Friday, June 6, 2008

Evening jaunt




Last night we took an evening drive around the Canyon-Lake-Old Faithful loop. We encountered rain, hail and brilliant sunset. One of the beautiful scenes was lit by the last rays of the sun on a flat of geothermal steam, with rain clouds behind us ... like a painting by Moran; I’ll call it “Yellowstone Sunset.” (It's the bottom picture in this post for June 2.)


 On the way there, we enjoyed a couple of strangely marked rabbits next to a boardwalk at the Lake Overlook. Not used to seeing wild rabbits that are generally gray, but have white feet and white fringes on the ears. (Our housemate, who worked in Yellowstone for seven years more than 40 years ago, said they were snowshoe hares, transitioning from winter white to summer gray fur.)


A real thrill for me was seeing a white pelican float down the Yellowstone River beneath me at Fishing Bridge. Meanwhile, Sandy was watching an otter at the other end of the bridge. (I’ve learned since that the ridge on the pelican’s beak denotes a mature male. See the WhoZoo story on white pelicans at whozoo.org/Intro98/stewwarr/stewarr1.htm) tv

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