Yellowstone National Park, WY, May 2025
(Note: The animal pictures are set up as links to the pictures because you need to zoom in to see the details. This requires the back button to return to the page. The other pictures are embedded. Just click on them to return to the page.)
Today was a beautiful day to wake up in Yellowstone. The temperature was 28 degrees or less last night, but it increased to 32 degrees by 8 am. Yeah!!
We did the typical morning breakfast – pancakes, eggs and bacon (just had to make your mouth water :-). Then, we planned our day.
My first goal was to drive to the East Entrance. I heard it was a rough drive for towing campers, but the road had been redone in recent years. Next, we would go for hike.
So, we packed up everything, including sandwiches for lunch, and off we went.
The drive to the East Entrance starts out by circling around the north and east side of Yellowstone Lake and then left turns east. Yellowstone Lake has quite a few areas that are frozen over.
The 25-mile drive, one way, took us 3 1/2 hours. Not because we were driving slow but due wildlife viewing and photos.
On the drive out past Pelican Creek, we saw a common American Pelican that was swimming around the creek and dunking for food.
John also managed to get a picture of what is likely a Lesser Scaup male and female. The Lesser Scaup has a purple sheen on its heard, instead of green.
We saw a male grizzly, who has been courting a female in the area. On the drive out, the grizzly bear was mooning us. On the drive back, he was wandering around eating grass and clover. In the last bear picture, you can see the clover falling out of his mouth. In both directions of the drive, there was a bear jam from people slowing down to see the bear.
Grizzly trivia facts: Grizzlies mate between May and early June. The fertilized eggs (blastocysts) implantation doesn’t occur until the fall. The babies are born in the hibernation dens.
Just past Steamboat Point driving towards the East Entrance was a bunch of large rocks surrounded by snow and ice on the shore of Yellowstone Lake. A river otter had caught a fish and ravens were trying unsuccessfully to take the fish away. The otter was diving into the water and climbing back out to avoid them. John went to the rocks to get a better picture, and the otter decided to investigate John. This produced some awesome pictures and videos, including a game of otter peek-a-boo. Finally, the otter decided, like our cats, that after eating, it needed a nap.
One of my favorite animals are marmots, and we saw 2 of them. I didn’t realize marmots had long tails. Either way, they are really cute. Yellow-bellied marmots are the most common marmot in Yellowstone.
Near the East Entrance, we saw the avalanche canon. There was a 1 mile stretch where we were not allowed to stop due to avalanche risk. You could see little snowball trails down the mountain where small bits of snow fell and rolled. The picture of the avalanche canon was trough the windshield, while driving. It is blurry and not very detailed.
On the drive back, we saw a great blue heron at Pelican Creek bridge, but none of the pictures turned out any good. All of them were blurry.
We saw more buffalo, though no babies, yet. We did not take any more pictures of them because they were further from the road.
We ended up not hiking due to seeing all the animals, and we were excited to get back to the trailer to download the pictures. When we got back to the trailer, a raven was sitting on top of the RV next to ours and yelling at us.
Tomorrow, we will try to get some of the movies converted and uploaded.
One response to “Yellowstone National Park Day 5”
Enjoyed the article & pictures. Happy u r enjoying your sightseeing days.