Museum of Natural History

Empire State Building

China Town

Museum of the American Indian

St. Paul's Chapel

300th Post

This is my 300th post of Robyn in Yellowstone and I am 2300 miles away from Yellowstone. I am wearing a nice pair of wool socks with a bison on them with the word Yellowstone so I still have a part of Yellowstone with me. These warm socks are coming in handy as I have just experienced a huge blizzard that shut down all of New York City. And this 'ol Minnesota and Yellowstone gal is in awe of this storm. I have never experienced anything quite like it. With some areas getting up to 30 inches and winds topping 60 mph in some places it really socked NYC. It was the drifting that I found incredible. The 3 feet of snow that hit Mammoth on Thankgiving doesn't compare to what I've seen in this urban blizzard. It's crazy.

More New York city Pics

Robyn In New York City

World Trade Center Site

Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan

Trinity Church in New York City

One of the Staten Island Ferries

Robyn on the Staten Island Ferry with the Statue of Liberty

New York, New York

The holidays are great time to get away. Many people make plans to spend the time in Yellowstone. With snow, snowmobiling, beautiful Christmas Trees (outside the Admin Building and in the Map Room at the Mammoth Hotel), cross country skiing, snowshoeing, etc. there is plenty of ways to celebrate the holidays here. But I will not be here taking part in those festivities. I will be leaving Saturday morning to celebrate Christmas and ring in the New Year in New York City! It will be my first visit there and I have a list of fun adventures that I will be partaking in (riding the subway, the Staten Island Ferry, Museum of Natural History, Time Square, Central Park).

Patrick grew up on Staten Island and asked me to accompany there for the holidays where I will meet his very New York, very Italian and very large family. A small-town Minnesota gal in the big city ---- I'm sure a great comedic holiday film could be made of this.

Bull Moose

Bull Moose by Floating Island Lake

This past week was a week of snow flurries with peaks of sun. But mostly it was gray week. It has been warming up and today is a slushy day. The numerous icicles are beginning to fall off the buildings and we can hear the sounds of steady drips from the roof. But there is plenty of snow on the ground from the storm a couple weeks ago.

My weekend included a trip to Bozeman (according to Andrea that is a trip to civilization). It has been awhile since I had been there so it was a welcome change of scenery.

Once again I had a 'famous last words' moment. Patrick spends most of his time in the southern part of the Park so he went with me on one of my Lamar trips. While driving past Floating Island Lake yesterday I mentioned that area was a good place to spot moose when suddenly we saw a grand bull moose.

By the Yellowstone Picnic Area we saw a couple big horn ewes pawing at the snow to uncover the grass.

Coming back into Mammoth we noticed that the sky was a brilliant display of colors: bright blue, pink, white and yellow.

Liberty Cap

Rocks With Ears

On Saturday I took my first winter trip through Lamar Valley. It has been quite a few months since I've made my way there and I was excited for my first drive through the valley. It had snowed over night and there was about 2 inches of new snow covering it. Occasionally I would see some tracks meandering through the snow.

There were quite a few elk in Lamar but there was a lack of bison. I saw a few lone bison and a few pairs but no large herds.

A snowy Soda Butte and mountains were a spectacular sight.

I looked for bighorn sheep across from the hitching posts since they seemed to be regulars there last winter. I didn't see any sheep but I noticed that one of the rocks at the top had ears. Curled up in a ball was a sleeping coyote, soaking in the warmth of the sun since it was only 6 degrees. It would occasionally raise its head and twitch its ears. It was the only coyote that I saw in Lamar that day.

The 24 hour notice for interior roads to be closed was given at 12:00 pm on Friday. That gave anyone in the interior 24 hours to move their vehicles out. This was scheduled to take place December 15 but there has been so much snow lately that it happened 1 1/2 weeks early. So Patrick made it to Mammoth this weekend via a snowmobile.

Last night we made a stop at the Food Farm in Gardiner and on our way back up the hill to Mammoth we came upon a bobcat running around on the road. It leaped over the guardrail and stopped to watch us. This was my first bobcat sighting in the Park. A little further up the road we came upon a snowshoe hare racing around and even further there was a coyote running on the road. We had to stop at the Yak Camp and as I sat in the vehicle with my headlights on a beautiful little fox came into view. It stopped, sat down and yawned right in front of my car and eventually trotted by my car and down the road. All this wildlife in the matter of 5 minutes.