A couple days ago we went to Nez Perce Picnic Area and saw a Great Blue Heron nest in the far distance. Today, we decided to use a pull off that was closer to the trees in which we saw the nest. (John also saw some people at the pull-off, but they are usually looking at Bison.) As it turns out, we could now view the other side of the trees and saw at least 7 nests. Many of the nests had great blue heron chicks. You can see the (blurry) chicks with John’s camera. Kate should receive her spotting scope next week, and, hopefully, she can take some close-up photos with her phone.

John took pictures along the way as he approached the closest point to the nests. There is nothing worse than walking towards an animal to take pictures and scaring it off before you have time to take a picture. The heron nests were far enough away that this should not be a problem, but why take chances? In the closest pictures, you can see some of the chicks bopping around in the nests in the middle.

The video also shows the chicks moving around in the middle nests. They are easier to stop, since they are moving.

Our Second major stop of the day was Tower Falls. Tower Falls is is only 32 miles from the Trailer, but it takes at least an hour to get there. This is mostly due to slow drivers, animal backups, and the speed limit of 45 mph.

If you ever wondered what an alien mosquito looks like, look no further than the plant below. About a week ago, the Yellowstone mosquitos came out in full force. The mosquitos are viscous, and they can see you from a mile away to attack!!

Calcite Springs is a couple miles from Tower Falls. Calcite springs is another area of the Yellowstone where a person can be flatulent and no one would know if it was you or the spring. This is an especially good area to visit after eating beans.

John made the mistake of trying to photograph swallows in flight with a 400 mm zoom lens. This should never be done before taking blood pressure medicine. Fortunately, a Violet-green Swallow did land on a tree, but it was backlit. You barely see the iridescent violet and green of its feathers. (Note: many of the bird photos are cropped to 75% to avoid the bird being a speck in the picture.) (Also Note: about 100 blurry pictures of trees and clouds with no swallows in them were deleted today.)

A White-throated Swift was an innocent victim of this swallow photography session. Now it knows how John feels. For some reason, the picture of the swift is much better than the swallows.

A Red-tailed Hawk interrupted this photo session. This is the closest that we have seen these hawks. It was only about 50 feet away at the closest; It helps that we were on the edge of a canyon.

Did we mention the Bison sleeping at the edge of the parking lot? John is pretty sure Kate wanted to hug him. We heard someone yelling, “Get back! You are too close to the Bison! 75 feet minimum.”, while we were looking for birds on the path.

Oh, and there were weird baby pine cones. This is another thing in the park that looks like it came from an Sci-Fi alien movie.

Did we also forget the world’s largest bumble bee? It must have been 1.5 inches.

The next stop showed how the rock formations formed as a result of the volcano eruptions. Kate found the ledge at the top with vertical rocks to be an interesting skirt.

At the overlook, another visitor kept on saying there is a white animal on top of the rocks. We looked and looked. We don’t believe there was anything on top of the rocks, especially since many of the folks stating this did not have binoculars.

Roosevelt Lodge was one of the few restaurants in the park that Kate had on her list to eat at because the reviews for park food aren’t that great. The Ribs at the lodge are the only food with decent, not great, ratings.

The lodge building itself is an experience to remember. The lodge was constructed in 1920 and used un-peeled logs. The original design had 43 small log cabins which was completed in 1922. Since completion, cabins have been added when the cabins from other areas of the park were no longer wanted.

We ate lunch at the restaurant. When you go inside it appears that both sides have tables. In actuality, the interior is broken down into 3 areas. 1 side was a resting and relaxation area with tables, fireplace, and lots of couches. The next smaller area had the bar. The final area was the restaurant. The restaurant area was about the same size as the relaxation area. One keynote is that the interior has no air conditioning or ceiling fans. I don’t believe I’d like to eat inside the building during a hot summer day.

You can see the raw wood columns and joists with the bark still on it in the pictures above.

The restaurant served the same food for lunch as for supper. We had the ribs with 2 sides. Both of us chose Roosevelt beans. John 2nd side was corn and mine was french fries. John said the corn was unseasoned and over cooked.

The ribs had a smoked flavor but were dry cooked and stuck to the rib. They were OK, but the ribs at Famous Dave’s are better. Kate thinks the food was better than the burgers at the park Diners, but she would prefer going to Texas Roadhouse. John things the bang for your buck is better at the park Diners. (They also serve Mountain Dew at the park Diners.)

Lots of parks boast petrified this or that. In Yellowstone, it is the lone Petrified Tree. (Kind of like the Lone Ranger. Without a horse. Or Tonto. Or moving much.)

John was feeling uninspired, so he just pointed the 400mm lens at the petrified tree up the hill and took the picture from the car. Artists are like that, so are tired people with long lenses.

Driving from the petrified tree to Hellroaring Creek Trail, we saw a pond on the side of the road with a car at it. We decided to do what everyone else does. We screeched to a halt beside them and yelled, ‘IS IT A BEAR?”

Not really. We pulled to the other side of the road and walked across to look at the pond. It had Yellow-headed Blackbirds and Red-winged Blackbirds in the reeds around the pond. There was also a brown bird that we could not get a good look at. It kept hiding in the reeds.

We saw an American Coot with what looked like it might be a Coot chick. The lady watching thought the adult was trying to push it under to teach it to dive. It was not clear, but either way, the chick seemed okay.

Next, a duck swam into the middle of the pond with a neon green beak. It turns out, that it was a sky blue beak, but the reflected sunlight made it look like it was glowing green. No one knew what the duck was. It turns out to be a Ruddy Duck. Apparently, these ducks are invading France and causing problems for the very similar looking White-headed Duck. Also, it looks like this ducks mate is pissed off. We think he did not take the trash out last night.

In the search for pikas, Kate read on the internet that they could potentially be seen at the Hellroaring Creek Trail area. We stopped and hoped to hear the chirps of angry pikas. The chirps from little critters only came from happy birds, so this was a bust for pikas. We did see a few new flowers that were really beautiful and intriguing.

You can see from the pictures above, that the flowers in the first row appear red-orange. The pictures in the second row are very clearly orange. The actual flowers were much closer to the bright orange color of the second row. Oranges turning red is not uncommon in cameras. With cell phones, this may be due to the over-saturation the phones use in photo processing. To be fair, the Canon T7i produced even redder flowers (think roses), but it was possible to correct in post processing.

Hopefully, we have enough time to hike Hellroaring trail before leaving. The trail has a suspension bridge and potential for seeing wildlife.

We stopped at an overlook between Calcite Springs Overlook and Tower Falls to continue to look for the elusive Bald and Golden eagles. While parking, we saw a white flash in the distance, but we could not get binoculars out fast enough. After talking to a few people, we saw it again. This time, John got his binoculars out fast enough to confirm it was a Bald Eagle. Sadly, Kate was not quick enough on the draw. We waited another 15 minutes before resuming the drive home.

We are tired of bears, bear jams, and people asking about bears, but when you are driving home and see a mother with two cubs, you still stop and photograph the bears. The cubs are very cute. (Kate is still not allowed to hug them.) They were following there mother along the side of the road and up the hill. She stopped to dig around a bush for food and the cubs investigated with her.

Just past Canyon Village, we ran into the weirdest jam of all. The “Park Ranger with a Shotgun” jam. We never saw anything other than the Park Ranger, so we are not sure what originally caused the jam. By the time we got there, it was people slowing down to look at the ranger causing the jam.