Yellowstone Wildlife

Yellowstone is famous for its wildlife ... well, and also for its thermal features ... and for its waterfalls.  Well, its famous for a lot of things, but one is its wildlife.  We have seen a lot of interesting critters during our 2 1/2 weeks in the park.  We even got a few nice photos of some.  Unfortunately, while we saw some black bears, we didn't see a grizzly.  And we never saw a wolf.

So here is a post showing off some of my favorite wildlife photos.

Enjoy.

A bison jam

Black bear

Bull elk taken from our coach at Mammoth CG

Black bear cub on the boardwalk

Uinta (ground squirrel).  This was Matilda's favorite wildlife.

"You can't see me!"

"Dorcas! Keep your eyes on the road!"

These guys posed perfectly

Shedding his winter coat

I think I violated Rule #5 in previous post!

Taken from our coach at Bridge Bay CG

Black bear says "Hello"

Black bear says "Yum!" as he munches the clover.

Black bear says "Bye bye"

Coyote on the prowl

Apparently he's not in the mood for swans this morning

"I see you too!"

The ground squirrel got away.  Dang!

Elk hanging out at Mammoth Hot Springs

Look carefully, there is a bull moose hiding in the shadows.

Mule deer

White pelicans

Osprey on her nest

Trumpeter Swans

"If you don't back off, I'm calling the ranger!"

Yellowstone National Park - All good things must end

The Roosevelt Arch

When our stay ended at Bridge Bay, we wanted to spend more time in the park, but I didn't want to try to get a reservation. At most visitors centers they know the fill times the previous day at all of the campgrounds in the park. I had my heart set on Mammoth CG which is at the extreme northwest corner of the park. I asked a ranger at the visitor center at Canyon when Mammoth had been filling. He said “Mammoth? You want to go to Mammoth? You ever been to Mammoth?” Like why the heck would you want to go there? Well actually we have been to Mammoth CG. We spent 5 nights there in May 2011 on our way to Alaska and enjoyed it very much thank you. Mammoth is a little different. It's about 1400 feet lower elevation than those campgrounds in the interior and it is less wooded and has more sagebrush. Actually Mammoth has a lot going for it.

1. Mammoth Hot Springs is gorgeous.
   
2. You can always see elk at Mammoth. They actually have a “wildlife resource ranger” whose sole job is to move orange cones and barricades around town to keep tourists away as the resident elk cross the street and move to different parts of the village.
   
3. It is the historic entrance to Yellowstone and the location of Fort Yellowstone, where the cavalry were stationed in the early years of the park as they provided order and protected the park from poachers. It is park headquarters and just a happenin' place.
   
4. It is close to Gardiner MT, where you can buy relatively cheap fuel and groceries.
   
5. It has good Verizon cellular (Internet) service.
   
6. Mammoth Hot Springs is gorgeous.
   
   
   
   
   

Elk on the lawns

 





The campground at Mammoth generally fills later than the other first-come camp grounds, usually mid afternoon and has a lot of large pull-though sites. We felt there was little risk of not getting a site if we got there early. We left Bridge Bay about 8:00 AM and checked into Mammoth about 9:30. No problem.

Our camp at Mammoth

Elk taking their daily evening stroll through our camp

While at Mammoth we explored the northern areas of the park: Lamar Valley, Tower/Roosevelt area, Norris and Madison. We went into Gardiner a few times for fuel and groceries. We have a washer/dryer on board, but we have been without electric, water and sewer since July1, so we visited the Wash Tub to do some laundry.

You just don't see that back home

Way too close!

I wonder how these guys got here?

Gibbon Falls

Tower Falls

Yellowstone River at Tower Creek

We have been in Yellowstone for 17 nights, the last 10 at Mammoth CG. When we first got here we had planned a much shorter visit, and then we would move into Montana and spend time in Glacier National Park. However, getting a camp site on the east side of Glacier, which was where we wanted to be, was looking to be difficult. They didn't take reservations at any of those camp grounds and larger sites were limited. At some point we made the decision to skip Glacier and spend more time in Yellowstone. Once that decision was made a cloud and a burden seemed to be lifted from us, and we knew we had chosen wisely.

Mystic Falls

But now the time has come to move on. Tomorrow we must leave Yellowstone and begin working our way eastward.

Our camp at Mammoth CG

Yellowstone National Park Part II

I have been in Yellowstone National Park perhaps 6-8 times, but never in the summer. Every time I have been here in the past was before Memorial Day or after Labor Day, which has always been a great time to be here. I had heard horror stories about the traffic jams and the crowds in the summer, so I was apprehensive about going to Yellowstone at all during the month of July. Of course, we came anyway.

Tourists!  Taking up all our camping sites!

Well, our impression so far is, it ain't so bad. Sure, when a chipmunk crosses the road, traffic grinds to a halt and the camera flashes drive the poor critter into an epileptic seizure. And there can be parking issues (fist fights) at some of the pull-outs, particularly at the more popular features. But it wasn't as bad as we expected. In fact, shortly into our stay at Grant Village, I started trying to get more nights in the park. Most of the major campgrounds are by-reservation only (Madison CG being an exception). It is a risk to depend on getting a spot at the smaller first come campgrounds. First, you need to get there early in the morning, and second, most of those have smaller sites and only a very limited number of sites big enough for our rig. If you miss, you're screwed and have to drive a hundred miles to find a place outside the park. So I got on-line looking for a reservation for some days after our stay ended at Grant Village. No luck. Finally I called the reservation phone number, and a guy found us three nights at Bridge Bay CG, only 19 miles north of our current site at the other end of Yellowstone Lake. Sweet! I did tell a minor fib however. I gave the operator the correct length of our coach but, when asked, I told him we were not towing a car. How could that matter? I think this helped us get the site, but it did cause minor a problem later.

 


So, on Tuesday we packed up and moved a whopping 19 miles to Bridge Bay CG. We checked in and were assigned site A-9. At first glance A-9 seemed to be a huge pull through site,just adjacent to the pavement on the loop road. But wait a minute. What's that white line painted across the pavement half way along the length of our site? And why does it say A-10 just beyond that line? Crap, they did it to us again. That mile-long pull-through was actually two separate sites. I pulled all the way up so my bumper was even with the white line, and my front mirrors actually intruded about a foot into A-10. There was nobody currently parked in A-10, but there was some gear on the picnic table. Obviously a small van-type camper would be coming back, and it wouldn't matter that we were slightly trespassing. The reason we needed as much space as we did was because there was no place to park the car. Park rules say all wheels must be on the pavement, but not in the roadway. Well, we only had about 6' behind us to park the car. I finally did manage to get the car in diagonally between the coach, a boulder and the fiberglass site marker, with Dorcas using her new parking gestures again. It was not nearly as dramatic as our parking nightmare at Grant Village, but it was stressful all the same. About this time a 40' Tiffin arrives to park in A-10. Because we are there, he must pull forward and do a parallel parking maneuver to wiggle around a tree at the front end of his site. When he's finished there is barely enough room to walk between our two coaches. Whoever designed the site layouts at Grant Village and Bay Bridge should be fed to the bears.

Bridge Bay had no cellular service, but we did have open sky for the solar array. Unfortunately, it was overcast for most of our stay here. We spent the next few days exploring the northern Lake region, Hayden Valley and the Canyon region.

This guy was in our site just a few seconds before

Lake Hotel

Lake Hotel dining room.  A bit rich for us.

Bison in Hayden Valley

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone.  I say eddy right then go for it!

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Black bear munching the clover

What do you see?  Is it a bear?

Evidence of the fires of 1988

 

Yellowstone Rules

I don't mean “Yellowstone Rules” like “Yellowstone Rocks!” (although it does), but "Yellowstone Rules", like Yellowstone Regulations". Yellowstone National Park, as do all other national parks, has a number of rules that visitors must follow. Most are designed to protect the visitor from park hazards, or to protect the wildlife and natural features from park visitors. Most rules are pretty sensible. Like, stay on the boardwalks in the geyser basins, don't feed the bears, stay 75' from bison, and don't spit on the ground squirrels. But the list of rules is far from complete. Therefore I have produced my own addendum to the Yellowstone National Park Rules.

Myron's Rules for Enjoying Yellowstone National Park

1.  Expect the idiot driving the other vehicle to do something idiotic. When he does, blow the horn and make a rude gesture.

2.  When you are driving and see wildlife along the road side and want to stop, GET OFF THE FRIGGIN' ROAD! When you observe a violation of this rule, blow the horn and make a rude gesture.

3.  Bison are not afraid of highways or automobiles, for good reason. Honda vs. bison, the bison wins.

4.  When you see a bear, take 300 photos. Even that will not be enough.

5.  When you see 300 bison, take one photo. That will be more than enough.

6.  Don't try to take a picture of every single geyser, pool, hot spring and fumarole (Dorcas!)

7.  Don't try to remember the names and characteristics of every single geyser, pool, hot spring and fumarole (Myron!)

8.  Don't buy groceries in the park: $3.99 for a bag of marshmallows! You gotta be kidding!

9.  Don't buy fuel in the park: $4.099 for gasoline? YIKES! $4.399 for diesel? DOUBLE YIKES!

10.  When you step out from the camper in the morning, watch your step. Bison are everywhere and leave a foul reminder of their passing.

11.  Every visitor should at least try to communicate using English. It will endear you to the natives. You are, after all, in the United States of America.

Geysers Galore! Yellowstone National Park

We departed our Gros Ventre CG camp at the crack of noon. Check out time was actually 11:00, but we were talking to some neighbors who share our interests and activities and time slipped by. Besides, we had hoped to miss the mad rush at the sewer dump. We had been parked here for nine nights and needed to dump the foul fluids and take on some fresh fluids. When we pulled into the dump there was not another RV in sight, however, before we left there were about four rigs behind us.

We headed north towards Yellowstone, taking our time and enjoying the scenery. We had a 4-night reservation at Grant Village CG only 70 miles away, so we knew we had a short drive and did not need to be in a hurry. We stopped for a short while at Jackson Lake Lodge where we knew they had some shops. We had not previously bought any Grand Teton logo souvenirs, so Dorcas bought a t-shirt and some purple socks, and I bought a t-shirt and a hat. We spent some time looking out onto the large meadow between the lodge and Jackson Lake, but did not see any interesting critters. We lunched at a river access on the Snake River just before entering Yellowstone National Park at the South Entrance.

We checked in at Grant Village in record time. They had three windows manned at the ranger station, and there was only a very short wait. We observed later that it was quite a zoo checking in later in the day. There are 450 campsites here and about ¾ of the sites turn over each day. It seems that most campers are packing up and leaving each morning and checking into another campground each evening. It is actually very quiet and almost deserted here after 9:00 AM, even though the campground fills every night about dark.

Warning!  The following paragraph is very graphic and terrifying!  Proceed at your own risk!

Getting parked into Site H-239 was the most exciting part of the day and certainly our most difficult parking experience ever. Site H-239 is a pull-through that claims to accommodate a 40' motorhome. We're 34' so no problem, right? Au contraire! The site is on a one-way loop, and the first thing I observed was that if we pulled straight in, our entry door would be on the road side, while our picnic table and fire ring would be on the diagonal corner on the driver's side. The path around either end of the coach would be obstructed by brush and low tree limbs. Obviously I needed to approach the site from the other direction so all the parts would line up, and the universe would be in harmony. To Dorcas' dismay (who was following in the car) I zoomed on by H-239 and pulled into H-244 to turn around. Not my brightest moment. H-244 contained a sharper turn that I envisioned, and I ended up on top of some of the infrastructure, that stuff that usually marks the boundaries of a campsite, where one shouldn't drive. I tried to back out, but that seemed to only make it worse. You know those fiberglass signposts the park service uses to mark trails and campsites? Imagine one bent over double to the ground under the coach. Then imagine backing up over it again, against the grain. It's not a pleasant sound. By now Dorcas had arrived and was screaming words I won't repeat here; suffice it to say she was not pleased. I asked for some more constructive criticism and direction so I could get back out onto the road before I subjected the campsite or the coach to any more damage or abuse. Thankfully the campground was nearly empty (see paragraph 3 above) and there was no one to ridicule us or call the park police. Dorcas uses standardized and accepted hand signals when I'm backing the coach into a spot. Such hand gestures include come straight back, come back left, come back right and stop. I knew things were dire when she put both hands against the side of her head, closed her eyes and her mouth opened in a silent scream. This was not a conventional parking gesture, but I interpreted it to mean “stop now dammit.” At that point Dorcas could see no way out of the dilemma and suggested (ordered) a bit of role reversal, that she should drive while I did the directing. I got out and wondered how the hell I had gotten into that fix in just one swoop; I had the 34' coach wedged between two trees 36' apart. It would take multiple short forward/backward events to get out. So, between standing at the drivers window and running back to the rear of the coach, I advised Dorcas to cut the wheels all the way to the left and back up 3”. Then cut the wheels all the way to the right and pull forward 3”. After repeating 6 times we were finally out into the open, and apparently no one else even noticed the episode. But remember site H-239? We're not yet parked, and H-239 still awaits! I was still convinced that it made sense to enter site H-239 from the wrong way (we later concluded there was no right way), so I continued around the loop in the proper direction, went out onto the main road and through a different loop, all so I could re-enter Loop H going in the wrong direction. Dorcas ran ahead to warn oncoming traffic, but we didn't encounter any (deserted, remember?) Then I entered H-239 from the wrong end. Another problem soon became evident. Site H-239 might hold a 40' rig, but only if it could bend 90 degrees in the middle. It was shaped like a thin banana with trees closely lining the edge. I tried several approaches, going backward and forward just inches from trees on either side, until Dorcas expressed her new-found parking gesture again. Then we gave up and traded places, went forwards, backwards, forwards backwards, until we were back out into the road. Our last resort was Plan A, meaning exit the loop again, turn around again and attempt to park on H-239 from the natural direction. I was not optimistic, but the park was full (even though it looked empty) and they would not likely assign us another site. We were finally successful at getting parked, more or less. It turns out that by pulling straight in and not trying to follow the curve of the site, we were able to get in far enough that the back end of the coach did not stick out into the road (well not much). With a little finagling (hard right 3” forward, hard left 3” back) we found a position where we could get the slides out (no window shades) and open all the bay doors. I think when we leave we will be able to back more or less straight back into the road. So much for a 40' pull through! All in all it took us about an hour and a half to get parked on the site. It took most of another hour to cut enough limbs so we could negotiate a path from our entry door to our picnic table. Cutting flora in a national park is a federal offense subject to all kinds of ugly penalties, but thankfully the loop was deserted, remember?  It turns out that we have good cellular service at the site, but our solar exposure is nil and I have not even tried to put up a TV antenna; I would have to climb onto the roof and perform more major pruning to get it up.  We probably wouldn't get a signal anyway.

Site H-239.  The trees were just as close on the the other side.  Note sharp turn in front of coach.

Site H-239  No window awnings out tonight!

During our stay at Grant Village we have been exploring, very leisurely, the west side of the lower portion of the Grand loop. This means basically the road from Grant Village to Madison Junction, a very small portion of the park. However, it does contain the majority of the geothermal features in the park, those along the Firehole River. Yellowstone has the largest concentration of such features in the world, approximately 80%. We walked our butts off in the Upper Geyser Basin, which is the area that includes Old Faithful (which is neither the largest nor most predictable geyser in the park). It is unfortunate that perhaps 90% of park visitors never get more than ¼ mile from Old Faithful. The Upper Geyser Basin is several miles long and contains a wide variety of geysers, hot springs and fumaroles, all different and beautiful. We were able to stroll and spend time at all that seemed most interesting. We spent quite a while at Grand Geyser, which was predicted to erupt soon. We sat on a bench next to a young fellow from Utah who visits the park about twice a year and was very knowledgeable about the geysers. Someone there described him as the “storm chaser of geysers”. He told us what signs to look for before Grand erupted. First the pool at the base of the geyser would begin to fill, then Turban, a geyser about 10 yards away on the left would spurt about 5 feet high. But if the Grand pool started to drain, it wasn't going to happen, and we would need to wait another 20 minutes for the cycle to repeat. There was also another small geyser about 20 yards to the right of Grand, and if that geyser spurted, Grand would have to erupt within 30 minutes or it wasn't happening. Wait 20 more minutes for the next cycle. I guess it just wasn't our day. We waited about 2 hours, through about 6 cycles, and Grand never did erupt. Maybe next time. But it did illustrate how the plumbing system for the geothermal features are all interrelated, and why it is so hard to predict the eruptions.

Tourists awaiting the eruption of Old Faithful

Thar she blows!

We toured Black Sand Basin, Biscuit Basin and others. We drove some side roads including Firehole Canyon Drive where about a thousand people were swimming in the river. We saw a smattering of elk and bison, but no moose or bears. At a ranger program we learned that the moose population had dropped from about 350 at the time of the 1988 fires to about 100 currently. After the fire the lodgepole pine thrived, but the spruce and fir were diminished. The moose apparently like the cover provided by the spruce/fir habitat better and left the area, probably for the Tetons. The best part of the Old Faithful area is the Old Faithful Inn. We joined a guided tour of the Inn and learned its history. It was built in 1904 and financed by the railroads, as were most of the old historic park inns. It was designed to complement the outdoors; its lobby is 70' high, the height of a mature lodgepole pine, and it has numerous unusual branched columns and stays, all mimicking being in a forest. All materials were harvested within 8 miles of the site, which could never happen today. The Inn closes in the winter and is unoccupied and unheated. All furnishings, which were designed by the original architect, and built before the inn opened, are removed and stored in a climate-controlled warehouse. On one night in January the inn is opened for the employees who bring sleeping bags and whatever else they can bring to stay warm and “The Shining” is shown in the lobby.

On our last full day at Grant Village we stayed close to home and took it easy. Dorcas had bought some blueberries before we left Jackson, and they were ready to be eaten. So we had a late breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon. The remainder of the day we lounged around camp and did internet chores, for me, mainly this blog; I don't know if we will have internet at our next site.. Tomorrow we will move about 20 miles to another campground at Bridge Bay for three nights. After that we might see if we can find some more nights in the park before we head into Montana.

THE END