buffalo in front, buffalo behind

i decided that yellowstone deserved two posts for one reason: wildlife. we had great luck in the amount and variety of animals we saw. very first, not long after mammoth, we saw two elk, one of them quite large, and they weren't that far away either. their horns are still soft and growing, which is why they look like they are covered in fur--they are. not too far after that we saw my favorite animal of the day--a baby coyote. just sitting on a rock, all by himself. at one point he tried to get down, but apparently didn't know where to go, because he just got right back up.
on the way to the falls we found ourselves stopped in a long line of cars on the park road, which is of course only two lanes wide. we figured that we had stopped because people in front of us were looking at something, and on getting out of the car we discovered what--there was a black bear just grazing along the side of the road. we all scrambled for a closer look, with mark saying from further back, 'jeanette, you're too close!' and patrick telling me that if the bear attacked he was going to jump on the roof of the nearest car. eventually a ranger came to get traffic flowing again, and we went on our way.

only to find ourselves stopped again--this time because there was a grizzly bear and cub in the woods next to the road. this was the good thing about going to yellowstone in the early summer--all of the baby animals we saw. traffic was still moving here, so we didn't stop since there wasn't a turnout, but we got a picture anyway. the cub is laying down with his ears perked up in the top left corner.
the next animals we came across were a small herd of buffalo, complete with several little calves. they were right next to the road, and i mean right next to it, so we pulled over like good citizens to get some pictures. there was also a clear creek nearby in which we spotted some fish. of course, once we got back in our armadas two buffalo came up to us--one in front of will's car in front of us, and one behind our car. we were bookended by buffalo. we sat there for a good five minutes before we realized that they weren't' going to go anywhere, so we drove around the buffalo in front.

on our way to the lake we saw a couple of trumpeter swans flying in the air, but we didn't get a picture. these are the beautiful, endangered white swans with black-tipped wings you see pictures of all the time. and from about this time on we saw quite a lot of individual and herds of buffalo, mule deer, and elk, but i won't bother you with any more pictures of them. except for this one--an idyllic herd of buffalo in an idyllic field by a perfect little river.the very last animal we saw in the park was on the extreme western edge--a bald eagle, probably a baby, sitting in a nest. they have an eagle preserve on the park, and apparently there are quite a lot of them around. it was still cool to see the nest--you can barely see the top of its white head sticking out the top.

we did not see any big horned sheep, moose (which i was disappointed about), wolves, and quite a number of other herd animals and birds. but all in all we saw quite a lot--the grizzly and cub was especially lucky.