We got up to a cold and gloomy day, much like the atmosphere in our room as we were leaving Yellowstone today. The snow storm that was predicted for last night had not materialized, at least here in Gardiner. That meant that we would have to leave Gardiner and head up to Bozeman. Our flight is scheduled for early Tuesday morning.

Deb was puttering around and doing whatever women do when it is time to leave, so I went out to talk to John. He said we could leave the packages we were going to ship and he would give them to UPS when they came by. We had not set up the return shipping labels so I had to borrow John’s computer to initiate the shipment. Unfortunately UPS would not let me set up a shipment for the camera lens as they would not insure it for its full value through the Internet. We would have to take the lens to an authorized UPS shipping office.

This was not too bad as we were going to ship the camera bag and miscellaneous lenses and electronics and we did not have packing materials for them. We were going to ship the camera bag as Deb did not think I should carry a thirty pound backpack right now.

We changed our itinerary for the Loonion and are now staying at the Yellowstone Village Inn for the full two weeks instead of staying at Old Faithful and Canyon for part of it. John then helped us load the car and we said our goodbyes.

We headed into the park for a final short visit to Mammoth. The ranger at the entrance station was very talkative today and we had an interesting conversation. We saw a few small groups of bison and elk on the way to Mammoth. We had to stop at Mammoth as Deb’s sisters wanted webcam pictures from Mammoth.

It was extremely windy and cold at the Mammoth Visitor Center. The snow banks were higher than the hood of the car so we just stood beside the car for the webcam shots. After we were finished with the webcam shots Deb went into the Visitor Center to stamp our passport and purchase some books. Since it was so cold and windy, we decided to leave the park proper and go out the Old Yellowstone Trail.

As we were going through the sheep management area Deb spied an extremely large set of elk antlers. You could not see the elk that was wearing them as he was bedded down in the thick sagebrush. We took some pictures and then turned around to see whether he was visible from another angle. Deb got out of the car and was able to get a few pictures of his head.