In which the buffalo are plentiful… but have no wings

We time our day to depart in time to get coffees at Tumbleweed, just down the street from the Riverside Cottages. They open at 7.

Well, first we see the deer that are right in our own parking lot this am. Then…

We each get a coffee plus a thermos to let us top off through the morning. We originally thought we might cross to Pebble Creek, near the Northeast entrance, for an early-morning animal seeking session (we would so love to see moose) but already the morning is warm, and the 40 miles across isn’t going to get us there in anything like prime viewing time. And we want to see the Terraces we skipped yesterday before it gets appallingly hot again.

So we visit Mammoth Hot Springs upper terraces instead, first walking it, hearing the elk trumpet as rut season begins…

Then driving it…

(While we are on our way on foot I am pretty sure I see a fox across the way but its too far and too fast and gone before anyone else sees it.)

Then we make the trek across the top section of the Yellowstone upper loop, from Mammoth to Towers, to Pebble Creek, stopping to walk along outlooks, seeing brown squirrels and chipmunks but no marmots – and (alas) no moose or bighorn sheep either.

We do see a lot more of these though:

Also in the distance we see what may be pronghorn but even with binoculars we can only just make them out.

We stop for lunch on our way back at Roosevelt Lodge, before making our way back to Mammoth and up out of the park.

Souvenir shopping stop. Pickup laundry stop. Ice purchase stop.

Nap stop. We are all so tired.

We walk around town picking up casual dinner, lip balm (my LORD, it’s dry out here), snacks, wine. A fawn is nibbling on the plants on the sidewalk beside our place. Then after dinner we sit out on the patio, listening to the river and FaceTiming with family back home.

It’s a beautiful evening.

View upriver from Riverside Cottages in Gardiner,MT. A perfectly lovely evening

## IRL: it’s a day to remember a very somber day, a dark day, but a day we stood together as a nation. Or maybe knelt in grief, in prayer, in hope, in resolve … as one nation. God bless America; may she live up to all her promise, by His grace. And may we.