Day 3 Continued (Afternoon)

After our grizzly adventure, it was early afternoon I think and we were all ready for lunch. We stopped at Canyon for a really good lunch at the cafeteria. Then, post lunch we continued further south in the park toward Yellowstone Lake via Hayden Valley. Hayden Valley contains the largest herd of bison in the park (900+ I believe). The Yellowstone River flows northward from the lake before heading into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone near Canyon. This beautiful river is immediately adjacent to the road for nearly the entire 16-mile stretch from Fishing Bridge (at the lake) to Canyon Village.

In Hayden Valley, people were watching a grizzly sow and her two cubs playing in the hills. We caught a quick glimpse of them for a couple minutes but unfortunately they were quite far away. You could see them with binoculars but the ranger's spotting scope was the better tool for this viewing. Now we were up to 6 bears for the day! (I neglected to mention a cinnamon black bear that we saw just south of Dunraven Pass.)

After getting our feet soaked trying to get a nice photograph of a curved swatch of yellow monkeyflower, we continued south to LeHardys Rapids on the Yellowstone River. These rapids are famous for viewing native cutthroat trout trying to make their way upstream to spawn. We saw plenty of trout fighting the very strong current but they weren't really jumping at this time.

Colin and I tried to capture a blurry photo of the current by using a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/8 of a second. It gave the surface of the water a nice silky smooth look. Again, it was nice to have the time to experiment like this.

Yellowstone River near LeHardys Rapids (1/8 second shutter speed)

Our next stop was near Mary Bay on Yellowstone Lake. The wildflowers here were simply dense blankets of color. Again, it was difficult to do the scene justice but it was easier here since the patches were so dense with reds, purples, yellows, and various shades of green.

Bill, Tom and Colin set up tripods near Mary Bay

Yellow-headed Blackbird