Day 62: Night pictures

- July 04, 2017

Thursday, June 1, 2017

We get up at 4am again. This time I sleep much better. Last night I followed my nighttime ritual much better. We take off around 4:30am with the general direction of Hayden Valley. We are hoping to see some wildlife including wolf.

We stop along the Madison River before Madison Junction to take some star pictures. They are not very good.

We want to find a place to take photos of the sunrise. We have no place picked out but I decide on this spot. It has some interesting spots plus the sun was starting to rise.

I decide to take my camera and tripod up the road a bit to get a picture of a a stream with a reflection.

Just after I took this picture I see some dog type animal walking at the other end of the pond here. I'm not sure what to do. I need my other camera (not sure why) to take its picture. I walk as fast as I can telling David that it is coming. It walks down the same path I took to get back to the car. It then walks across the road from the car and goes back into the woods. David gets some nice closeups of what we later figured out was a coyote.

Once sunrise is done we go a couple of miles and make it into Hayden valley. We see better spots for taking sunrise pictures here.

I think this is the coyote that went by the car just a little while ago.

We go down the road a bit and there are bison right by the road.

There is a herd of bison across the road.

These are taken with the sun behind the bison. It is very hard to get the light just right.

Elk

We stop along the pull offs. There are plenty of people with scopes. They are all looking for wolves. They can keep us updated if the see anything.

I get yet another picture of a coyote.

We decide to take the loop around Yellowstone to get back to West Yellowstone. Part of it is interesting and part of it is rather boring. We stop at Fishing Bridge.

We finally get back to West Yellowstone. Pick up the ladies and head off to Old Faithful. Vicki and I are taking David and Susan out to dinner at the lodge for hosting us this week.

After dinner we head off to see Old Faithful erupts. This is my third time. It turns out there is a bison who has decide to graze right by it.

I was really surprised it did not run when the eruption happened.

The other day when we were here I saw a stream with wild flowers around it and wanted to take pictures of it. So, on the way in I looked for the stream and did not see it. I find it as we are heading home. I have David turn around and drop me off. I get my fancy tripod out and set it up so the camera is just above the water. After taking several pictures, David drives by and Vicki yells at me the Rangers are coming. So I grab my camera and tripod and hurry back to the road. I figure that I should not be in that area but I had not seen any signs saying I could not be there.

I meet the rangers on the road. The ranger asks me what I was doing and I said taking pictures of the stream. He points to the tripod and asks what it is. I said a tripod. He said he had never seen anything like it and stopped to find out what it was. The tripod is a Vanguard Alta Pro 263 AT. The way I had it configured was the have the legs almost flat to the land. The middle bar was parallel to the land with the camera connected to the end. I asked where my car was and I pointed to David's car parked down the road waiting for me. I asked if I was allowed to be there and he said he saw no signs saying I could not be there. So, yes I was allowed to be there.

I am still trying to figure out why he really stopped. I find it hard to believe it was just to find out about the tripod. Vicki said the rangers had actually been by a few times before they stopped. The rangers left and David came by and picked me up. The pictures did not come out the way I had hoped. I probably needed to be there about an hour but that was not going to happen even without the rangers. Vicki, Susan and David were waiting for me.