As my final post for the next two weeks I figured I might as well go with a big ticket item. These male polar bears are trying to prove dominance by who has the bigger mouth. As for my next two weeks, I’ll be in Kenya and hope to return with many more big ticket items. Stay tuned.

The last time I was visited Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado I took a bunch of panorama shots (usually five or so frames across that I later stitched together in Photoshop). They look great big with tons of detail, although quite small and underwhelming in the format of this blog. I never posted any because of that. But if you click on this image, the full size photo will load (you might have to click it again after it loads to go full size). If you’ve never been to Great Sand Dunes, it’s a great place. One of my favorite national parks, and also one of the newest, having only recently been upgraded from a national monument to a national park.

I photographed this young black tailed deer a while back in one of my favorite locations, Olympic National Park in Washington state. The little guy was eating grass along the side of the road with his/her mother and took a quick break to see what I was up to.

I’ve posted quite a few photos of elephant seals before but I keep finding new ones that I like. This mother was protecting her newborn pup from other agitated seals that were sharing space on the beach (and perhaps from the close approach of a photographer — the only one on the deserted beach last winter near the small town of San Simeon, California).

This mother moose and her son seem to be having a bit of a conversation as they walk through the snow. I was driving through Silver Gate, Montana when I spotted them through a stand of evergreens on the side of the road.

At about this time every year, thousands of snow geese and sandhill cranes descend upon Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. It’s quite a spectacle seeing giant flocks take off en masse every morning at dawn. It’s also nice to witness the quieter moments — like the morning I photographed these two cranes wading in a shallow lake.

I was just finishing breakfast when I saw these two polar bears through the dining room window of the lodge.  I quickly grabbed my equipment and hustled on out to a side patio to record the action. Turns out I could have taken my time as they kept at it for a good 20 minutes or so. They were obviously play fighting on the ice, but at times it really did look like they were out on a giant dance floor.

Tule elk are the smallest subspecies of elk in North America. They live only in a few small pockets of California. One of the most reliable places to see them is at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. It was getting near the end of the day when I came across a small herd of females, including this young lady who was obviously reacting to a particularly funny joke that I told her.

Here’s another one from the late spring trip to Yellowstone — this one not looking quite so springlike. I had never seen so many grizzly bears in the park. They seemed to be everywhere, digging through the snow looking for food. I watched this guy as he walked for about 15 minutes along the river and then proceeded to swim across and climb up the mountain on the other side.

The northwest entrance to Yellowstone National Park is a great place to spot bighorn sheep. The vast majority of Yellowstone is in Wyoming, but Gardiner Canyon where I took this photo is in Montana (the park’s boundaries also spill into a bit of eastern Idaho). I was there this spring and several recently born bighorn lambs were running up and down the steep walls of the canyon. It’s amazing how fearless they are at such a young age.