Mud Volcano - Grand Canyon of Yellowstone...

After the night in the cabin we went on to have a nice breakfast before heading out to Yellowstone.  It was my 24th birthday after all!  I had to start it off with a big stack of pancakes!  Once we got in we set out to go to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  We made several stops along the way to look at the scenery or coming across random things like the Mud Volcano's.  There is so much to look at!  To your left there will be hot springs, geysers, and mud volcanoes and to your right will be rolling hills, river rapids and water falls, mountains, and pines trees as far as you can see.  And sometimes a mixture of both.  Just a heads up....there are a lot of pictures here.

^^we stopped by a lake to get a snack...just showing how tall the trees are^^

Bison!! Our first encounter with wildlife! This guy was just chowing down by the road. 

^^just to show how close we got.  I realize it probably wasn't the best idea to get this close, but we were only there for a quick minute and went straight back to the car. ^^

these were taken from the car.  just probably 15 feet away.

Pulled over to see the mud volcanoes

we could smell the sulfur from the road!

Jeremy took some videos on his phone through out the trip which you can get a better idea of the place

....

except for the smell

(i may post videos later)

Hey y'all!

hot springs NOT for swimming

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Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

really glad we brought the binoculars!

came across a meadow

and jeremy told me to go frolic

Elk! We noticed a bunch of cars stopped and figured it was some sort of wildlife.  We had stopped and looked at some elk earlier in the day, but they were a little far off and since i don't really have the best zoom on my camera (it pretty much only zooms in to like what you see outside the camera...but has a good zoom out, which was great to capture some of the larger things) So the distance you see her is about how close i got.  Again, it was probably too close, but i wanted a picture! And i wasn't the only one...i was kinda hiding behind a tree.

there were some females and babies off in the distance on the left. 

next up: Old Faithful, geysers, hot springs, and a hike.