Day 2 in the park!

Today started out a little slow. We started out by heading up towards Mammoth and Tower. The Dunraven pass is closed but we are all okay with it. In my opinion it is the least exciting part of the park. The tourons were heavy today. Stopping in the middle of the road to get a picture of one of the million bison in the park and holding up traffic when there is a pull out 25' up the road. Very annoying. However my favorite touron experience happened later this afternoon, I will explain later in my post. We stopped in Tower to feed Dillon and give ourselves a little potty break. Having lived in Casper for the past 2 1/2 yrs has really jaded me to the experience of seeing the great Prong Horn antelope. It is amazing we had a near miss with a couple people stopping in the middle of the road to see a whopping 7 of them. However they are beautiful creatures as well as the fastest land mammal on this continent. It just so happens though that 90% of their population lives within 50 mi of Casper so we see them literally everyday!
After Tower we decided to head back to Mammoth to see the Great Horned Owl that lives there. We have some amazing pics from last years trip and added a few more today. Between Mammoth and Norris there have been many sightings of Grizzly bears so we were hopeful that we would be able to catch one. WITH OUR CAMERA NOT OUR BAIT! (Bait is what Dillon was referred to as today!) We unfortunately missed out. Aftert Norris we headed back over to Hayden Valley where there is said to be many bears and even a wolf den! There were many cars ahead, we were getting excited... more buffalo! Again a gaggle of cars more than we had seen together at once in the park this trip. Excitement. We park. We scan. We overhear a gentleman explaining what all the hubub is about. "Alright you see that gravel bar in the middle of the river (this is already across quite a distance) not the first one but the second one. Yeah there is a white stick in it. Okay go straight up from that to the second level of sage grass. There's a black dot. Do you see it? That is the back of a grizzly he killed two bison calves earlier and has bedded down there to eat. He lift his head up every now and then." We stopped to see a black dot. JOY OH JOY. But we'll still count it. We headed back to Fishing Bridge to let Dillon eat again (it has been 4 hrs at this point since we stopped in Mammoth.) Bummed and all feeling a little edgy we decided to give Sedge Bay another shot. It is past Fishing Bridge and somewhat out of the way however, we are glad we did! There were cars gathered but not for a dot. There was a Grizzly on the side of the road trying to dig up some tasty morsels. Finally saw a bear. We captured some great pics and headed back toward Canyon to go home. Shortly after leaving Fishing Bridge we encountered another Grizzly but this time we had the most amazing Touron experience! People stopped in the middle of the road ABANDONING their cars. This was on a very narrow two way road. With no way around we sat. I got out of the car because at this point we still didn't know what it was that was causing the jam. I saw the Grizzly took a few pics and jumped back in the car. TWO close bear sightings and one dot! Great way to end the day. We did stop and take pics of the Wolf den. No wolves though. To end the evening we stopped and picked up BBQ. Ribs for dinner. Yummy!


My comp is being super stupid and I need to sleep. I will try to post pics tomorrow. Sorry! LOVE YOU ALL!