Yellowstone... FABULOUS!

Yea! We finally made it to West Yellowstone, Montana! The drive wasn't so very bad because the scenery in Montana is incredible! So our plan was to spend two days here but we decided to do the entire park in one day... all day today. Thanks to Shasta waking us up early once again, we got an early start, bought our yearly pass to the National Park system and were off like a herd of turtles (as my sister-n-law Lauren likes to say). There were animals everywhere and after awhile I actually stopped taking photos of the bison or buffalo as I would call them because they are around every corner! Here's a photo of one in particular that decided to pass by our little walkway which completely freaked me out & I was screaming (quietly of course for the fear of the big guy deciding to charge at us just like the park brochure claims they do) at Mike to turn the boys around and he completely ignores my little panic attack and patiently waits for the buffalo to pass and then we proceed like it was some poodle crossing the road. NUTS!

We also saw several wild goats, elk, a couple of black bears, a fox and an eagle in her nest. It was rather incredible! The scenery was so different from one corner of the park to the other! There are miles of lovely grassy pastures, rocky mountains and sadly miles of park that were previously ravaged by a fire... the forest shows new growth but haunting upright trees remain, bleached and dead. The massive cliffs, valleys and rivers varied throughout the entire drive and fun little mineral pools were bubbling up everywhere shooting steam into the sky. The only way things could have been better were if we were in a convertible little car. Check these photos out...

Hayden checks out the topography of a burned out section of the park.

Above are the boys of course posing for the camera with yet another picture perfect view behind them.

We slipped into the Old Faithful parking lot... walked over to where everyone was standing around and not 5 minutes later she blew! Hows that for timing? Here's a quick pic!

This was Shasta's favorite spot... typically a cold weather breed (Keeshond), we pulled over to play in the snow while going over the pass & Shasta went nuts! He dug his nose into the snow, and crunched on it like it was the Gridley Burgie crushed ice (locals understand completely). Poor thing, I hate to tell him he's stuck with summers in the 100's and winters just cold and wet. In this photo he's got his eyes on a snowball that Koltin threw up for him to catch.

So I took about 200 photos and feel like we saw as much of the park as one can in one day. We were supposed to stay tomorrow but have gotten the itch to move on and are leaving for Cody, Wyoming in the morning, just for fun. More photos to come!