#24-Life is good in Yellowstone

Alas it was a wonderful day. The morning started with overcast, sun and then cloudy, so we stayed with our original plan of going to the town of West Yellowstone to be tourists. We opted for the park showers and then headed to town.

Of course on the way we were treated to our second bear sighting in as many days—and this one wasn’t because of a bear jam. We were the only ones that watched the black bear climb up the mountain at a leisurely rate—very cool. And this brings the bear counts up to 10! And again there were plenty of elk, bison, and even watched a coyote try to catch breakfast. Since we headed out along the Madison River, we also saw plenty of fly fishermen. What do they do with the flies they catch?

Once we got to town we treated ourselves to a vegetarian pizza before we hit the shops. The boys were tucked into our coats and caused quite the “cuteness” stir, but they are amazingly good travelers—never question or fidget at whatever we asked. The three of us are now fighting over the two of them. How will they handle going home and just turning into dogs again?

We ended up scoring some really cute and cheap moose t-shirts and I finally found my t-shirt I had gotten 20 yrs ago. The run over bear with the caption “All I wanted was a cookie”. Cartoon of course, so there isn’t any road kill blood and guts! And a bit bigger and more colorful than the original one, but a good shopping day that was very relaxing.

Before heading back we stopped at the grocery to get prepared for Yuliya’s birthday dinner on September 11th. Had to get some better wine, candles, and it looks to be eggplant parmesan for her dinner. Of course she agreed to cinnamon rolls for her breakfast morning…back to that conflict on eating healthy…

Tomorrow we head to our new campground—at Bridge Bay. Not really doing any major tourist stopping yet in the park since we figure everything will be less busy after the weekend. We have yet to see Old Faithful blow but that is on the agenda. And will probably do some further traveling to case out our next camping spot. After all—any time on a Yellowstone road means a good chance of seeing cool wildlife. Makes the high priced gas almost worth it!

Still haven’t seen a moose yet but hopefully that will change in the next couple of days. Since we had an ultimate moose experience in Glacier everything will be secondary but we have yet to see a bull moose—or as Stacy is referring to them—a buck moose. Amazing how when people spend enough time together in small spaces they tend to create their own species with their own terminology. Anything to entertain ourselves…