First Trip #1

Folks,
Yesterday was our first day off together and we drove the upper loop of the Grand Loop through the park. The Grand Loop is really a figure 8 and we live at the top of the "8", so we traveled the upper loop of the "8". It was a beautiful day - windy and a little chilly, but absolutely beautiful. I'll upload a few of the pictures. More will come later.

We saw lots of great animals: Bull Elk, Bison, Antelope (pronghorn), Big Horn Sheep, and... our very first Grizzly Bear!. One thing that I can't really describe and the pictures don't show - especially in this small format - is the scope of the vistas. You see for tens of miles, and this is a totally foreign concept at home in Virginia - even in our own mountains. It is one of the most amazing aspects of living out here.

The bear in the picture is a grizzly. You can tell by the hump at his shoulders. He is going away from us - not a bad thing - and is pretty far away.

The mountain is Mt. Holmes - for Bruce & Connie - taken from the Norris Geyser Basin. It was beautiful.

You can see that the snow is still high in places. The pictures of us with snow are near Mt. Washburn. This road was just opened a few days ago. We got new snow on the mountains overnight, and I just heard that the road over Beartooth Pass is closed - again.

Got to go. More later.
Doug & Lorraine