Road Trip: The Animals

I should have had one of those hand-held counters for the cows. We saw a lot of cows. A cow walked through one of our campsites; there were cow patties in another. They walked across the road in front of us.

They grazed scenically all over the place.

But it wasn’t all cows, all the time. We saw bald eagles while white water rafting, and looked down on turkey vultures from the top of the Flaming Gorge dam.

We saw huge trout in the outflow of that dam, tiny baby Snake River cutthroats at the Jackson National Fish Hatchery, and little brookies on the Gardner River in Yellowstone (we were fishing for them, but we released all that we caught).

There were bison walking through a parking lot, big horn sheep causing a traffic jam on the way to Zion National Park, herons, bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels, wild horses, moose, a coyote (well, the kid was the only one who saw the coyote – it was pointed out by the fishing guide), one beaver, antelope, and Western jays.

Most of the bison were not in parking lots:

At that campsite that had an aviary, there were turkeys and peacocks begging for scraps of our breakfast baguette, after the rooster had woken us all up in the morning.

There was also an exceptional dog.

No dogs allowed
in building
No exceptions!

And I got to ride a mule named Tony, Tony the Ledgewalker.

I got a mule and his name is Tony,
he likes to walk on the edge of the trail.

And though we didn't see any wolves, we went to a ranger talk on the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, bought two books about wolves, and came home with a burning desire to visit the Wolf Conservation Center that's not too far from our home.

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Part 1, The Hut, is here.
Part 2, The Campsites, is here.
Part 3, On Food And Cooking, is here.
Part 4, The Assignment, is here.