Yellowstone I - Setting the scene

We arrived in Bozeman after a couple of busy flights, courtesy in part to joining the masses heading for the Super Bowl in Minneapolis, our layover airport.  Bozeman has one of those airports that bodes well for the holiday ahead, with a backdrop of snow capped peaks. 

From there a drive up to Gardiner and our hotel for the next few nights.  Pulling into Gardiner we were welcomed by a couple of elk snappable with my pocket camera

although the hotel lawn they occupied didn't exactly look authentically wild.

The river behind our own hotel looked interesting

but the schedule meant that apart from taking a few snaps when I couldn't sleep one night we never actually got to explore.  The night I did go out I took a couple of pictures, but the mule deer I stumbled across on a back street didn't stay still long enough to get a decent picture.

Each day we were up and off early, getting into the Park proper for first light, heading for the Lamar Valley, one of the iconic Yellowstone wildlife watching sites.  This being a wildlife photography trip there didn't prove to be much opportunity for proper landscape shots but I did take some snaps which I will slot into this series of blogs to give a flavour of the place. 

We would drive to the far end of the valley and stop for breakfast before retracing our steps. I've eaten picnics in worse places - even the toilets were kind of scenic, and the hirundine nests in the eaves hinted of warmer days to come.

Unlike the UK traffic wasn't held up too much by the snow,

although even with the ploughs some care was needed, not least because of the other road users who were happy to take the easy route sometimes.

I took a lot of pictures!  My plan with the blog is mostly to go through species by species, but there will be other subjects for a couple of the posts.  To finish this first a few pics to hint at what will follow.