Category: Wyoming

Yellowstone Wild Life

Dmitrii11 Comments

On our second day in Yellowstone we decided to go hike at the Mt Washburn. On the way there from the Mammoth Hot Springs we took Blacktail Plateau Drive, it is a none paved road that can be taken at the much lower speed in hopes that some wild life will show up and allow to stop and observe it a bit more freely compare to the main roads at the park. For almost entire drive we didn’t see anything but some great landscape views, until almost the end of it when we spotted black bear in far away distance. He was traveling along side the mountain and we could watch him for about five minutes before he disappeared in the forest.

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Couple minutes later I spotted this guy seating on the top of the tree and took the shot right as he decided to take off in search of better hunting grounds.

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After having a great hike to the top of the Mt Washburn we were going to leave the park and drive to the Bozeman Montana, but before we left the park we had three more quick encounters. Two of them were right on the Grand Loop Road, a few miles before Mammoth Hot Springs. First we saw this scrawny red fox. He was just jogging along side the road, I’m sure it is easier to travel on the road than in that sick brush. Unfortunately,  you can’t just stop or pull over while driving Grand Loop Road, it is very narrow  and while there are some pullouts, they are few and wild life kind of does not care about it.

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Then, suddenly we saw this coyote, same running on the road, looking for something to kill on the side of it. Cute little fella.

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Finally, right before we exited Yellowstone Park at the North Exit we some a bunch of Elk. BTW, if you ever visit Yellowstone and want to see a lot of Elk, then make sure to visit Mammoth Hot Springs, it is infested with them.

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All of the above images are available in high resolution, just click on them.

All Alone

Dmitrii9 Comments

In Yellowstone we stayed at the Mammoth Hot Springs lodge. Before coming to Yellowstone we thought that Mammoth Hot Springs is very remote and it would be hard to get to any “cool” places in the park. The truth to be told, anywhere you stay at the park is very far from everything else and you will have to drive to get there. Looking at map it doesn’t look too big but distances between major “attractions” are substantial. So the Mammoth Hot Springs was perfect place to stay, as probably would be any other place in the park.

I got up early to get some sunrise shots of the Hot Springs and after first examination this photo is one of my favorites from that morning.  Amazing how those trees are even standing there, must be many years since they were overtaken by it and probably died long time ago, but still standing.

btw, in case you didn’t know, you can click on any of my photos and it will take you to my photo gallery at smugmug and will allow you to see higher resolution image of the photo.

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Grand Teton

Dmitrii19 Comments

PlacesUnknown.com

I decided to change domain name of my site to http://placesunknown.art, anything that goes to the SillyMonkeyPhoto.com name, you all use to see, will be redirected to the new name, so all your favorites and links should continue to work (well, at least as far as wordpress assertions). I chose that name because I think travel photography is about places that unknown to the majority of the people. Yes, we all know famous landmarks and can recognize many other places, but truth is that most people will never be able to see most of the world and bringing to you famous landmarks and maybe more down the road places is what I’m trying to do. So really, it just the name change of the URL, everything else should stay the same.

Mormon Row

The night before we stayed at Jackson Hole, ate at the Snake River Brewery and drank some nice IPA. We got up early and started making our way up north to the Yellowstone National Park. But first we took Gros Ventre Rd and saw our first buffalo on the trip. It was so exciting to see the first buffalo. I was taking pictures of it from far away. After the first encounter every other buffalo was just like a normal occurrence and we actually ignored most of them unless there were a lot of them and right in front of us. Over the next two weeks it was interesting to observe other cars stopping and the first site of the buffalo, they probably saw their first as well.

From Gros Ventre road we got onto the Mormon Row. I wanted to take some photos of the old barns that I saw before. I was really surprised by how small they are in real life to what I have seen on the photos. The one below is actually not the one that most commonly photographed, but I liked it more and decided to share this one first.

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Sunset at Jenny Lake

Dmitrii18 Comments

Last week we came back from two week break during which we managed to visit a few western states. Over the next few weeks I’ll attempt to post one photo from each day we were there (maybe with exception of Fridays), maybe even in the chronological order of our travels. We put 2700 miles on our rental, thankfully it had unlimited mileage and it did not matter how much we drove, that is a lot of driving but it allowed us to see different places and kind of get an idea of what is what and where we might want to get back again.

On the first day we drove to Jackson Hole from the Salt Lake City, after 5 hours in the car I was starting to get headache and we almost immediately went for a quick hike at Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Great way to get rid of any type of illnesses. We hiked by the south side of the lake all the way to the waterfalls and the boat dock, we thought about going all the way around, but the sun was setting behind the mountains and we decided to return back the same way. Maybe we will complete the loop on our next visit.

While you get an idea of the beauty of the Grand Teton from the Jenny Lake, it is actually a bit too close to it and you can’t see the whole grandiose of the mountains. Like here we can’t see the Tetons in their all massive beauty, you have to step a bit back from them. Maybe next photo from this trip will have that view. 

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