Winter is quickly leaving us here and I still had not managed my trip to Yellowstone that I wanted to make so I called up my friend Robin and asked if she wanted to do a super fast day trip down and back on Friday.   She was game (I'm so glad) and came over with Thursday night dinner and spent the night here so we could be on the road no later than 5 a.m.    We missed the best light in Paradise Valley (hazard of waiting till March to go) but we had the most marvelous weather.   It was 56 when we left Gardiner and the whole time we were in the park it was absolutely lovely.    So over the next little while I'm going to share photos from the trip down and back.   Robin was the good luck charm in the wildlife viewing arena as you will see and I had lots of chances to work on some of my scenery shots.   Hope you enjoy!

See if you can find the bison (there's  more than one) in the shot below. We had the upper terrace at Mammoth all to ourselves but many  of the geysers are just not active anymore.  It is still really surreal to realize you are walking around on top of a volcano!