Today marked the halfway point of my amazing adventure in Yellowstone. We headed around the south end of the park from Old Faithful stopping at West Thumb for a bit and then working our way along Yellowstone Lake were we stopped for lunch. I did a pano while we were stopped. I love the vast expanse of nearly untouched snow covered ice that is Yellowstone Lake in winter. The sun came out and the clouds were just right giving us a classic Yellowstone image. Unfortunately, the constraints of this blog don’t do the image justice but, you can get an idea of the beauty anyway…
It was another great day in the park and to top it off we encountered the Canyon Group of wolves at twilight. While the image is not the greatest, I had to go to 3200 ISO to even get 1/40 of a second but, who can pass up an opportunity when the wolves are near. The alpha female and beta male came right past our snow coach, the male even pausing for a minute to check us out. The alpha male (black) is much more skittish around people and skirted the vehicle through the trees. After a week along the Madison with three elk kills under their belts (literally), they were headed back home. It was good information to file away for tomorrow as we check the area for more sightings…
Images captured with Nikon D3X (pano), D3S (wolf), AF-S 70-200mm VR II on Lexar Digital Media.
