"Encountered" critters in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Iowa....
Some pictures could fall under the wishful thinking category, or the best I could do with my 4x zoom. My daughter-in-law had a 10x zoom that made me pretty envious. But she'll share her pictures so I'll give you something better to look at when I get em.
I had a snake picture but somehow lost it. I hope it doesn't sneak up on my like the actual snake did. Yes. I saw two snakes. Very small, and fortunately, not of the rattling variety. One was far enough away that I could control my emotions enough to take a picture. The second one was close and roiling and slithering and I made a scene. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The squint real hard pictures include a mule deer, prairie dog, a bluebird, and mountain goats.
We saw hundreds of buffalo and dozens of elk. (An elk story to follow..) Somehow I did not actually take any buffalo pictures, but my daughter-in-law did. And the running girl is a picture of her possibly snapping a picture of a bear and running back to the car...not because of the very, very far off dark object's slight possibility of bearness but because of the freezing drizzle. And speaking of bears...
Our group (the others who met us in Montana) had a grizzly bear encounter. I don't have those
pictures yet. But this is significantly creepy because a man was killed the day before we entered Yellowstone by a mama grizzly. My niece mentioned that people were very foolish around the bear she saw. One person even took a flash photo, flashing the bear in the eyes. We drove past the closed bear attack area the following day. The man was only a mile and a half in, just off a busy road. We hiked further and deeper tha
n he had at least twice. I was sobered and spooked about it. A sad thing. And the picture of the girls was taken the morning we left, they were sad, they knew we were leaving them. They had a good week, though, and are glad we are back.
