Today was supposed to be our geyser day. In the past, we have spent most of our time shooting wildlife in Yellowstone. This time, we wanted to start the trip by doing the geysers first.
Our first stop was the loop along the
Firehole River.
We had always skipped this loop in the past as
we drove to other destinations. We expected this to be known
for geysers, but this section of the river was better known for
the waterfalls along the river. There were a couple good cascades
and then the Firehole Falls was pretty impressive.
Although the lighting wasn't very good, the Firehole River was beautiful. It slowly meanders through a fairly level meadow framed by pine trees on each side.
When we reached the Old Faithful geyser basin, we discovered our timing for catching the geysers wasn't very good. We missed Castle, Daisy, and River geysers, and Grand Geyser wasn't supposed to erupt until early evening. We walked around about half of the geyser basin, but the only major geyser we could photograph was Old Faithful. The percentages caught up with us. In the past, we had lucked out and had been able to go from one geyser to the next with very little wait. We weren't so lucky this year.
Since we couldn't shoot geysers, we
continued around the loop toward Canyon to shoot any wildlife
we could find. The clouds were rolling in, so we didn't think
we would have much luck with landscapes. The first stop was Kepler
Cascades, which was very cool. The slow shutter speed worked
very well here because of the thin veil of water dropping over
the wide ledge. The overcast skies actually were an advantage
to shooting here.
Heading north, we missed our turn at West Thumb but found a great opportunity to shoot a bull elk and his harem. They were down along a Big Thumb Creek, and the bull elk was busy trying to gather his harem. The females weren't being very cooperative, so it was interesting. Although the lighting wasn't great and there was intermittent rain, it was a lot of fun to shoot.
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| Bull Elk Watching Over His Harem | Come Back! I'm Sorry. Was It Something I Said? |
We turned around and got back on track when we found a deer buck above the road. We had often passed on shooting deer because they were so "common." The result of that attitude is that we have very few good pictures of deer. This opportunity looked good until another tourist stopped and walked right toward the buck and chased both deer off. We had been looping around the deer to get in position so they would move towards us, but we lost the shot when they bolted.
The Yellowstone River from Yellowstone Lake to Canyon has always been one of my favorite areas of Yellowstone.
The curve at Otter Creek is especially beautiful. Even in the cloudy, overcast weather, the drive along the river was amazing.
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| Yellowstone River at Otter Creek | Hayden Valley |
By the time we reached Hayden Valley, it was starting to get dark so we cut across at Canyon and returned to our campsite at West Yellowstone. Just before we reached Canyon, we got another opportunity to shoot a buck. He was even bigger and more cooperative than the one we missed earlier in the day.
It wasn't the day we had planned, but we enjoyed shooting the elk and the waterfalls in spite of the weather.
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