Day Ten

Yellowstone/Elks/Sylvan Pass/Bison

Third day into Yellowstone, and what a fun time the day was. Elk were grazing in a valley, which made it three wild animals (bison and chipmunks being the other two) I had seen with my very own eyes.

The goal was to travel on some of the other remaining routes of Yellowstone, the one past Old Faithful that would lead to the Continental Divide, to road to the eastern entrance eventually leading to Cody, and the northeastern path leading to Mammoth Springs and the northern gate. Mileage of the day totaled about 350 miles on a 13-hour journey.

The road along Yellowstone Lake provided a pretty view but unspectaculer. The road leading to Sylvan Pass on the eastern corridor was impressive, with an elevation of 8,559 feet. There was no time to take the scenic route to Cody, Wyoming, so I'll have to figure out a plan to travel that way on the return from Glacier National Park in northern Montana. The plan would be a return to Yellowstone en route to Grand Teton.

Backtracking from the eastern road and up toward Canyon, cars stopped along the road because a huge bison was traveling in the middle of the road. I got out to check out how far it was and it was slowing moving in my direction. Thirty feet, then twenty feet.

All I could think was "Damn, I have no comprehensive health care! I gotta save my own ass." So, I moved back into the car, snapping the camera away, as the buffalo passed by just 10 feet away and making its way back into the valley.

Farther along the valley a horde of bison gathered, and a few were on the opposite side of the road. It was an amazing sight to behold.

Another amazing sight was the drive back to the hotel, past Roosevelt's Arch in the northern entrance, and toward Paradise Valley, flanked by mountains of Gallatin National Forest. And as I drove westward, the sun was setting behind a mountain range -- slowly turning from an orange hue to a sharp red.

There's something to be said about sunsets -- each is different and every location is unique, be it from a mountaintop in Baguio, from the streets in Bangkok after a heavy rainstorm, from a fjord in Oslo or from the deck of Top of the Rock in midtown Manhattan.

Those views stay in your mind for a while. Sunrises, too, but those stories can be told another time.