Just after we got into the park we spotted three Moose roadside... You can see two in this picture. Photographing wildlife can be very tricky - it seams like if you just got a little closer you'd get a much better picture - but if these animals feel threatened they will not hesitate to run into you and ram you with their horns. Every year people in the park system are hurt for Moose, Elk, Buffalo & bears.
We didn't have any problems - but we saw a crazy video at Yellowstone where people got rammed by male Elk with large antlers and one woman trying to get a close up picture got rammed into by a buffalo and then toppled over, causing her to roll across the prairie.
So now you know why we don't have super close up pictures of the wildlife...
This picture was from a quick hike in a valley.
This next picture is from the highest point on the trail in the tundra. The Tundra , or high altitude areas on the tops of mountains, is always such an interesting place because of the harsh conditions that plants and animals are exposed to. Plants are dwarfed in size and also evolved to deal with the extreme cold and extreme sunlight - at high elevation, with the atmosphere thinning there are higher concentrations of UV light. So even though it was raining (the weather system up there is constantly changing but most often dreary) I got a little sunburn pink on my nose.
Another interesting thing about the Tundra is that it is very fragile - at the national parks, originally people we allowed to walk all over, but the tundra can't take the pressure, turns a sun burnt red, and dies off.
After our trip through the main highway across the park we were scheduled to head off to Wyoming and other parks... but we were pretty exhausted - so we stopped near a visitor center and pulled out our new hammock! This is definitely a must for car camping - you can set your hammock up virtually anywhere and get a quick snooze to refresh before your next adventure!
And here was our next adventure - driving out of the park we saw a couple Elk munching on bushes by a river. You can spot Elk by their darker colored heads and white butts!
And coming out East of Rockey Mt Nat Park, one exits through this incredible canyon... the drive through here was about 10 miles and just incredible!
1 comment:
Hammock ... genius! I've done much living out of a car recently and one of those would've been HUGE.
Also, incidentally, you can spot Eastern Europeans the same way as the elk.
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