There's a bear in there...

Yellowstone is fabulous

started the day by sighting a bald eagle chick in a nest by the road. Silhouette photos because of the sun, but easy to see the feathering as it reaches out for a stretch. There's canada geese by the river and some more bison as we take a drive along the flats.

We walked through the thermal basins we had missed yesterday and some watery sunshine starts to warm us up a bit, but the wind is straight from the snow. There's an elk and his mate grazing quietly in the paddock beside the road, drawing a crowd of photographers and excited viewers. We still haven't seen a moose, but I am hopeful.

Yellowstone lake is still frozen around the edge in many places and the ice patterns in one small bay are interesting enough to call for a short viewing stop.

Bear-jam, just up the road we stop at what the rangers name their traffic jams. Bears always draw a crowd, even from a long distance, but this one was lying sleepily under a tree in a small clearing, giving everyone a great view. Two wolves were circling and one lay down near the bear, looking out at the crowd. Thank goodness for zoom lenses! It's a fabulous grand finale to our time in Yellowstone.

The park had one more surprise though, as we leave via the eastern gate the lake at the pass is still frozen solid and the roadside has snow right onto the road. It's a small glimpse of Yellowstone in winter and very pretty although at 2 degrees C we shiver as we get out of the car to take a couple of photos.

We leave Yellowstone and head east via the Buffalo Bill dam and another tunnel through the mountains to Cody. The Buffalo Bill Museum in this friendly town is fabulous - a collection of five museums with wonderful native american, natural history, western history and art. We broke our visit with a 'trolley bus' ride through the town and out to the dam again, learning about Bill Cody and the town that has his name. Our enthusiastic hosts encouraged us to attend the 'Gunfight at the OK corral' acted nightly in town at the historic Irma's Hotel, so after seeing some more of the museums, we make our way there.

A donation to charity gets us front row seats and we watch as the good guys win (mostly), the bad guys loose and calamity Jane gets handy with a whip. The boys make a lot of noise with guns and everyone steps up for a photo call. Lots of fun in a wild west kind of way. (did you know they can buy guns and ammo at Walmart here?!)

The bus for the Cody nightly rodeo leaves from outside the hotel, so we order a plate of nachos and a budweiser and chat to a friendly local while we wait. The rodeo is entertaining, though nobody manages to stay on a bull more than about a second or two. As we leave the stands the bus pulls out without us, so a friendly local couple offer us a ride back into town. We accept with thanks and it turns out they run a cattle ranch, raising angus cattle. Our 'ranch' is much smaller, but I wonder at the chances of this encounter.

Tomorrow we drive on to Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming - and yet again, sleep is what we need now.