Western Wildlife

One of the true joys of vacationing in national parks and national forests is sighting wildlife in natural surroundings, not behind bars. Yellowstone National Park has a large bison herd and we saw hundreds of them, including this one up close and personal as he browsed the grass next to Old Faithful Lodge.


Yellowstone's Mammoth Hot Springs had over a dozen elk in the median between the 2 directions of traffic near the northwestern entrance road.

This prairie dog was on guard duty at the prairie dog village just inside the entrance to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Dozens of his buddies were scampering about doing whatever they do, as the guard surveyed the skies, alert for predatory hawks and eagles.

Here is one of the numerous bald eagles we spotted as we canoed the 150 miles down the Missouri River in Montana's Missouri Breaks National Monument. It was wonderful realizing we were duplicating Lewis and Clark's return trip route and observing wildlife just as they no doubt did 200+ years ago.

Also on the Missouri River trip, this prairie rattlesnake swam right past our canoe. Greg, our leader, followed it to shore and examined it, knowing it would temporarily be very docile after its time in the cold water.

In Wyoming, we indeed were where the deer and these pronghorn antelope play, and we saw many dozens of them as we drove to Jackson.


This deer was only feet from our campsite at Signal Mountain Campground in Grand Teton National Park.

Here is an elk we spotted in Teton NP...

... and another elk in Yellowstone NP.

Yellowstone also has many coyotes. Too bad we didn't see any of the wolves that were successfully reintroduced here in the 1990s.