Yellowstone

Our return trip included a detour into Yellowstone National Park - one little corner of the park, actually. At that time of the year, only one entrance to the park is open and that road is only plowed for a certain distance. After some miles, the road becomes impassible to cars. At the end we found a little town that appeared to be the Wild West with snowmobiles. The place was buzzing with men who were racing from their hotel to the gas station across the street on their snowmobiles - just because they could - it didn't appear there were any wives around to tell them how silly it was.


Anyway, before and after reaching the end of the road, we saw lots of wildlife, including buffalo, elk, a bighorn sheep and even some wolves. The wolves were far away and we wouldn't have known what they were except that some scientists were watching them through high powered telescopes and let us take a turn. Pretty cool.


The first few buffalo were pretty exciting, even though they were far away, they were camera worthy.


The next buffalo pictured was closer than he appears in my shot. While we were stopped beside him in our car, I imagined the ridiculousness of my life ending in such a silly way - she was going to move to Portland, yet was gored by a buffalo trying to get a great picture from her point and shoot camera.


The picture below illustrates my constant fascination with open spaces and vast stretches of road.













After leaving Yellowstone, we continued east and spent the night in the north east corner of Wyoming. As it turned out, we were very close to Devil's Tower. I really wanted to see Devil's Tower. Not out of any interest in how the tower was incorporated into the culture of Native Americans or for any geological reasons, but because it was so prominently featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind

Here's a shot of Devil's Tower:

I also have to include at least one picture to prove that I was on this trip. As it turns out, our trip took us through the other, more famous Sturgis, Sturgis, South Dakota, home of the Black Hills Motorcyle Rally.

Here I am, looking a little dorky, probably one of the few people photographed under this sign who is not wearing leather.

Ok, that's it for this time.