In honor of tonight’s MEGA MILLIONS Lottery drawing I bring you your very own jackpot if you will. That jackpot being a bonus post for the month! I know, I know, a cheap replacement for the millions you could have won with the real drawing, but hey, the likelihood of getting this post was a whole lot better than your odds of actually winning that thing anyway. Truth be told, one of the reasons for the extra post is due to the quality of this particular set of pictures. One of the professional photographers Linda and I enjoying listening to has a podcast we play on our longer road travels. In this podcast, Rick Sammon is always fond of saying “One blurry picture is a mistake, a hundred blurry pictures is a style”. Generally I laugh this off, but in this particular case I’m going with wholehearted truth. In a slight variation, these images are in the STYLE of high grain hand painted mural. Here is a perfect example of this.
What do you think, captivating brush strokes, complimentary colors and that “stand back 20 feet” appeal common in many classic paintings in art history. Any chance you are buying that? thought so. Now a little background. The first time Linda and I visited Yellowstone, we did not get the opportunity to see a single wolf while we were out there. Part of that is due to not making it out to Lamar Valley which is where these wonderful animals tend to hang out (or rather where they are most often viewed). This trip out we had a bold goal to leave with at least one sighting and if a miracle occurred, some photos. On the very first morning we headed out to Lamar Valley with our friends David and Dr. Giselle. There we were met with lots of people with spotting scopes trained on a far distance cluster of trees on the banks of the river – just below the confluence. Thanks to a friendly lady from the UK we learned that the Druid Pack had been in a 2 day standoff with an cow elk who had sought safety in the middle of the river. I cannot give you a good estimate of the distance that was from where we were at on the side of the road, but it was way too far for the Beast to pull in any detail at all. Some other visitors around us were more than happy to give us a look through their more powerful scopes (quite friendly people out there by the way). Sure enough, we could see the cow elk’s head and top of it’s back along with a couple of wolves taking random passes along the banks. I can’t imagine how stressful this was for the participants in the standoff not having eaten in two days in a struggle of life and death. I do not usually take sides in the natural wildlife food chains but it turns out that a group of ignorant tourists decided they have the right to. Later in the day, these idiots decided they would walk out near the standoff and have a bite to eat while watching the event. Well, guess what, both the elk and the wolves freaked out at this intrusion causing the end of the skirmish – the wolves abandoned the hunt and the elk made off. Now one would say that those people saved an elk, but those of us who understand that predators have to kill to feed themselves and their cubs consider this as even more days without nourishing the pack. While were making our final scans, a park ranger came by and informed us that this had happened and he was looking for the morons that walked out there… so we’re not the only ones upset about this (the UK lady wanted them banned from the park immediately).
So one of our goals had been met, we actually saw wolves – Yeah! But the story does not end there.
Hit the jump to read the rest of the goodness and the explanation for the shot above !
