Truly a safari experience! Hold on to your hat and anything lightweight.. feel the wind and swirling dust! Our guide Monica had the exhuberance of a true wildlife expert who has the educational background to correctly answer everyones questions and add to it. She navigates the narrow and at times unpaved rocky, wildly potholed roads with the sturdy axle of her safari truck! We saw pronghorn, bison from afar, moose and baby, elk. She knew where to look for wildlife based on her knowledge of their habits. This was our first time to visit the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park, and we were here for the total Solar Eclipse. BrushBuck Wildlife Tour was the first tour we had scheduled after the eclipse, so it was a good introduction to the park.
We did the Dusk Safari from Teton Village towards the end of our holiday and had already visited Wind Cave and Yellowstone NPs so had already seen quite a lot of wildlife on our own. We were hoping that the safari would take us off the beaten track a bit to see more. However we seemed to be doing an awful lot of driving around amongst other traffic and asking people what they were stopping to look at. We did get caught up in a 'bear jam' at one point, but the bear was difficult to view from the road and there wasn't an opportunity to get out of the minivan. There were very few photographic opportunities as it wasn't always possible to pull off the road when there were any animals to view. The vehicle we travelled in was very comfortable but I think Kevin was having a lot of problems with the gears and an alarm kept going off every now and again. Also some of the seat belts were not working.The windows were tinted so as it got darker it was really difficult to see out other than through the windscreen. Kevin, our Guide, was extremely knowledgable and interesting.He had a plentiful supply of snacks and drinks which were much appreciated. He also had a binoculars for everyone and a good scope.
We did manage to see a bear up a tree, a Bald Eagle, a couple of Elk in the distanceand hear them bugling and also a Magnificent Bull Elk toward the end of the tour.
Our overall impression of the tour was that it was expensive for what it was. We felt a tad disappointed.Perhaps,if we had done this before we had gone into the Parks on our own it may have seemed more worthwhile and exciting.
Our guide was Evan! He was fabulous. We saw a bear, elk, moose, prohorn antelope, bison and more. He reallly knew ,the area. He was a wealth of information. He was in no hurry in areas where we were watching for wildlife. Our tour was extended, because we kept seeing animals and would stop to watch. Highly recommend this tour.