We had a really good time. Yellowstone was massive with different landscapes everywhere- from the geyser fields all around, to their own Grand Canyon, to a natural stone arch, to waterfalls, to grasslands. In all we saw tons of buffalo and elk. The first night we were at Old Faithful- which we saw go off at least three consecutive days- a buffalo wandered through the parking lot as we were getting ready to leave and a herd was at the grassy area at the entry. We spent one night just outside the park in West Yellowstone Montana then the next night inside the park at Mammoth Hot Springs. The hotel there was neat- with sinks in the rooms and a john and shower down the hall- just like in the old days when it was established. Outside a herd of elk- on male and his harem- were bedded down for the night. We drove up into Montana to the town where the early soldiers and rangers used to go for recreation of many kinds, then back to West Yellowstone because we could only book one night inside the park. The next morning we drove into Idaho just to have been there and birded and saw the ranches, etc.
We drove down the east side of the park after seeing pretty much every mud pot, hot spring and geyser on the west side. Then we went to Cody, WY and enjoyed it there. In the evening we saw the reenactment of a gunfight outside the hotel established by Buffalo Bill and named for his daughter, Irma. The hotel has a bar given to Buffalo Bill by Queen Victoria. The next morning we went through the Buffalo Bill Museum- really five museums and very impressive. One museum is dedicated to Buffalo Bill, then there's a natural history one, a western art museum, an Indian museum, and a weapons museum which we didn't visit. Buffalo Bill's childhood home in Indianan was also moved there. We were surprised it was so nice and that Buffalo Bill was a modern thinking man who supported women's suffrage and equal pay.
From there we drove south to Riverton inside the Wind River Indian Reservation. We did our usual wandering- Dick looking for birds and me for rocks along the riverside and I actually found a nice hunk of turquoise just at the time that Dick came to tell me he'd just seen a sign that said we shouldn't be trespassing on Indian lands. Of course I couldn't part with it any more than I could give up the small bits of volcanic glass I found along Yellowstone Lake.
The next day we drove to the only real resort hotel we stayed in. We hiked out back on the grounds and Dick got some bird photos, but I found little in the way of rocks now that I was in legal territory. We had gotten a gift certificate at restaurant.com for a restaurant called Thai Me Up, so had a good meal with wine and beer and I even had a fried banana with green tea ice cream. Then we went to the Arts Center for the Cowboy Jubilee- a woman poet who was very good and recited a funny poem about her daughter attempting to go to the john with spurs still on in the horse trailer while her boyfriend inadvertently drove it off, causing her big problems. Then there was Sourdough Slim who played the accordion, yodeled and was very funny. The last act was a more serious cowboy singer/songwriter who was also very good. We had an hour's drive home during which we saw an accident where a car killed a buffalo which was very sad, although the buffalo got the very worst of it and the couple in the car weren't hurt much. We considered ourselves very fortunate not to have been the unlucky people.
We saw a couple of bighorn sheep and some pronghorn antelopes, and well as common little rodents, but no grizzlies or wolves. Dick got about ten new species of birds. And that about sums up our trip. It was a nice mix of activities- with not enough rock hunting in good locations, but otherwise a very good time.