Saturday, August 22, 2009

Yellowstone NP (I). Fauna

After 1 day at Grand Teton NP, I decided to continue to Yellowstone NP. Both parks are just next to each other. You go out of Grand Teton NP and 4km after the exit, you find the entrance to Yellowstone NP.

Yellowstone is huge. You can't really figure out how huge it is until you are there. You can drive hundreds of km within its limits! I spent two full days there and I couldn't visit it all. To see everything properly (long hikes, long reflection times, animal seeking...) you need at least 1 week!! No kidding!! It is so large, that I am still trying to figure out how to divide the visit in several posts...



Today, I will start with something easy: fauna in Yellowstone. This is one of the highlights of the park and, therefore, deserves a post on its own. I was pretty lucky and so quite some bears (3), deers, moose, etc, and many many bison.

As soon as I entered the park, I came into a herd of bison by the road. It was the first time I saw this majestic animal.



Later on, I started figuring out when I had the opportunity for animal sightings. Just stop where there are tens of cars blocking the road!!



A moose with huge antlers:



A black bear in a hurry to avoid hundreds of humans disturbing its daily peace:



Baby and Mama black bears:



A bison drinking some water in one of the thousands of ponds in Yellowstone.



A bison nodding off in one of the thousands of thermal zones in Yellowstone...



Last sighting of deers/elks or whatever those are:

2 comments:

Aitor said...

increible yellowstone, eh?
por cierto, lo que pones que es un moose es un elk!

Alvaro said...

Si! La verdad es que es un sitio impresionante! Lo tiene todo: lagos, bosque, el cañon y actividad volcanica... no puede pedirse nada mas!!

Lo de moose y elk lo he dado por perdido... para mi, todos son ciervos, unos mas grandes y otros mas pequeños.

En algunos sitios vi que elk era europeo y moose americano... pero luego he visto que aqui se supone que hay elks y moose, asi que ya no se lo que pensar. Para confundir un poco mas:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=509418