Day 16, Saturday, July 2

Took off this morning and rode around to the upper loop of the park. I ‘d been hoping all week to see a bear but had thus far been disappointed. Several times I talked to people who’d seen them and drove by the huge masses of vehicles parked alongside the road for alleged bear sightings, but I never got to see one personally. Well today was the day. After driving by yet another of those clusters of vehicles in an alleged bear sighting "It’s somewhere over that fourth knoll" I was told by one driver sitting comfortably in her suburban, smoking a cigarette, and looking through expensive binoculars, I actually got to see a bear about 20 mins later. A cinnamon colored brown bear which hung around long enough for me to get lots of good pictures. VERY cool. Another really cool thing I got to witness today (and even take some video of) was a herd of bison with lots of babies swimming across Yellowstone river. It’s amazing how incredibly agile those huge animals are. Again today, I got to see another super intense rainbow over the Yellowstone River valley. And again I got to come back to a tent already set up, an air mattress already inflated, a sleeping bag already stretched out, and tonight I even had another fire. What a fantastic night. Only draw back today was that when I got back to the Canyon Lands campground I found that they’d lost power so there were no hot showers to be had, and no lights in the bathrooms. That inconvenience hardly even rates being written about because the day was so good!