A female pronghorn strolls through a meadow before sunset at Mormon Row.
Tag: Wyoming
At the End of the Trail
I became intrigued with the Subaru Outback while in graduate school so when we moved to Oregon and were ready to replace my wife’s car, it was our first choice. It was my wife’s daily driver for fourteen years and I took it on all my hiking trips, near and far. It was always a welcome sight when I arrived back at the end of the trail, in this case the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone.
Late in its life it got hit a few times, once by someone who ran a red light and twice by people who inexplicably plowed into the back of it. I suppose one sign of how much we loved it is not just that we drove it for so long, and not just that we replaced it with another Subaru, but that we replaced my Honda with a Subaru too.
We bought this model when it first came out and fell in love with the color, which had literally just arrived at the dealer (they hadn’t even had time to take the protective wrapping off). Apparently a lot of other people loved the color too so we ended up seeing them everywhere, including a few nearby in our neighborhood. There are still enough on the road that I frequently get a nice reminder of our dependable little wagon that I took to so many of my favorite places.
Dust Cloud
When I took Ellie to the dog park this evening she plopped over on her back in the green grass and wiggled happily. She does this frequently and it always reminds me of this bison bull that I met along the Storm Point Trail in Yellowstone. Here he shakes off a cloud of dirt after bathing in a wallow.
Pride
A quick edit of an old picture to mark a historic day in my country. This was my first visit to Storm Point in Yellowstone and the trail lived up to its name. A brief but violent thunderstorm rolled through before yielding to the sun and an intense rainbow.
Revenge of the Marshmallows
When I saw this scene in Mammoth Hot Springs, I thought perhaps that marshmallows were at long last taking their revenge for all the times they had been placed on a branch and roasted over a roaring fire.
Mammoth Hot Springs
I photographed this little section of Mammoth Hot Springs on my first visit to the area in 2004. I’ve gone back to this spot on each trip since but its appearance has changed over the years and it’s never looked as good as it did on that first trip.
Turning Frogs into Katydids
My visit to the Tetons in 2011 got off to a slow start. I hadn’t seen much wildlife and while the scenery was beautiful as always, the light and weather weren’t cooperating. In the mood to try something new, I hiked a trail I hadn’t been on before, the Two Ocean Lake Trail. In the meadows I was startled multiple times by creatures moving in the grass that reminded me in size and mass of frogs, but they looked like giant grasshoppers. I had no idea such things even existed, not having seen them before (or since), but they were Mormon crickets. They’re actually katydids, not crickets, and lack the ability to fly.
Drizzle
A young elk bull grazes in a meadow on a rainy fall day in Grand Teton National Park in 2006. He was eating with another young bull, both keeping a watch on the nearby harem of a mature bull.
It’s a little hard to see the rain in the picture at this resolution, but I had just purchased my 500mm lens before this trip and while the lens has weather sealing, I was still a little nervous about exposing it to the elements. Nine years later it’s been through a lot more rain and is still going strong.
Preacher & Pulpit
A Uinta ground squirrel delivers a sermon from a makeshift pulpit atop a log beside the Two Ribbons Trail in Yellowstone National Park.
Early Reward
A moose cow walks with her calf (almost completely obscured by the tall grass in front of her) near the road from Mammoth to Tower in Yellowstone National Park. I am not a morning person (to put it mildly) so getting up early for photography is always a struggle. This visit to Yellowstone was in 2004 and I was still learning how productive those early hours can be. I finally decided to get up early to beat the crowds on the last day of the trip and was rewarded with close views of not just this moose and her calf but also a black bear and her two cubs, an elk cow and her calf, and bison as well.
Boolie 