So, my number one goal when visiting Yellowstone National Park was to see critters. Bears and wolves, especially. Especially bears. Well, the quest to see bears and wolves was pretty much a complete failure. We saw one bear for about two seconds on our drive into Yellowstone. And, we saw a wolf on the side of the road illuminated by our headlights at about 4:30 in the morning for about one second. Not exactly what we would call good sightings. And, as a friend told me, if there aren’t photos it didn’t happen. So, apparently those sightings didn’t happen at all.

Birds were also a bit of a disappointment. I think we saw only one bald eagle and I’m not sure we saw even a single hawk. We did see lots and lots of absolutely massive ravens.

And these little guys.

But our failure to see some of the big attractions that doesn’t mean our quest to see animals was a complete bust. Far from it.

We saw so many amazing elk.

There were herds of elk that hung out just outside of Mammoth.

They were amazing.

And, we even saw a couple of elk crossing a river one day.

We also saw bighorn sheep.

They were right outside of Mammoth too.

And, we saw several coyotes. They were often far away and hard to spot, but boy was it cool to see them.

And pronghorn.

And, I think it is probably impossible to visit Yellowstone and not see bison.

It was so unbelievably cool to see these amazing animals. Now, if I can just convince Robert to go back and look for those bears and those wolves . . . .