Yellowstone

So our next stop was Yellowstone. We had a long drive and decided to go by freeway as long as possible which put us entering the park's west entrance. We got to the park at about 9:45 pm to find out the shortest route to our cabin closed every night at 10 pm and we wouldn't make it before it closed. If we would have entered at the south entrance this wouldn't have been a problem, but we did not know about the closure before hand. Anyway, it was so dark in the park since there are no street lights and we were terrified a large animal (deer, elk, moose, bison) would walk out in front of us. We both had our eyes glued to the front and sides watching carefully. We did pass several animals along the way as well as an accident involving a van that hit a very large deer. It died...so sad. As we were drivin, we kept glancing at the temperature (we have a thermometer in our car) and it was dropping. By the time we got to our cabin it was midnight and 33 degrees. We knew it would be cool but were unprepared for that kind of weather. The next morning we ventured out for breakfast to find there were patches of snow here and there still on the ground from the winter. We couldn't see that the night before, though. After breakfast we drove part of the park to see what kind of wildlife we could spot. We got lucky and saw Elk, Mule and Pronghorn deer, a bear, a few bald eagles even one on a nest and lots of bison. I almost got trampled by a small herd of deer running through Mamoth Village. I was out of the car taking a pic of 2 Elk while in the other direction the herd were heading right in my direction. It was quite funny to look up and see 6 or 7 LARGE Elk running toward me.
The park itself was not what I expected. There were thousands of fallen trees just laying around making it look messy. It was rainy and cold the second day when we were supposed to see the geysers. We just drove by most of them but we did stand in the drizzily cold to watch Old Faithful. Because the sky was overcast and the steam of the geyser, we didn't get a good pic. You couldn't make out the sky from the shooting water. Very disappointing. All in all it was a great time. We should have scheduled more time there to go hiking.