Exploring back roads

This time of year the National Park is pretty crowded, so we find ourselves exploring other areas. This afternoon we took a nice ride on some national forest roads.

The view behind us as we drive in the mountains.

We pulled into one of the campsites in this National Forest Campground to eat our picnic lunch. If you look really closely you can see the nearest camper off in the distance.

A close up of the small flowers seen in the foreground in the previous picture. There were thousands of these tiny bouquets.

Another very interesting tiny flower.

Wildflower colors are amazing.

This black bug makes a great contrast with the white flowers.

He's not too happy to have his picture taken.

Storm clouds are rolling in, chasing us back towards home.

These seeds look like dandelions, but the clumps are about the size of a baseball.

Was getting ready to take a photo of these asters, when this striped grasshopper jumped in.

White Pelicans and Wildflowers

On one of our trips to the 'big city' of Bozeman, we drove along the West Fork of the Madison River. There were many people enjoying themselves by floating down the river. The flock of white pelicans we saw seemed unaffected by all the people.

They are very large birds with a tremendous wingspan. They are very graceful in flight, considering their size.

Ready for a touch down.

A pair wading in the cool water.

This squirrel is a frequent visitor to our campsite. It found a tasty pine cone to munch on.

Wherever we go, the camera travels with us. These are some wildflowers we found near the road.

Beautiful Sights along the road

We scan the roadside as we travel around in this wonderful part of the country. Quite often we are rewarded with wonderful sights.

We first spotted this large grizzly bear as he tried to cross the road 2 vehicles ahead of us. We turned around and watched him in the brush and trees along the road as he seemed pretty anxious to get across. We got this great shot, shortly before he finally got across behind our truck. This was just 3 and a half miles west of town, which is not within the park.

Since we have had quite a bit of rain lately, we see waterfalls, such as this one, where it's usually dry.

The following are a couple photos of wildflowers we saw along the road.