Yellowstone 2016 - Part 1

We always like driving around Yellowstone National Park.  We camped for the first week at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana.

Some of the Aspens around the park have started turning.

Firehole Falls

Great Fountain Geyser between eruptions

Old Faithful Geyser

We spotted this Great Gray Owl and quickly pulled over.  Soon after we had stopped, many other cars stopped and the owl decided to move along.

Bison scratching his head

Bison in the Hayden Valley

Raven portrait

A Great Blue Heron in the Hayden Valley

A flock of Canada Geese

A bull elk watching his harem near the Madison River

Buffalo Bill Museums

One of the primary reasons we spent some time in the Cody, Wyoming area was to visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.  This is a complex of five museums which cover Buffalo Bill Cody, the Plains Indians, local natural history, western art and historic firearms.

Museum entrance

The entrance to the Buffalo Bill Cody museum had a neat display.  A machine was blowing a sheet of vapor (probably dry ice vapor) out at the entrance.  A video of someone portraying Buffalo Bill welcoming visitors was projected onto the vapor.  People would often walk right through this display.

A rare surviving poster from Cody's Wild West Show in London

Cody was involved in many different financial enterprises (many did not do well).  This printing press was one that Cody owned and eventually brought to the town of Cody.

The Museum of the Plains Indians had a lot of information about their lives around the 1800s.

Commemoration of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (aka Custer's Last Stand)

The natural history museum had some very nicely done mounted animal displays.

The ram on the left has been at this a little too long!

The Cody Firearms Museum has a very extensive (overwhelming) collection of historic firearms covering most of their history.

This sculpture in the Western Art Museum was interesting.  It was first constructed from pieces of driftwood, then a mold was taken of the sculpture and finally cast in bronze.

Chief Joseph Scenic Highway and Beartooth Highway

We took a long drive from our base camp and drove over the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway to the junction with the Beartooth Highway.  We then took the Beartooth Highway over Beartooth Pass to Red Lodge and then returned to Cody via MT-72 and WY-120.  The Chief Joseph Scenic Highway mostly follows part of the route that Chief Joseph used leading the Nez Pierce Indians attempting to reach sanctuary in Canada while trying to avoid capture by the US Army.

Starting up the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway

View from the summit at Dead Indian Pass

A memorial sculpture for the Nez Pierce

A panorama from along the Beartooth Highway

Long Lake

Looking down below Beartooth Pass

Video panorama from Beartooth Pass

This juvenile Red-tailed Hawk was using the strong updraft on the mountainside to hover while scanning the terrain below.  It would then swoop down low over the land below and then return high up to hover again.

A couple more views from the Beartooth Highway

Buffalo Bill State Park

We are spending several days at Buffalo Bill State Park on the edge of Buffalo Bill Reservoir on the Shoshone River, a few miles west of Cody, Wyoming.

Our campsite along the shore of Buffalo Bill Reservoir

A couple of views across Buffalo Bill Reservoir

Mountains to the north

We've seen a lot of wild Prairie Sunflowers lately.

Died sunflower seed head

A couple of the local inhabitants

Just outside of Cody, we found this large field of commercial sunflowers.

Little Bighorn Battlefield

A few years ago, Barbara learned that one of her great-grandfathers was buried in the Custer National Cemetery within the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  He was a civil war veteran and Custer National Cemetery was the closest national cemetery to where he died.  We decided to visit the National Monument to visit his grave and to see where Custer's last stand happened.

The older part of Custer National Cemetery

Grave of James Upton (Barbara's great-grandfather)

Area along the Little Bighorn River where many more Indians were encamped than Custer was expecting

Last Stand Hill where Custer and his group met their end

A sunset in the plains

Bighorn Mountains

We spent a few days in Buffalo, Wyoming, so that we could explore Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains.  Here are just a few images from one of our drives into the Bighorns.

The Bighorns viewed from the east.

A mountain stream

Water Lily covered lake