will stop for wildlife

It's snowing outside our window, and we're pretty darn excited. While most of the East Coast and Midwest has been hammered with snow (sorry, Kinz!), we're still waiting on our big storm. And we need it, boy do we need it. So far there's just a light dusting of powder on the ground, but we're hoping it will continue on through the night.

Yesterday we signed up for an employee-only tour to West Yellowstone. The newest addition to the winter fleet of vehicles here in the park is the Glaval;


transportation decided to do a test run with it, and we signed up to go on the tour. We took off around 8:30 a.m. and headed towards West. We didn't get far--to Fairy Falls--before we ran into a bison jam on the road.


The normal employee runs to West don't stop, but because this was a test run for a normal tour we stopped at points along the way, and for wildlife. We pulled off at Midway Geyser Basin and checked out Fountain Paint Pots


and Rusty Spouter.


Alongside the boardwalk you'll spot these boulders, which are actually remnants of the old road that ran through the geyser basin.


Because this was a tour, we only had about an hour in West once we arrived, just enough time to hit the post office, grocery store, and grab lunch before we headed back into the park.

Despite combing every inch of the Madison valley that we could see, we didn't spot any wolves or bobcats, just a small herd of elk resting by the shore of the river. Our next stop was Firehole Canyon drive, where we saw a few more elk, and also Firehole Cascade


And by popular demand (ahem), more coyote pictures! To my delight, we also pulled over and watched these two mousing along Madison River for about ten minutes.