We had breakfast one last time at the Bearclaw Bakery. We bid the staff Good Bye. We will see them again in June when I return with 12 MPEGers and spouses.
We took our time doing some landscape/street photography in Cooke City on the way to the Park. It was a beautiful sunrise, blue sky day!
On our way through the Park going westward, nothing too terribly exciting... a coyote hunting along the Soda Butte Creek, the big horn ram was still hanging around the Hitching post area. I stopped to speak with well known Wolf Watcher, Doug McLaughlin. Doug lives in Silver Gate, MT and manages Silver Gate Lodging. We spoke about the Yellowstone wolf situation and 06'. Doug informed me of a new pro-wolf website he is working on. The website is: www.warof754.com Be sure and check it out and please help support Doug and this great cause! The wolves need every voice they can get! Help Save the Wolves!
We proceed west looking for bull elk but nothing but bison and cow elk. We see another coyote near the old elk carcass. Then we come upon yet another coyote in the road just walking along going from Point A to Point B. We drove up ahead of him... waited and took video of him just walking by us with no fear. I will post the video soon. We proceeded to Gardiner and there was a large crowd at the pull out just before the Park exit (North gate). There were wolf watchers and some photographers observing the 8 Mile Wolf Pack (7 wolves) up on a ridge close to a mile away but you could clearly see the wolves bedded down. Some wolves were up and about. I took images at 1300 mm. They are documentation images, but not suitable for print or posting. The Pack started moving west and so did some of us (along the road outside the north entrance). The wolves began howling which is music to my ears and everyone there. It's an awesome experience! We never found them again but maybe they will hang in the same area tomorrow. We spend 2 hours with the wolves. We decided to go up in Gardiner to look for mule deer and whatever else may pop up. We found several mule deer does but no bucks. I snapped a few nice mule deer images I can't wait to show you....
We had lunch in Gardiner and the proceeded back east for one final loop ride. Much of the same (elk cow, bison) and we almost ran over an ermine as it ran across the road in front of us. Those buggers are fast!
We found a beautiful coyote in Lamar in a snowy, rock setting and snapped this pretty picture! Then we had another bison jam (about the 4th one today) and snapped some pics of bison in the snow, etc. Another photographer spotted a golden eagle land in a tree behind us. By the time I got set up and ready to snap his picture, he flew off! Dang it!
We proceed through Lamar and Bill spotted 2 bull elk (finally) on the hillside . We took their picture for several minutes. See image posted in this blog post. We left there and proceeded back to Gardiner for the night. We had a pizza for dinner and called it a night!
Well folks, tomorrow is Day 7 (the final day). It has gone super fast as it always does. My final blog post will be tomorrow night, February 8, 2013.
I have way over 100 GB of RAW images (so far) so I will have a "just a few" images to edit when I get home. I will be posting a few images on Sunday on my website and on Facebook but the bulk of the editing will have to wait until I return from a business trip to TN/Arkansas next week.
Stay tuned for Day 7 (The Finale) tomorrow night!
Jared and I will be headed back home on Saturday afternoon.
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