Quiet morning in Yellowstone

It's taking me longer to get together the more interesting Yellowstone photos than I thought.  (A word of advice: before taking hundreds of irreproducible photos, make sure your lenses and sensor are as clean as possible or you'll be retouching dust specks for hours.)

So I thought I'd give you a quick look at our first Yellowstone campsite: Canyon campground.

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We were in Yellowstone for three nights and stayed in a different campground each night. This was the best way to ensure we saw as much of the park as possible, as we'd only stop at attractions while driving to the next campground (remember we did not have a car with us). The campgrounds were just places to spend the night for us anyway.

Canyon campground was very heavily wooded.

It also was located on a fairly steep hill (especially if you're on a bike and not yet acclimated to the thinner air at these high elevations as I soon learned), and our campsite was all the way at the top:

When I say "campsite", I really mean "parking space", as we didn't have anything to setup outside the RV other than a couple of folding chairs.

This is the morning we looked out of the window at the head of the bed (back of the RV) and saw the biggest crow we'd ever seen before, walking through our site. We later learned that this was a raven. They're HUGE!

Luna was the best traveler of all of the cats, not hiding while driving, often laying on the dashboard, and getting the prime window spots when we were parked:

She wasn't afraid of anything! (At least after the first night.)

Although the camp was packed, with our nearest neighbors about 25' (7.5m) away on two sides, it was extremely quiet in the evening and early morning. I attribute this to both considerate campers and the abundance of trees.

It was a nice, serene place to fix a bicycle tire and take photos of the lichen and pine tree bark, which you know I couldn't resist:

After this repair I rode my bike down the hill to the visitor center to get a map of the area and find out what side of "the canyon" we should visit. The ride downhill was fun, the return trip... not so much. Cool, mountain air is so refreshing -- there's just not enough of it!

I'll post about the amazing "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone" tomorrow.

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