Our Yellowstone trip was an absolute blast. Even though the mornings were always a little early for my liking, it was all worth it because of the things I was able to see and learn while there. I feel like the experience was heightened because of our guides, Quinn and Taylor, from Wolf Trackers. They were more than happy to share with us previous experiences and would always answer our questions about anything, including animals, geysers, weather, and places to go in Gardiner. A couple cool things that I learned were how to tell if it was a grizzly or wolves eating a carcass, and the measures that park rangers take to prevent people from taking animal skulls and shed antlers off of the park. They always had the inside scoop on where to go to see the wildlife and got us there before the roads got too congested so we had time to set up our spotting scopes in a proper viewing position.

We saw a combination of wildlife and geothermal locations, and while some of the geothermals were kind of cool to look at, the wildlife was definitely my favorite part. We saw multiple grizzlies, a few black bears, eight wolves, some mountain goats and bighorn sheep, and a whole bunch of bison, elk, whitetail and mule deer, pronghorn. Just in the area of Yellowstone I was able to see hundreds time more than I could in North Dakota. Seeing the animals scattered out across the vast open valleys and heavily wooded mountains was almost too much for my small prairie town brain to take in. I just wish we would’ve done some more hiking away from the roads. We might not have seen as much wildlife, but I’d love to see more of the park away from people.

All in all, it was a really fun time. Between the people, the wildlife, and the nature, it was a truly unique experience. I would definitely recommend this trip to anyone thinking about it and would definitely consider going again next year.