Admittedly things have been pretty quiet and dark around our home for a while and I can say I was very much looking forward to my annual winter Yellowstone trip with my buddy Robin.   Unfortunately our original date picked ended up cancelled due to horrific weather so we backed it off a week and had fabulous roads and weather to go....at o-dark-thirty!

The time change definitely benefited us as did the clear roads.   We saw scads of wildlife on the way down to the park and once in the park and as all good wildlife photogs know, by mid-day it all disappeared.  We headed home about 1:30 and both commented on how we were avoiding wildlife on the roads all the way in but there was nothing to be seen on the way home.   I have never had to avoid as much wildlife on the road as we did heading in - but we did AVOID it all so I was happy.

Am going to break this trip up into a number of posts and I will warn you the coyote and eagle posts coming up has them eating on winter kill so if that stuff makes you squeamish you may want to skip those - although in all fairness I was really happy with some of the results!

My photography goal this trip was to get back in the groove with my cameras (that went so-so) and to become friends with my tripod.   That also went so-so but I am at least getting used to what knobs do what and I'm pretty sure that even opened up it is more steady than my hand held.  I did take the opportunity to bump down my ISO (usually use 200 for my handheld stuff) and I will have to admit I didn't see a huge difference.  Especially in the stuff shot with my telephoto completely extended.   

So this first post is scenery for you and our "surprise" shot (wayyyyy off) of a young moose, which neither Robin nor I thought we'd ever see from the road in the Park.   Also, scenery is limited because as you probably guessed, only the winter roads are open - Mammoth and to Lamar.  

The photo below gives you an idea how far away we were from the moose - this is at 600mm.

We will take it!  LOL