My Cranium: Road Trip - Summer 2015: Cody & Bears!

On Saturday, July 11, we made our way east to Cody, Wyoming. We had heard we had a better chance of seeing bears if we went east, so we kept our eyes peeled. We watched for hours as we drove. It got to be so it was disappointing to see only bison and elk.

FYI: Wyoming is beautiful.

Shea, Cody, Autumn, Michayla, and Sean in front of Yellowstone Lake.

The landscape became increasingly defined, almost sharp.

The mountains and cliffs were huge.

Shea

Of course, we had to take this picture!

The Durango in Cody, Wyoming

Photo by Ben

There were a lot of cool houses near Cody, but this one takes the cake. I think the man who built this wanted a tree house as a kid and never got one, so he built this instead. Photo by Ben.

We arrived in Cody, looked around, ate lunch at the McDonald's, got supplies at the Wal-Mart, and headed back to Yellowstone.

And then...and THEN... FINALLY! We saw bears!

And not just a passing glimpse; a bear slowly meandering along the side of the road.

And not just any bear; a grizzly!

And not just one bear; a mother with two cubs!

We were just about thrilled to pieces!

Photo by Ben

Photo by Ben (he has a lot more)

Q: How close were we? A: Very.

I added an arrow to this picture to show you the bear.

The bears walked out of those trees and toward us right along the road at the bottom of that little slope. I didn't take any pictures when they got closer. I was counting children and looking for an escape route! Even as badly as I wanted to see the bears, I kept remembering the rangers telling us that the most dangerous feature in the park is a mother grizzly. It was terribly exciting!

This is Lake Butte Overlook. We climbed to the top of the hill and just loved the view. Between the six of us who had cameras, we took about a million photos of this place.

Lake Butte Overlook

Me and my babies at Lake Butte Overlook

Here is Sean at a geyser feature. He says it was Mud Volcano or Sulphur Caldron, but I don't remember stopping there that day. I don't know where else it would be. Poor record-keeping skills on my part.

This is the same place (wherever it is). A family stopped on this boardwalk. The man kept inching forward and the woman and child kept inching backward. Typical! Closer inspection revealed a buffalo that was not at all shy and eventually came right up to the boardwalk.