Another great day!

I went out for a walk this morning and was greeted with this beautiful sight!  It's going to be another great day!

Evan spotted this guy near the camper:

We headed over to Chico Hot Springs for a dip first, then had lunch at the restaurant next to the pool. 

Next we headed back to Mammoth so Evan can be sworn in as a junior ranger, entering the park through the Northwest entrance. 

The Northwest entrance "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People."

We headed toward Cooke city to Lamar valley and we saw three owlets that a nice group of people from Montana showed us.  People are so nice and seem to enjoy showing kids what they have spotted.  They had a really powerful telescope pointed to the birds and were nice enough to lower the scope so that Evan could look in.  After that we saw another couple with a big telescope so we stopped.  They were focused on some bison, but turned it around and focused on some Elk so that Evan could take a look.   We saw some elk right next to the road and got some pics.

Bear sighting shortly before making the turnoff to Lamar Valley. Momma bear and two cubs!

We turned around before getting into the mountains after Lamar Valley to head back towards Fishing Bridge Campground where we will stay the night.  Not long after turning at Norris, we saw a group of people with cameras and binoculars...a good sign that wildlife is around :). We did not have a place to pull over the motorhome, so we drove down the road a bit  and found a pull out.  Evan and I jumped out and headed up a big hill to check it out.  It was at least half a mile uphill!  We were rewarded with another Momma bear and her two cubs!  We got pictures of this one too.  

Still on the road to the campground we stopped at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and hiked down to the lower falls right at the brink of the falls.  It was beautiful!!!  However, Evan was a little fussy about the long hike :). I must admit, the hike back up was tough.

We also saw Bison at several points along the road, including a Bison traffic jam.

At the turn at Canyon Village we saw another group of people (which usually means a wildlife sighting).  This time it was a male bear and he was huge.  I was really surprised by how much bigger he was than the female.  This brings our count up to 8 bears today....one that Evan and I saw, but did not get picture evidence...then the first mother and 2 cubs, the second mother and two cubs and then the male...pretty good for one day.

This has been a really long day.  Although Evan was tired and ready to get to the campground, we stopped at the Dragon's breath thermal feature before going to the campground.  

We arrived at the campground around 7:30, stopped at the grocery store, set up camp, cooked dinner, and watched Wild Hogs for our nightly entertainment.

It has rained this afternoon.  Snow in the higher elevations, light rain lower elevations.  By the time we got to the campground it was raining pretty hard.  It has been much wetter this trip than trips later in the summer.  However, we have not let it slow us down.