June 9th. What a day.
The short summary of today is that you, whoever you are, should visit Yellowstone. The long summary is...well, here goes.
We arrived at our Yellowstone campsite at about 6 p.m. on July 8th. The drive in along the Beartooth Highway was other-worldly. Absolutely breathtaking. We saw more mountains than I knew existed, plus some yellow-bellied marmots and a handful of mountain goats.
We got to the campsite and couldn't believe our eyes. We grabbed a spot no more than 10 feet from a big river that's all runoff from the mountains - which we could see from bed. Bonus, the sun set behind those mountains.
Peg + campsite on June 9th.
So we went to the park to see how far away we were and to get a small taste of what Yellowstone could offer before bed on our first night (the 8th). We saw a moose through the woods in a small town outside the entry gate, but couldn't get a good look at it. That's OK though, we thought.
Into the park, we drove to the Lamar Valley, a notedly wonderful wildlife viewing area. We saw hundreds of bison and just marveled at the general beauty of the area. After a bit, we turned around and headed back to camp. But on the way out of the park...we saw a bear. It's unclear if it was a smallish grizzly or a brown version of a black bear (black bears can be brown out here. It's weird.) Either way, it was excellent. It was off the side of the road, just foraging in a small grassy area.
In the end, we didn't get back until a few minutes after 10 and didn't get to sleep til closer to 11:30 or so...which was the end of a long day.
And then July 9th happened.
We were both awake by about 6:15, and as we started a morning snuggle we thought aloud "...should we just go into the park? We're awake...should we just go?"
Obviously the answer was yes.
We were on the road to the park at 6:28 a.m. Apparently the legendary wolves of the Lamar Valley are most active at sunrise and sunset, and even though sunrise is more like 5:15 a.m. here (woof), 7:00 probably wouldn't be bad.
We took a leisurely drive into the park and didn't see much out of the ordinary...except what appeared to be the SAME bear in the SAME spot, but 10 hours later! That was cool.
The valley itself was great, although nothing overly notable. It's a pretty majestic place, so it's cool to see in general, but aside from several hundred bison, we didn't see anything unusual. We pressed on to Slough Creek, as we'd gotten a tip that a moose and calf typically hung around there. As we got close, we saw no less than 30 cars on the main road, then another 50+ on Slough Creek road. All eyes were pointed up onto a hillside, far across Slough Creek itself.
Turns out there was a mama wolf and 2 or 3 cubs. They were far enough away that seeing them was a thrill, but not a life-changer. We could only really tell that it was a wolf because someone suggested it and then we saw it move. And even then, it was only through a viewing scope.
So OK, 9 a.m. and we'd already seen a wolf, and that meant we didn't have to wake up at 4 to do it like a lot of people.
With that in our back pocket, we took a hike at Yellowstone River Overlook trail, which was exactly as the name implies: a beautiful trail that runs alongside the Yellowstone River, looking into the valley for about 2 miles. It was gorgeous. There wasn't a lot of wildlife, though we did see a beautiful northern bluebird and took about 20 photos of it. Then we had breakfast.
The bluebird
It was a busy morning.
From breakfast we continued toward Mammoth. There was nothing to see at Tower due to construction, and we drove past what amounted to be a bear jam near Petrified Tree. The bear jam was FAR worse going east and we were going west, so that was nice. Also the bear was not exactly visible.
We got to Mammoth around 12:30, and it was packed. The whole intersection near the hot springs was just slammed full of cars, and a few elk were just kind of hanging around the area. The visitor centers, as it turns out, are all still observing COVID suggestions, so all exhibits were off-display, which was a bummer. However, we took the chance to just catch our breath.
We napped in our house-van and laid around for about 90 minutes. We did nothing. And it was wonderful.
We rolled out of bed, snacked a lot, and used wifi at the visitor center, where we peppered a ranger (Ryan Fox!) with questions about all kinds of things. Around 3:00 we moved the van to a different part of the area and checked out the hotel lobby for water and gift-shop stuff. Around 4:00 we went to the hot springs scenic drive, which was about 1.5 miles of "...whoa. That's so weird looking."
We did the loop a second time but got out halfway and walked out on some boardwalks to see some of the more bizarre formations up-close. It was outstanding.
By 5:15 we were headed back toward camp, but the distance between camp and Mammoth was nearly 60 miles. So we drove.
I wanted to take a side-road, a one-way street that runs parallel to the main road, but it was closed. So that stunk. But right near where it let out was that same spot from the bear jam in the morning, and wouldn't you know it? Another bear jam. Except this time it was worse going west and we were going east (not many people stay east of the park, so we weren't competing with a lot). We briefly caught sight of a mama and cub or cubs!
But with so much traffic, I felt guilty stopping, and ultimately we drove past...and then turned around and parked someplace easier.
Right as we got to a good spot to see what was going on, the mama brown bear (black bear, but brown) started ducking into the woods. But just before leaving our sight, the two cubs tried to climb a tree! So we briefly saw two cubs climbing a tree! Moments later, they were gone, and the rangers dispersed the crowd and traffic went back to normal. It was too quick to get a photo, unfortunately.
And then we were off again.
We were planning to stop at Slough Creek again to look for the moose. Also we weirdly get cell reception there so we wanted to get the geotag for a fox den that a friend told us about. But before we could get there, a massive throng of cars presented itself. It was as crowded as the morning's wolf-sighting, so we figured it was another wolf.
We were partially right.
It was 3 wolves.
One black wolf (the animal is technically a gray wolf, but this one was black) was trotting and half-running, which is only really notably because it was very near about 50 bison. Were we about to see a hunt? What would happen? Is it great? Or horrifying? or both? I lean toward horrifying, but you never know.
In any case, we watched through binoculars as the bison chased the wolf off! Multiple times!
The two other wolves were not far off either, though they were mostly just laying down about 300 yards away. We kept wondering if the one was going to work solo and try to get a bison or if the others were going to jump in and help, but neither really happened. After a solid 30-45 minutes, we realized how exhausted we were and decided to move toward our campsite.
But then we had to stop and use a toilet and also make/eat dinner. And then we still had to find the fox den. And then drive to our campsite.
We were pretty well alone as we passed the fox den spot at 5-10 mph but we didn't see anything. By the time I got back to the 45 mph speed limit, I saw brake lights.
Sure enough, a fox crossed the road in front of the truck in front of us. I was pretty shocked. We kind of pulled alongside the little critter carefully, as I was afraid s/he would dart back into the road. Thankfully it didn't, but it did stop to eat some kind of grass right next to our car. And it looked up at us. And oh my god...I didn't know a fox could be so wonderful-looking. It had these piercing eyes that I was completely unprepared for. It was so cool.
So then we drove back to camp. Ho-hum.
And we got there moments before sunset to see the clouds above the mountains turning a fiery red, then orange, then purple, and within about 30 seconds they were just dark and gray.
What a day.
Also, for the record, we started coming back to camp at 5:30 and we arrived at camp at 9:05.
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