06.01.08

Down and out in YELL

Posted in photo, travel, vacation, yellowstone at 10:07 pm by heidihoho7

so many of you know that i’ve headed off to Yellowstone National Park (YELL) for a photography tour with Dale Franz. It’s been a rough week with a death in the family, i’ve been thinking of them a lot. In addition i’ve been fighting a cold all week and now that i’m up at altitude i’ve apparantly pushed my body a bit too hard. I guess i should have learned my lesson in Arizona. I was just happy to land in Bozeman without bleeding ears, but it seems fate decided to wait a bit before throwing me a curve ball. (bela, did you like that baseball reference haha!)

We got some great wildlife views in so far (deer, pronghorn antelope, chuffs, elk, moose, black, bear and a grizzly with her cub). Not all of them were ideal photo ops so we didn’t always stop but it was amazing to see! So while touring the park in the morning i started getting a bit of a headache. We had spent about 5-6 hours driving around going up the mountains and my head got worse as the day went on. After our grizzly sighting my head got pretty bad since we were pretty high up in elevation.

I ended up having to ask Dale to pull over on our way back to town, with just enough time for me to get out of the van. Our ride back was made even more adventuresome by me requiring at least 2 more stops (tho i may have lost count, but 1 of them included me hanging out of the side door of the van while Barb and Kay made sure i didn’t fly out!) So now I’ve got an off night in my hotel. I’m finally feeling a little better due to the most amazing group of friends. I have to say that Kay and Barb were so nice while i was on the side of the road laughing with me when i attempted to make jokes to liven things up and reassuring me as i was breaking down that i’d be just fine. Then after we got back Barb’s husband Chuck came to my rescue as well as they all made sure i was ok and had everything i needed. I even learned something new, warm ginger ale is quite yummy!! It’s worth a try!

So i’m not entirely sure what my plans will be for tomorrow, i’m hopeful my head will play friendly but we’ll have to wait and see. For now i’m going to go back to vegging on the computer and try to ignore whoever is jackhammering right outside my window!

I’ll include a few of my favorite pics, i’ll prob end up posting a bigger gallery so check back!

My photo bag, including the “big mama”, my rental 500mm lens. If you look close you can see my usual “big lens” in the middle, dwarfed by the big mama. Kay rented the “big daddy” 600mm and barb’s 200-400 we’re still deciding what to call it. At first it was little bear, but i think its bigger than mine, so i’ve been calling it the lil sis, but it may take over as the big mama.

We saw a lot of bison and calves. We haven’t stopped to look at geysers yet, but we did see some of these plumes of smoke. Notice all the ice on Yellowstone Lake. Its very wintery up here and im some places still feet of snow!

Diana, the below pics are why i rented the “big mama”, would you really want me getting that close to this grizzly? haha, don’t worry Dale kept a close eye on us and made sure we were at a safe distance. I do admit it did get my adrenaline going a bit! Can’t wait for what else is to come!

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