After our two night stay in Island Park to see the south part of Yellowstone and Old Faithful, we moved to a new location north of the park. In order to get to our next campground we drove into the west entrance of the park, quickly crossing from Idaho into Wyoming, through the park crossing from Wyoming into Montana and came out the north entrance. Three states in a short distance. Remember in the last blog I said Yellowstone is in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana with the largest section of the park located in Wyoming. Along the way we ran into a brief “buffalo jam” which is always fun!

Near the north side of Yellowstone we saw this coyote.

We went by the Park’s Post Office and noticed the bears had on face masks!
In this picture you can see the historic arch at the North entrance to the park and there is Bill making the turn in front of me. The cornerstone was laid down by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903.

Our next campground was located in the tiny town of Gardiner, Montana, conveniently located just outside the park. We checked into the campground and started to get settled into our new campsite along the Yellowstone River. Bill was outside getting things set up and talking to our new neighbors, also from Florida. Suddenly I heard a commotion and the lady next door was very upset. Going to the window I discovered a large snake had slithered up the tree behind us and was going after a nest of baby birds. Her husband grabbed a long pole and knocked the snake with a baby bird out of the tree. The snake coiled up and began to hiss.

Everyone backed off and the snake quickly ate the baby bird and then continued to coil and hiss. The neighbor managed to use the pole to flick the snake over the river bank. The mother bird was quite upset screeching and circling overhead. The neighbor looked at us and said, “Welcome to the neighborhood”. If we hadn’t prepaid and had nowhere else to go, I would have been tempted to pack up and leave. I wondered if there were more baby birds in the nest and the snake would come back. After some discussion it was determined it was most likely a bull snake since it didn’t have a rattle. In case you are wondering, we thankfully never saw the snake again and after a couple days I forgot about it. 

The next day we left the campground early and spent the day touring one of my favorite places in the park, Lamar Valley, known as the  premium place to see wildlife. This is a blog where pictures can describe better than words. We saw many bison, pronghorn sheep and even a bear. We loved every second of this day!

Next up: Yellowstone part 3 Waterfalls and more animals