Yellowstone IV

Well, we just finished our third (and probably last) day of touring Yellowstone National Park. We put 490 miles on the Jeep in three days and still did not travel all of the major roads in the park, much less the minor gravel side trips. I'm convinced that you could spend a summer here without ever getting bored. On an interesting side note, those 490 miles took just a bit less than 22 gallons for a mileage of about 22.5. That is significant because the Jeep almost never breaks 20mpg. The driving, as you can imagine, involved significant amounts of climbing steep grades, low gear engine braking down grades (once using 4WD low range!), and frequent applications of brakes. Nonetheless, we got 22.5. Do you s'pose the fact that my average driving speed was around 30mph was a factor? Ya think? This trip has driven home the fact that, if you want to save a little fuel, slow down!

OK, I have decided what pictures to attach. After two days in the park we had seen only one elk. This morning there was a herd of them bedded down at Park headquarters. I guess that grass with Turf Builder Plus 2 is sweeter than that stuff mother nature provides. A short time later, well away from civilization, we found a very large bull rattling his antlers against the trees. It is a rear view picture, but it shows his size. What a variety of terrains exist in the various parts of the park! The focal point today was Canyon Village where can be found the upper and lower falls as the Yellowstone River descends through the "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone". The upper falls drops over 100 feet, and the lower falls drop over 300 feet. The vantage point is called Artist's Point. It would be, too, except that the thousands of crowding tourists would keep knocking over your tripod and easel. Seriously, I sat on a log bench and stared upriver at the falls through a veil of evergreen branches and felt like I could stay there forever. This camera goes from 35 to 420 mm eq. Yet I kept thinking that my wide-angle lens was not wide enough.

It should be noted that I can only attach about 10% of the pictures to the blog. Today I took 45, and there were no rejects. It is difficult to decide which ones to include. I guess I can pick a few and send a few more from Missoula tomorrow. The camera may get a bit of a break for a couple of days.

By the way, today we committed to being a seasonal camper at the Moorings RV Resort in Belfast, ME for 2009 again.