First up: bison. We saw a lot of wildlife, but none so impressive as the bison. They’re all over the place.
The first time we saw one walking down the road towards us, forcing us to stop, Heather was nervous (actually, that may be putting it kindly). There was nothing we could do but stop and wait while this huge animal (1000+ pounds?) walked slowly by us. Luckily, they are quite used to cars and it barely even glanced at us as it passed. By the second time it happened, Heather was taking picutures of it. The third time was the best though. We had pulled off to look at the Mud Volcano, and as we were getting out, a group of bison wandered onto the main road which was about 50 feet from us. So all of these cars were stopped and these animals kept walking back and forth in the road. They didn’t appear to be going anywhere, and certainly weren’t in any hurry, and there was at least one young one (calf?) so some of the adults were staying very close. So we sat and watched them for probably 10 minutes while traffic was backing up quite a ways in both directions. Elizabeth was laughing the whole time… I’m not sure what exactly she liked, but to her it was hysterical.
After leaving that area, we drove a short while longer and came to a river, and there was a huge herd of bison. The herd stretched out over probably a mile of river, and I’d guess there was somewhere around 1000 bison there. It was really impressive.
They were definitely one of the highlights of the trip.