After the snow coach experience of last Friday, we struck out on our own Wednesday and Thursday to drive the only portion of Yellowstone open to traffic during the winter, Mammoth Springs to Cooke City which includes the famous Lamar Valley. We saw an abundance of bison and a couple concentrations of bighorn sheep. Strangely enough, this is the first time I've seen Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep outside of South Dakota, which is not in the Rockies. There also was another "coyote of the week" strolling down the road taking no notice of people gawking at him. Most of the elk we saw were concentrated near the human activity of Mammoth and Gardiner.

We got to see how the different grazers dealt with digging through the snow to find vegatation. The bighorns pawed at the ground with their hooves. The elk stuck their noses into the snow. And the bison swept back and forth, clearing the snow with their massive heads.

The weather was mostly overcast but not too cold. There was one minor little incident where I got too close to the edge of the road near Soda Butte and needed the assistance of park rangers to get my truck free. My bride describes the incident in much more dramatic terms. Anyway, I added images from these two days to the previous slide show. The link below will start with the new images, then wrap around to those from last week.

Bighorn Sheep in Lamar Valley