Animals in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park

We've been back for over a week, and I'm ready to document some of the high points of our recent trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. Big and small animals in the wild, impressive mountains, and unearthly volcanic landscapes are the major attractions of these parks. While we were not lucky enough to see a moose, we did spot one grizzly bear from a quite far distance. People were talking about spectacular kills of an elk and a buffalo calf by bears and wolves, but we weren't in the right place at the right time. However, we enjoyed seeing quite a few elk, buffalo, and smaller animals.



The buffalo often cause a traffic jam, sometimes by standing beside the road, sometimes by trying to get across the road in traffic. We also saw a very peaceful buffalo down a hill from the roadside, resting in what appeared to be a patch in the grass that he had worn bare by circling around to get comfortable:



In Grand Teton Park, we saw this huge herd of buffalo -- we saw a similar herd in Yellowstone also.



Len took this beautiful picture of an elk near one of the big hot springs areas in Yellowstone.



I took a picture of Len photographing the elk.



At dusk, we saw several elk grazing around the hot springs at the south end of Yellowstone Lake.



We caught sight of a coyote, running through the woods not far from Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.



Near Steamboat Geyser, we saw a bunny nibbling on grass.


And of course the chipmunks scurried all around me while I was sitting on a rock near Jenny Lake in the Tetons.



Addendum: We also saw marmots capering on the columnar basal formations in Yellowstone, beavers swimming and even giving a tail-splash in an oxbow lake in the Tetons, and a sleek reddish otter beside a stream near Jenny Lake.