If you are not familiar with the layout of the roads in Yellowstone the main road is a figure eight. The entrances to the park are from the east from Cody, Wyoming, south from the Teton's National Park, Wyoming, west from West Yellowstone, Montana, north west from Gardiner Montana and north east from Red Lodge through the Bear Tooth Pass, Montana. We started today on the east side of the north loop of the figure eight. Our first stop was at a trail to Warith Falls.
I really thought this turned out to be a cute picture. It looks like he is either hiding under that leaf or wearing it. This whole area was so full of these prairie dogs that I wondered if they really have coyotes in Yellowstone. There were hundreds of them running all over the place. They even had some of their tunnels dug in the middle of the path.
Warith Falls.
Yellow Columbine
Wood Forget-me-not
There are so many Buffalo around in the park that we don't even pay any attention to them except to keep our distcent. More people are hurt by the buffalo in the park than by bears.
Tower Falls on Tower Creek that just a little way down the creek flows into the Yellowstone River.
Blue Flax, I guess you can tell Peggy and I like the flowers as much as the animals. Every time we see a new flower we have to get out the flower books and try to identify it. We're no expert but we enjoy it. I did take a course in local flora at both Duquesne University and Penn State University. Also took a course in Dendrology but these western trees certainly are different from the eastern ones. We did have samples of pine cones from the west and I sure would like to find a sugar pine cone. They are huge.
This is Mount Washburn the highest peak in the park at 10243 feet. That's fairly high compared to most of the mountains in the east but when you compare it to Colorado which has about a dozen peak over 16000 feet, I guess that's not high. There is a trail up to the top. Sure wish I could walk that far but we are very thankful to get to do as much as we do and see as much as we see.
This is the view from the trail to Mount Washburn. We are at 9000 feet and believe me there isn't as much oxygen here as at lower levels. 
This is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I have a slide of this same area that I took 40 years ago and it hasn't changed a bit. Aren't the colors beautiful? You can also see why they call it the Yellowstone Park and River.
This is another view of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The river is of course the Yellowstone River.
The Lower Yellowstone Falls. You can see many painting of this and the upper falls. We didn't get to the upper falls yet but we will so keep tuned.
This picture was taken when we were on our way back to the campground on the west side of the upper loop road. While I was taking this picture of the black bear, Peggy was on the other side of the road that videos of a grizzly. If you want to see a bear jam you should have seen this. There were cars all over the place, parked on the side of the road and even just in the middle. Traffic couldn't go any where and there was plenty of it. I should have got a picture of the traffic jam but didn't think of it. It probably was more interesting than the bears. I wonder why humans are so taken by these wild animals? You will notice Peg and I were both out there with the rest of them taking pictures and I guess that's part of the reason we are here. I have a hard time deciding which picture to put in the blog there are so many I want to share with everyone. There are many more in my picture album. I do put sign pictures in my albums not in the blog. I take the sign pictures to give any one looking at the pictures as much information as I can. I also want it for my own future reference because I sure forget a lot. 
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