Spontaneously we decided to spend two more days in West Yellowstone as we have not seen a sunrise in the park yet due to various reasons.
Today we drove into the the park fairly late, have not seen much but enjoyed some fall foliage and short hikes.
We drove along the Blacktail Plateau Drive in the hope of seeing some great wildlife but besides a couple of cars and beautiful scenery this was pretty much it.
Nonetheless, a recommended drive if you are in the northern part of the Yellowstone National Park.
Close to the petrifried tree we saw a small group of mule deer along the hiking trail and enjoyed watching them a little bit.
After a very short drive towards Lamar Valley – too many people on the road – we made a short stop at crowded Tower Fall, grabbed a coffee and continued driving along the Chittenden Road before we made a stop at the Cascade Lake Trail and decided to hike the 2.5 miles (one way). In order not to carry to much weight we just took the Canon 300mm 2.8 lens as longest lens mounted on Eva’s Canon 30D, the small Gitzo tripod with Really Right Stuff ballhead and Wimberly Sidekick and as backup my Canon 1D Mark II with 3 other lenses.
This nice squirrel had lunch. See how fast he is moving his hands to blur the image:
In the distance we spotted this Coyote and I wished to have my 500mm lens with me but the 1.4x Extender on the 300 had to do it. He successfully got his lunch as I missed the moment of capturing the moment but if you are used to the AF performance of your Mark II the 30D falls off a little bit.
It was a nice and decent hike we had a break at the Cascade Lake and on our way back we saw the Coyote again before he disappeared in the forrest.
Then we decided to drive slowly back, had dinner at Pete’s Pizza and will go to bed early as we are planning to get up early tomorrow morning.
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