Yellowstone National Park. September 2020 We arrived!

 We left home and drove through the Tahoe area and across Nevada, turning north at Wells and spending our first night in Twin Falls, Idaho. The next morning we went to the local Walmart and bought fresh fruit and deli items to add to the groceries we brought from home. Our next stop was West Yellowstone where we would spend one night.   

We made it to West Yellowstone in the early afternoon and decided to visit the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center that happened to be right across the street from our hotel. This center is a sanctuary for grizzly bears who have become habituated to people (used to eating people's garbage) and couldn't be successfully relocated. It's a bit sad to see them even though they're taken care of very well, but it's certainly better than the bears having to be destroyed.  Most of the wolves at the center seemed to have been orphaned as cubs. I learned something I didn't know: wolves turn white as they age, even black wolves! I don't mean just their muzzle either, all their coat turns white. 

After the grizzlies and wolves we decided to drive over to the park entrance gate and buy my America the Beautiful Lifetime Senior Access pass. Now I have to say that I had mixed feelings about qualifying for this pass (you have to be 62), but the price of $80 for free access to ALL national parks and forests for the rest of your life is a screaming deal! We visited two parks on this trip so it almost paid for itself already!

After we bought the pass, we decided to drive into the park a little ways since there weren't a lot of cars at the gate. As we were driving along the Madison River, we stopped because there was a big bull elk with a large harem of female elk in the field. I took some photos and then we stopped again because a female was grazing on the opposite riverbank and there was a bald eagle in one of the trees. We had barely been on the park 15 minutes at this point. We passed another large group of elk and then saw a lone bison lying in a field with the river and mountains illuminated by the sunlight behind them.  So that was an awesome first afternoon, so much wildlife in just a short time. 

Next day's plan: Geyser day!