Day Two: We went up to Jardine before venturing into the park.  There we saw some mule deer, some elk, a bald eagle an a golden on a carcass, and a distant bighorn sheep.  Onward to the park.  Before reaching Mammoth, we picked up some movement off on a sagebrush covered slope.  Another coyote not too far off the road.  It trotted into an area of thick growth, not offering any photo opportunities, so I made some rodent squeaks with my lips.  It responded by loping back into the open, but it still did not look our way as I had the camera trained on it.  What to do next?  I let out a howl with my voice and got a bit more than I bargained for.  The coyote I was looking at was not the first one to respond.  No, the first response was from across the road.  A group of coyotes lit up with howls, provoking coyote number one to answer back to them repeatedly and  run down the slope toward the road.  I was cranking off frames as fast as I could and hoping that some of them would be in focus.  As soon as the coyote hit the road, I prepared to exit the 4Runner and head for the other side of the road for any last fleeting shots before the coyote was out of sight.  I happened to look out Scott's window and saw a couple coyotes down the hill on the run.  They had sounded close when they were howling, but I had no idea they were that close!  It became quite obvious when they joined up with coyote number one that they were family, because they were jumping all over each other and one tried to nurse off coyote one as well.  Their goofy antics and yips and barks were quite hilarious, and they offered me several shots, much better than the previous shots of coyotes up to that point.  What an awesome way to start the day!  More coyotes on down the road.  More shots of the solitary ram.  Then I spotted some distant critters as we were crossing a bridge, and thought it looked an awful lot like sheep.  Scott had the idea of hiking up to a point where we should be able to see them, so we did some post-holing over snowshoe trails with buffalo tracks to try to trap our feet and trip us up.  Once we got up to the top of the hill, we found ourselves on some rock outcroppings overlooking some steep cliffs and below, a decent herd of sheep with a monster ram.  The only problem was, the ram was behind a tree and as steep as the cliffs were, it was hard to get a decent view from above the sheep, with no options to get at their level.  I explored around and Scott waited the ram out.  I had only originally seen two rams, so when I saw a little one go by, I thought the next one that came out had to be the big boy.  Not quite, but I snapped off quite a few shots of him too.  From my location, I watched as Scott ventured out on a small rock overlook.  I was hoping he knew what he was doing because it was kind of scary watching from my perspective and it was a long way to the bottom with a rocky landing!  After we joined back up, he told me I would be able to see the big ram from there, so I found myself straddling the tripod legs in the same tight spot.  Fired off some shots and filled my memory card with a pile of sheep photos.  On down the road, we got some more shots of a pair of coyotes in a neat setting.  We were just about to pack up and I looked down the road and saw a mystery critter walking across the road.  Was it?  Could it be?  Badger!  We busted up there as quickly as we could and got a bunch of winning shots of it before it went too far up the hill to be seen from the road.  That day concluded as we saw some wolves finishing up on the dead buffalo and we got some shots of a frozen waterfall.  We wondered about some people's sanity as we saw them down in the hot springs along the river, because it was feeling rather wintery out there and once we got back, there was snow and sleet blowing in the direction that would have been in their faces for a half mile walk back to the parking lot.  BRRRS! 

Day Three:  This was the last day of our photo expedition.  We went into the park, not knowing what we were going to see this time.  We saw a group of people viewing the river in the area where we had seen the badger.  Our first thought was that perhaps the badger was on that side of the road, but we had hopes that maybe it was the otter the guy had told us about previously.  Sure enough, there was a dark spot bobbing in the river that could only be an otter, the first I have ever seen.  I bailed with my gear and tried getting set up on the thing, but it was cruising at a good rate of speed, so about the time I got set up, it would go under and resurface twenty or so yards downstream for a split second, and do the same thing again.  Impossible to get ahead of it and pretty much impossible to get a camera focus in the short time it appeared in the unpredictable places that it did.  The river took a sharp bend away from the road and the otter kept going downstream, so I never did get a photo, but it was a neat experience seeing it at any rate.  We got some quality shots of the American Dippers today.  We also managed to see the badger for a second time and got some fair shots of it.  More bighorn rams, and more coyotes.  In our last trip down the road, Scott happened to look in the rear-view at the right time and he said something about a coyote or something crossing the road behind us.  He got the 4Runner turned around and we saw a wolf at close proximity.  We watched it for quite a while before it went over a hill out of our view.  After we left the park, Scott spotted a bald eagle perched in a tree at a fishing access, so we turned around and went in there to get some pictures.  It wasn't too worried about us, so I rolled the window down and snapped off a pile of shots, as this was my best opportunity ever on eagles.  After I felt I had a sufficient amount of decent pictures, I got out and got my tripod so I could get some potentially sharper shots.  The eagle let me get everything set up and then decided to fly.  I watched for it to fly up or down the river but didn't see it, so I figured we better sneak up to the edge of the river bank to see if it was down on the rocks.  It wasn't long and I could see its head poking up, so we set up and got what shots we could, then crept up further and got some full on body shots of it before it flew.  What an awesome trip it was!  Scott and I are now talking about future trips to places like Glacier National Park, Zion, and perhaps the Grand Canyon.  So make sure to stay tuned for many photos to come!