Photographic gallery — Landscapes

Two ghostly coyotes crossed my path in the dim light as I walked along the boardwalk near Old Faithful on a December morning. The low light gave Castle Geyser an otherworldly feel.

The sun rises softly over Yellowstone's Little America on a summer morning.

Badlands National Park is a place of quiet beauty. In the early morning and late evenings--especially outside of summer, few people are in the park. Coyotes occasionally howl or bark in the distance, and if the air is still, you can sometimes literally hear nothing.

Obsidian Creek, smooth and glossy upstream, breaks over stones and before flowing into the Gardner River.

While driving by Golden Gate, a fierce wind lifted pebbles from the roadside and shot them at my truck. From Swan Lake Flat, I watched as the storm moved away to the north.

The Yellowstone River plummets some 300 feet creating the Lower Falls south of Canyon Village. The view from Artist Point rivals Old Faithful Geyser for visitor attractions in the park.

Mule deer provide scale to a fairy landscape in the Badlands after the passing of a spring storm.

At twilight, the formations in the Badlands take on an otherworldy appearance.

Fading sunlight warms a sliver of Electric peak as the foreground rests in the shadows.

Mammatus clouds sweep over a forest towards Yellowstone's Electric Peak.

Muted autumn colors lend a subdued mood to this bull moose's landscape as the rut nears.

A full moon rises above Yellowstone's Mt. Norris on a still February night. Down the valley, a lone wolf's howls go unanswered.

The Many Glacier country is home to bears, moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goats among others. This image shows the tranquil side of a spring evening just before the sunshine waned.

Sunrises and sunsets more than make up for the lack of fall colors in the Badlands as this early autumn photograph shows.

More than 300 stairs take you down to the lowest view you are allowed to get of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. The view is well worth the effort of having to climb back up all those stairs!

With forest fire smoke in the atmosphere, the moon rises above characteristic formations in Badlands National Park on a still and silent night.

Like sunshine and clouds, the formations in the Badlands are ever-changing, being eroded by wind and weather.

The glassy surface of the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River captures the tranquility of a spring morning in the Tetons.

The first two trips I made to the Tetons, I never saw the rugged peaks of the mountains because of cloud cover. Finally, on this spring morning, the mountains stood clear and bright.

A lone bull rests a moment while feeding in Yellowstone's Round Prairie. The deep and heavy snows of 2010-2011 taxed many bison and elk. As a result, many did not live to see the spring green up.

The cold spring water of Obsidian Creek slips downstream over stones and reflects sky and forest.

Early one morning while camped by Yellowstone Lake's South Arm, I meandered along the water's edge and caught this sepia-toned sunrise.

Blazing skies above the dormant Old Faithful Inn warm a cold December evening.

A cold, gray day transforms Electric Peak into a sketch, highlighting its glacially carved features and the inky forest below.

Smoke from forest fires filled the skies in Bozeman during the late summer of 2012. Some days, you could barely see three blocks away as the smoke from other western states rolled in. But it made for spectacular sunrises and sunsets from Peet's Hill.

The Hoodoo Basin (originally named the Goblin Labyrinth) sits near the eastern border of Yellowstone. At different times of the day and in varying levels of light, the rock transforms into interesting shapes and figures, such as these hand-holding goblins.

Wind gusts blow across the ridges of Electric Peak as shafts of sunlight flitter in the cold smoke.

A colorful sky glows behind the silhouette of a pine forest following a summer storm near Gardner's Hole.

The Tetons are a young mountain range that thrust upward several million years ago. The early morning sunlight on this June morning illuminates some of their glacially chiseled peaks.