Yellowstone Tourist Pleasers

Yellowstone National Park consists of 2 million acres, and only about 200 miles of roads.  The wilderness is vast!

Yellowstone Lake, located at 7,732 feet (2,376 m) above sea level, covers 136 square miles with 110 miles (177 km) of shoreline. Its deepest spot is at least 390 feet. Yellowstone Lake is the largest freshwater lake above 7,000 feet in North America.

The lake freezes by early December (except for hot spots on its southern shore) and can remain frozen until early June.

Lehardy Rapids is downstream from Yellowstone Lake.  In early summer, we have seen at least a Yellowstone cutthroat trout a minute jumping over the rapids, heading to Yellowstone Lake tributaries to spawn.  This time, we see only a few trout hanging out in backwater eddies.  Lake trout, introduced into Yellowstone Lake at some point in the past, eat young cutthroats in the lake.  The population growth of this non-native species has dramatically reduced cutthroat numbers between Yellowstone Falls and the lake over the last ten years.   

A handsome pelican puts on a show for the tourists.  He perches on a rock close to shore, occasionally scratching his head with a webbed foot or yawning as he waits for dinner to swim by. 

A spider makes a meal of a caddis fly on the tourist boardwalk.  I think we are the only ones who notice this gruesome, if small and unobtrusive, sight.

Further downstream, a lone bison bull lumbers along the Yellowstone River. 

A wily coyote hunts for rodents near the road.  Here, he looks like a trickster, as Native American folklore depicts him.

But here, he looks like the stalwart, honest fellow that we'll assume he is.