Wyoming blog
1/1/2025: New Years Day brought one of our favorite winter spectacles, hoarfrost. Here we are looking from our backyard over the Wind River to the Wind River mountains.
The following video is not of snow falling. New Years Day was a blue sky, sub-zero day where water vapor instantly freezes into tiny ice crystals in the air called “Diamond Dust”.
1/30/25: Many don’t realize that the Milky Way is also visible in winter. However, since we are looking to the outer arm of the Milky Way, it is very dim and only visible in extremely dark skies like in Wyoming. I tried for years to capture it on camera but it has proven quite difficult. Also the summer Milky Way arch is visible in the east, while in winter it is in the west which made it perfect for capturing it over the Tetons.
2/24/25: We’ve been seeing this young bull moose in our backyard frequently this winter. I hope he stays in the area this year so we can watch him grow his new set of antlers!
3/7/25: Since moving here 11 years ago, I’ve been searching unsuccessfully to find a Great Gray Owl. A birding friend of mine called me to let me know one was spotted in a town only 25 miles away. Needless to say we immediately jumped in the car and were lucky enough to find it. It is the largest owl in North America with a wingspan of 5 feet! Magnificent bird!
4/21/25: We camped near Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge again this year. I didn’t take many pictures this year, mostly choosing to be a “birder” and just watch with binoculars. Did get OK shots of a Prairie Dog, Pronghorn and an active Bald Eagle nest. Even got lucky to see one of the adults bring in a fish to feed to a single baby.
5/20-5/23/2025: Camped at Firehole Canyon campground this week. Probably the most impressive view from a campsite anywhere. Whenever we come here, we always tried to find the Juniper Titmouse but never succeeded. While it has a large territory in the “Four Corner” states, in Wyoming it can only be found in the very southwest corner near this campground. This year we not only found one but also got good photos of the Black-throated Gray Warbler. We had seen these before, but they are very hard to photograph. The last photo here is of a very small but tenacious Douglas Fir growing out of a rock in the Red Canyon area of Flaming Gorge.
5/25/2025: Around Memorial Day we make our annual trek to our secret location of multicolor Indian Paintbrush. They did not disappoint.
6/1/2025: Today we went to check out the high water flow in Sinks Canyon State Park. This was one of the highest we’ve seen here with the Middle Popo Agie almost to the top of the cave and the overflow channel was raging. Also happened to coinside with peak wildflowers!
Here I am on the trail that normally leads all the way into the cave. Today my feet were on the waters edge far from the cave!
Here is another view of the river nearly filling the cave. If you are on a laptop or desktop, you can “hover over” with the mouse cursor to see the cave just 4 weeks later.. (Unfortunately it doesn’t work well on a mobile device. If you gently press (not tap) on the photo it MIGHT work, but sometimes it auto scrolls all the way up to the top of the page. Sorry, I’m not really a web disigner.))
This is the overflow channel that only has water in it for a few weeks a year. Again, if using computer with a mouse, you can hover over the image to see this just 4 weeks later.
Candy spotted a couple of new wildflowers for us. The first has unusual flowers that were almost as green as the leaves! The next is the intricately beautiful Sego Lily,
Prickly Pear cacti are extremely common in Wyoming. While we’ve seen them blooming before, this was the most perfect bloom I’ve ever seen.
Even The Rise was interesting. Ususally at overflow there is just a little more water seeping throught the wall at the edge. This year we could see sand billowing up from the bottom showing that the water was forcing its way up from there as well.
6/6/2025: Camped in Grand Teton National Park this week. We decided to take the boat ride across Jenny Lake and hike to Hidden Falls since it had been a few years since we did that. Before heading to the boat dock we enjoyed the wildflowers, saw a cow moose and walked along the lakeshore.
This is looking up from the trail back to the boat dock. Here you can hover over the image to see mountain peak labels.
6/7/2025: Today we took a new hike to Heron Pond in the Colter Bay area. The first part of the trail had nice views of the Teton Range across Jackson Lake. Heron Pond was pretty with lots of lily pads and great views of the Tetons as well.
6/16/2025: This week we camped at Middle Fork Campground in the Big Horn Mountains. This is going to be a wildflower heavy post. We identified at least six species of wildflowers we hadn’t seen before.
For years I’ve wanted to see and photograph a Golden-crowned Kinglet. I finally got to do so right at our campsite! This bird is very small and never stops moving, so it was quite a challenge.
Candy noticed a new side road we hadn’t seen before called Schoolhouse Park with an incredible view of the Big Horns. This is where we found most of the new wildflower species.
We’ve seen Larkspurs in many locations, but this is a different variety called Low Larkspur. I didn’t realize the amazing intricate details of the flower until I got home. Mouse over the image for a close-up of the center.
These next 5 flowers were new ones for us.
I have photographed Prairie Smoke many times before, but it is such a unique flower, I couldn’t resist doing so again. Here there were so many, I could photograph all three stages. The flower starts in a hanging down position, Then the stalk straightens up and starts to open the seed pods, and when it is fully open it looks like smoke.
Back at the campground I found another new wildflower, Golden Bean.
7/1/2025: This week went back to the Tetons. We’ve hiked to Taggart Lake multiple times, but this time decided to start the Taggart Lake Trail then branch off to Bradley Lake which we’d never done before. Beautiful views, and wildflowers were plentiful.
This hike was more difficult than Taggart Lake because it was longer at 5 miles and had more elevation gain. In fact, here we were looking down at Taggart Lake 200 feet below.
7/2/2025: Still tired from yesterday’s hike, we decided to do only a portion of the Phelps Lake trail then switch over to the Boulder Ridge Trail which we had never done before, mainly to look for more new wildflowers.
There is no adequate way to describe just how tiny the flowers of this Narrow-leaf Mountain Trumpet are (aka Tiny Trumpet). The trumpet stem almost seemed as thin as a human hair, yet as thin as that was, each trumpet was about 1/2″ long.
The Harebells were blooming everywhere. As the name suggests, the flower usually hangs down like a bell. Here we found quite a few angled upward allowing me to try to photograph the inside of the bell.
A few years back I discovered and photogrpahed a fascinating plant named Merten’s Coralroot. It is a member of the orchid family that doesn’t have any leaves or chlorophyll. It gets its nutrition from fungi in the soil (mycotrophic). Here we found its close relative, the Spotted Coralroot. Each of these blooms are very tiny, about 3/8″ in size.
We discovered these American Alpine Speedwell flowers growing as a low groundcover. Each tiny bloom is <1/4″ in size.
7/16/2025: It had been 6 years since we visited Beartooth Highway, mostly because of distance and difficulty towing a camper over steep mountain roads. The weather was poor on our drive up with low clouds. In fact, when driving over Dead Indian Pass we were actually IN the clouds with almost no visibility. Also, that first night in the campground we had rain and hailstorms. However, we managed to snag the best camping spot in Hunter Peak Campground. It is right on the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone river and has neat rock formations and lush plant growth almost like a rain forest.
While it has been easy to photograph and identify new wildflower species, it is not often I get to see and photograph a new bird species. Below are some new wildflowers, a fern growing out of a boulder and a beautiful moss, as well as a “lifer” Hammond’s Flycatcher.
I had seen this next flower before but never actually got it identified. I always said it looked like a Penstemon (aka Beardtongue), but the flowers were tiny compared to other Penstemon. Turns out I was right. This one is called Small-flowered Beardtongue!
Our next stop was to see Beartooth Falls which can only be viewed from a distance as they are somewhat far down below the road. While I was photographing the falls, Candy spotted across the road a large number of wildflowers seemingly growing out of a sheer rock face. I counted at least 15 different wildflowers in that small area.
If you’ve followed this blog, you know we have photographed a large variety of colors of Indian Paintbrush over the past 11 years. However, at Island Lake, Candy found a number of bright fuchsia Paintbrush we had never seen before.
At 11,000 ft elevation, the views from Beartooth Pass are impressive. Unfortunately, this year we did not see the mountain goats.
We then drove up a rather sketchy road to the Clay Butte Fire Lookout Tower. The first photo is along the way up, and the second is a 180° panorama from the lookout tower.
7/28/2025: Camped in the Snowy Range this week. Realized we had not done our favorite hike here since 2021, so we went to Lookout Lake. We saw a total of 5 moose this week including 2 right outside our camper one morning just before sunrise. We are still thrilled to see the mighty moose, but get just as thrilled when we see the tiny and insanely cute American Pika. Lookout Lake is a great place to find them as well as it being “columbine heaven”. Here the columbine grow between the white granite boulders along the lakeshoe, along the trail, as well as covering the hillsides.
