Day two in Montana got off to a promising start because a cold front had blown through overnight. The wind and light rain cleared all of the smoke and overcast blegh, so the Big Sky show was in full effect. The day’s schedule consisted solely of an excursion south into Yellowstone National Park. I wanted to see as many of the Park’s wild animals as I could, and it was slow going.

This chipmunk was as good as it got, at first. I don’t know if the smoke from earlier in the week had the animals in hiding, but we didn’t see much for the first hour or two. It didn’t really matter since the scenery was as advertised and a complete stunner at every turn.

I was tickled by the way fishermen would just pull off the road and walk down to the river to get after it. Like, no parking lots or anything. If you’ve got a license to fish (and you better have one because the park rangers don’t play with that shit), you’re free to go.

We stopped to take in some of the majesty at an overlook that featured this waterfall.

And if you are going to have wooden rails to keep people from falling, you’re going to get the good pocketknife graffiti.

We eventually saw just about every animal I’d hoped for.

Bison:

Magpies:

Elk:

What they call “tourons“:

We also saw some packrats, prairie dogs, ducks (we have those here, though, so not so impressive), a gopher, and a mountain goat, but I didn’t get photos of those.

I just couldn’t get over how crazy it was to have mountains everywhere. It’s a beautiful place.

They also get dozens of feet of snow in the winter, so there’s no chance in hell I’d live there.