Beartooth Highway
I got up early to make one more attempt to shoot Lower Yellowstone Falls from Artist Point. High clouds muted the sunrise light, and today's shots weren't any better than the other two attempts. I'll have to settle for the good shots I got here 8 years ago.
If the waterfalls don't work, I always have the wildlife in Hayden Valley. Today was no exception. Alum Creek has been our "never fail" spot, so I parked Ruby and started walking along the road. Looking upstream, a huge herd of bison were streaming in from the left along the edge of the creek. As the snow in the high country continues to melt, all the streams and rivers are flooding into new lowlands. Alum Creek looks more like a giant lake than a stream. There must have been 200 bison by the time they finished filling the meadow. Way out in the distance, a solitary elk cow, a flock of Canadian geese, and a white pelican joined the herd of bison.
On the opposite side of the highway, the Yellowstone River flooded into the lowland where I had photograhed earlier in the week. It made for good reflections, but I'm sure the badger who had just dug his hole in the area wasn't pleased. The Canadian geese, on the other hand, seemed to love the new swampy area.
As I was walking back towards Ruby, I noticed three swans flying over the Yellowstone River and photographed them as they crossed the road. They were gorgeous in-flight but pretty clumsy when they fell into Alum Creek. After they landed, it got very interesting. They started a ritualistic display where pairs reared up facing each other and then flapped their wings. Then they would drop back down into the water and intertwine their long necks. It definitely looked like some kind of courtship ritual. When they faced each other with their bills touching, they created the heart that we sometimes see on cards and emblems. It was VERY interesting.
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When I returned to camp, we had breakfast and decided to do the Beartooth Highway. The weather forecast was a little "iffy," but we'd run out of days. Our original plan was to drive over the pass on one day, stay overnight in Red Lodge, and then drive back the next day in order to get morning light on the best locations. That never worked out, so we drove out and back the same day. It was probably just as well since the road had just opened after Memorial Day Weekend and nearly all the turnouts and roads into campgrounds, etc. were still under 8 feet of snow. It was impossible to shoot most of our planned locations. We took very few images until we reached the area near the pass where we could see the snow-covered peaks in nearly every direction. At one point we drove around a corner and through a tunnel of snow that was at least 15 feet tall. We were dwarfed by the snow on each side of us.
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