Our hotel room outside of Yellowstone National Park was not yet ready when we arrived. The lobby looked comfortable and cozy but my paranoia for COVID19 got the better of me. Instead of hanging around the hotel lobby and potentially exposing ourselves, we decided to enter the park and see what the late afternoon sun will bring us. It was the second national park that we visited after Arches National Park.

It didn’t take long to find ourselves at the end of a line of vehicles. We were driving on a two-lane road and traffic was stopped on both sides. For us newbies, the initial thought was a road wreck up ahead! As we inched closer, we found a herd of elk was holding up traffic. I just grabbed my camera and joined the crowd!

The buck didn’t seem big enough but his antlers were huge! It was my first time to see a buck that close. I was thinking, they must really be so used to having people this close to them! I fired away with my camera just like the rest of the people gawking at the herd.

The reason that the buck was steadfastly holding his ground was because of these elk cows. It didn’t occur to me until I saw another young buck standing alone close by. All the time that I spent watching National Geographic has finally paid off!

We didn’t want to go any further into Yellowstone National Park because we were running out of daylight. We returned to West Yellowstone, a small place just right outside the park, to our hotel room.

West Yellowstone was not the place that I expected it to be. Yes, it was small but the shops on both sides of the road were brightly lit and teeming with people. And, though teeming with people, guidelines were followed on social distancing and mask wearing.

We still had a few more days to explore the park. The plan was to do it in segments since some parts of the parks had already been closed for the winter season.