YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

                          The view of Yellowstone Lake from the Overlook

Of course, the next morning, when I awoke, I was still in Yellowstone.

The first thing I noticed, on my way to see if Raspberry might be around, was that the bright orange tent that had been set up next to Yellowstone Lake, on a small bluff, the night before was gone.  I wondered what time it was when rangers knocked on their door and made them leave their perfect little camping spot.

Raspberry was in the burned forest near the lake but there wasn’t much light and so I went back up to visit the Dusky Grouse at Lake View Overlook.  A couple was standing there in the early morning and I was struck by him in his shorts, the snow still on the ground and the yellow flowers blooming on a nearby bush.  The grouse came calling but was not as flirtatious as before and was not doing flips for me.

By the time I returned to Raspberry, she was gone, slipped off into the forest.

I had a few goals for my time at the lake – to see Raspberry, the grouse, the loons at Indian Pond and, my biggest hope, to see Hobo.  Hobo eludes me time and time again….

But, I spent the morning with the loon, though didn’t get terribly close.  It was quite early when I hiked out beside Indian Pond, to the lake, then around the back of the pond and back to my car.  The loon was closest to my car the whole time but the early morning hike was wonderful.  I sat low on the pond bank and waited for the loon to come closer, which it did several times, but not close enough.  A loon needs a very long body of water in order to take flight and this loon flapped across the water a couple of times but never did get into the air.  The most special part of the morning was the call of the loon, which I finally captured  about 20 seconds of. I will have to add it to a video one day.

Afterwards I went back to check for Raspberry but she was not there.  Along the way I found a marmot posing next to the lake.  He gave me several different cute poses and I couldn’t choose just one to show so here are three.

And then I returned to the Overlook to visit the grouse one more time.  There I ran into fellow photographer and friend, Max Waugh, and he told me about the coyote pups on Mormon Row in Grand Teton National Park.

That was when I knew that my destination was the Tetons – but, in the back of my mind I was still trying to figure out how to also get to the wild horses…

Stay tuned for part 3