Yellowstone Trophy

As we came around the ridge, we began to see signs of the tell tale Yellow-stone bear sighting. I pulled over to the side of the road and proceeded to walk the half mile or so up the highway and came upon a line of tourists with their iPhones out trying to capture a large male Grizzly bear above them by about 70 yards. I immediately took off running back to the car and signaled to the troops that there was something indeed worth seeing up the road. I grabbed my bag and took off back up the road. When I got there, the tourists were still trying to photograph him with the zoom function on their phone with comments such as, “Why can’t I get a still shot of him?”  I felt bad setting up my 500mm pro lens next to them, but then again I had roused my entire family at 5am, promised them animal sightings, and had driven around for a few hours to no avail. I was going to prove myself right and walk away with my trophy. The family finally caught up just as I began to click away and immediately my boy asked to look through the camera. Then I knew that my real trophy was his experience, and the picture he took away from it. My consolation prize was the family reasserting that getting up at 5am and driving around Yellowstone for 3 hours was a brilliant idea. “How did you know to do that Dad?” And my second place trophy was still a pretty good too.