Ockey Family Adventures: Yellowstone 2015 Day 2

Day 2 in Yellowstone was an early start to head up to LaMar Valley to find some bears. Apparently the buffalo didn't know that we were in a hurry. They were right in the road which is really quite normal. After we passed the buffalo, we stopped at Tower to walk to the viewpoint. It was a beautiful morning and we enjoyed the rainbow in the spray of the Tower waterfall.

Ummm..... Excuse us....

Tower Falls is amazing.

Once we made it into Lamar Valley we started by seeing this mama grizzly bear with her two cubs on the first corner up to the valley. We watched them for awhile as they ate and slowly meandered across the mountainside. Once we made it into the valley, we saw some coyote pups playing next to the den. They were pretty far away, so all the pictures look blurry. We also spotted a million pronghorn. Usually when we go to Yellowstone we see a few pronghorn here and there, but this was the year of the pronghorn.

Two little cubs!

You can just see the coyote pups.

The pronghorn aren't impressed by people much.

After spending a few hours in Lamar Valley we headed back to Roosevelt in hopes of meeting up with some of our traveling companions. We found Steph and her kids, as well as Grandma and Grandpa. While Grandma and Grandpa headed out to Lamar, Steph stuck with us while we hiked to Lost Lake right behind the Roosevelt Lodge. The hike was more difficult than we expected... it was a pretty steep climb up to the lake. But we all made it and we enjoyed seeing another beautiful lake in Yellowstone.

Abby stuck with us...Raymond wanted to take his time coming up with mom.

This was our first time at Lost Lake.

We wanted to hike to Trout lake again. It was our favorite hike from last time and we really wanted to see otters. So we headed back into Lamar Valley. We came across these Bighorn Sheep right next to the road. We couldn't believe they were so easy to spot since we usually have to see them through a spotting spot a million miles away. Then, the younger boys fell asleep so we drove a little further out towards Cooke City and we were able to see two mountain goat spots on the mountainside before we went back to hike Trout Lake.

You'd think they'd groom the bighorn sheep once in a while.

Yellowstone has a lot of beautiful spots.

Can you spot the mountain goat spots?

Trout Lake has to be one of the most beautiful spots in the park. We love walking around this little lake. We didn't see any otter this year, but we saw a Goldeneye with her little chicks. We also spotted frogs on the banks of the lake which was super exciting since we haven't seen frogs at Yellowstone before. We enjoyed the scenery and the company of Steph, Abby, and Raymond on this hike.

The Goldeneye chicks were precious.

Abby spotted this frog, but Mark spotted a few, too.

Randy took this amazing picture of Trout Lake.

Grandpa Daniels got everyone a Daniels Bunch shirt for wearing when we take trips together.

Steph and me! I wonder the last time we took a picture just us two (with Mark photobombing)

After Trout lake, we headed toward Mammoth for dinner. Along the way we spotted a lot of bears. We saw several mamas with their cubs which is so fun. We saw a mom with three cubs running across the mountain back toward Roosevelt. The ranger wouldn't let us stop, and I only got a picture from the car so they are just black dots. Then we drove out toward Petrified Tree and we saw a bear laying down with her cub from quite a distant. We were getting a little sad because we weren't seeing bears very close. Seth couldn't really appreciate them. Then we came across a mom with two cubs right next to the road. It was awesome. We watched them for a long time. The cubs would climb the trees and they didn't mind the huge crowd watching them. Seth loved it!

We ate dinner in Mammoth and stopped by Undine falls before making the long drive back to Lake.