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 June 1998 was a rainy month in West Yellowstone, Montana. One evening I stepped outside of our fifth wheel and was greeted by this outstanding scene. The rain we had been having didn't seem quite so bad.
 During a summer Jim will drive ten to twelve thousand miles in the park and Carole will put on nearly 15,000. This picture was taken in early June, 1998 as I was navigating from Fishing Bridge to Canyon Village. This year has seen a lot of bear sightings, both Black and Grizzly, and this fine specimen crossed the road less than 50 feet from where I had stopped the truck. This picture is one of a series of 14 pictures I took as he rambled down the hill, crossed the road and headed for the river.
 While the above bear is a Black this one is a Grizzly. This bear was about 500 pounds which makes it pretty good size. He was a frequent visitor to an Elk he had killed near the road north of Norris Junction in April of 1998. While this bear and the above are very different colors it is not possible to tell them apart by color alone. Either bear can very in color from tan to black.
 This is one of my favorite Yellowstone wildlife pictures. It was taken in mid to late August 1995. This fellow has had pretty good eating and while his antlers are still in velvet they won't grow much more. It is about a month to the mating season (rut) and he will add a few more pounds. He was grazing near the road just south of Canyon Village and needless to say there were a lot of photographers present.
 This was a neat scene and I was right on top of them. They were playing rather than fighting, but they play a little rough and you wouldn't want to get in the middle of it. In addition, Bison are rather unpredictable and will charge a bystander with little or no warning if they get to close. In this case I had a pickup truck between me and them
 I call this picture "The Lodge Meeting". A bunch of the good ole boys sitting around talking about their . . . well, whatever a bunch of elk talk about. In this case the guy on the left is probably telling his two younger buddies to stay out of his way when the rut starts.
 This is one of the reasons I love my job of driving through the park. No two scenes are the same on successive days and a photograph never really does justice to the scene.. The clouds, the fog, the mists, the frost, the rain, the snow, the sun casting shadows through the trees, etc., etc., all combine to change every conceivable scene in the park. No one will ever get this exact same photograph and it really was a gorgeous day. Each day brings new wonder to the eye and while I seldom stop to capture them on film I revel in their beauty.
 Wild flowers in the mountains are truly beautiful. In Yellowstone the first of them start showing up in May. Each species seems to grow in their own little environment and because of the temperature variations at each altitude they bloom some where in the mountains all summer long.
 This little fellow was only a couple hours old when I came across him. His mother had left him while she went to feed and recover from the trauma of giving birth. The calf should have been lying still but the tourists had scared him while trying to get close up photos. A Park Ranger was flagged down and he soon had the situation under control.
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