Yellowstone National Park

In June I visited Yellowstone National Park for the third time.  The park is huge, encompassing a total of more than 2.2 million acres.  I'm much more used to Yosemite National Park and the valley floor, which is only 7.5 miles long and 1 mile wide, there is a big difference  between these two parks.

Yellowstone is interesting to some degree just for the fact of its different communities that are frequent users of the park, groups like the bear "groupies" and the wolf-watchers.  There was actually one RV that had a license that said, "Bearjam."  People who visit often know the names of the different bears and where the bears mostly travel and/or the names of the major wolves in the wolf pack they follow.  Most of these people also know the history of the animals they follow.  

I go to take photographs and I generally have no clue what bear I am photographing, but I do enjoy getting to see the mama bears (sows) and their cubs.  The cubs are just way too cute to watch.  This time one sow had three cubs and one of them was too adventurous for his or her own good and was into everything and way ahead of the others. At one point this little cub, and these were all newborn this year, stood up tall, then sort of tottered backward slowly and plopped down: I can only assume he had not mastered the art of standing up yet.  

June is a good time to visit the park if you want to see babies: bear cubs, elk and pronghorn young, Bighorn sheep youngsters, and bison babies for the most part.  For landscape shots, the fall colors are very nice and then the elk are in rut so you can get photos of elk strutting about to impress the ladies.  

​I love this park and all that it offers and wide open spaces in it are incredible.