The Lamar Valley

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7 Jul 2016: Today we drove up to the Northeast quadrant of the Park to visit The Lamar Valley. The Lamar River, which provides drainage for the Valley of the same name, derives it's name from Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar who was secretery of the interior from 1885 to 1888. Before then, the river was known as the East fork of the Yellowstone River.
The Lamar Valley holds major concentrations of Elk, Bison, Grizzly Bears and Wolves. We saw a huge herd of Bison in the valley but that was all. People were fishing in the Lamar River and in the Soda Butte River. The water might have been a foot deep.
I had not been very mindful of the distance we had traveled and our remaining supply of gas was diminishing the farther we got from the last gas station. Rather than turn around we decided to drive out the Northeast entrance of the Park and gas up at Silver Gate or Cooke City, Montane. We reached Silver Gate but there were no gas stations. They were all located in Cooke City so, refueled, we returned to our campsite. There weren'T any geysers or waterfalls but the Bison were plentiful and the scenery was incomparable.

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