Day 5: 2012 MPEG Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP Groupshoot

Grizzly crossing the Yellowstone River (1 of 1), a photo by Mark/MPEG (Midwest Photography Enthusiasts Group) on Flickr.

Well, we BEARly saw anything today.

It was mostly cloudy today, some snow, some sun and the rain came around 5:00pm.

It was a decent weather day but the wildlife seem to take a day off .

The grizzly sow and cubs were not at SL Flats this morning so we went to Mammoth and had some breakfast. After breakfast, we went down to Gardiner, the back over to Tower/Roosevelt. We saw a black bear and a tan variant of a black bear but they were too far away- well over 200+ yards heading back into the woods.

We got some mule deer, pronghorn, bison/bison calf images. We missed a wolf photo op by 20 minutes (of course).

We did get to photograph the black bear sow and her 2 cubs in the Rainy Lake area. I got some decent images before the rangers showed up and moved everyone WAY back, well beyond the 100 yard limit.

We had lunch (Jared and I) in Cooke City then came back west through Lamar Valley and scouted the Tower/Roosevelt again and the Rainy Lake area. The sow and cubs were back but out of sight in the woods. This caused a massive traffic jam but a ranger was there to keep things moving.

We are still seeking the red fox around the Yellowstone picnic area.We missed him by 5 minutes today.

It was starting to rain and we decided to do Lamar Valley one more time as the rain was increasing. As we approached the bridge over the Yellowstone River, we saw a jam and then saw this huge grizzly walking down the middle of the road then veered off to the sidewalk.

Jared took this pic (see the blog pic) from the car window with the Canon 7D/ 70-200mm (we have a lap camera just for these occasions as wildlife here pops up unexpectedly).

Note theTouron (tourist moron) following the bear. Maybe 50-60 feet behind him!

Now, if that bear changes his mind and decides to turn around and go back over the bridge heading east and he feels threatened by the touron, the touron has no options...he has no chance to avoid serious injury or death from a POed grizzly.

Note he has no bear spray visible. It should be on his belt for easy access. I am confident he had none as most don't carry bear spray here but should, but thats another discussion.

The others haven't touched base with me yet so I don't know how well they did today. I am eager to hear.

The plan in the morning is to be in Lamar Valley by 5:30am in search of some decent wolf images.... then move over to Hayden Valley, and points south and west after lunch.

Not a bad day considering the weather. The weather tomorrow (Monday) is expected to be sunny. In fact, sunny for the remaining days of the groupshoot!

Stay Tuned for Day 6!

Don't change the channel!