Yellowstone- Wildlife Count (07-10-12)

I counted the wildlife for my own purposes, and I was surprised at how much  we actually saw.  Of course, being in Yellowstone for three weeks contributed to the high number, partly because we learned how and where to go to watch them.  Even with these numbers, there were many times we could have stopped to see a bear of a herd of elk but didn’t because of the crowds. The longer we stayed here, the more I felt that we were being given a unique opportunity to see these animals on their own “turf”. They were all just living their lives, trying to ignore the humans that keep encroaching on their territory. For the first week, every time we saw a “new” animal, I got really surprised, excited, and anxious to get a good view.  Later on, I got just as excited, but in a much quieter way.  It’s hard to describe.  I guess I was no longer surprised to see the animals, because I know now that they just live here, but I was happy every time their daily routine brought them close enough to me that I could observe them.
Anyway, each number represents how many times we saw each type of animal.  Sometimes it may have been the same animal on a different day (who knows?)…
Wildlife watching could be addictive, except that there aren’t many other places in this country that we can see this many animals:
Bison- too many to count
Bull Elk-lone- 4
Elk herd with calves- 16-18
Big horn sheep-1
Osprey- 1
herd of wild goats-1
moose-1
moose calf-1
Grizzly bears- 3
Grizzly cubs-1 (there were two at the same time-2nd year cubs- bear cubs stay with their mom for 2 summers)
Black bears-5-6
black bear cubs-3 (there were two cubs each time) black bear sows can have 1-3 cubs at the same time, and all can have different fathers.
howling of a wolf pack-3 (the second time we heard it was just as awesome as the first time)
howling of a coyote pack-1 (difference between wolf and coyote howl- wolf is lower tone, pure howl, coyote is higher pitched with yelping mixed in)
wolves-3
wolf- Alpha female with pups-2(needed a scope to see them, I took someone’s word for it that the blobs of fur were pups)
wolf pack (Canyon Pack) -2
coyotes-4-5
Snowshoe Hare-2
Grouse-1
Pronghorn- 7-9 small groups or single animals
fox-1
Bald Eagle 3-4
Mule deer-1
fawn-3 (the third one was alone and actually could have been a tiny elk- after seeing it, we asked a ranger and both elk and deer leave their young alone in a field with “instructions” not to move- they have very little scent to them so predators pass them by.)
Sand Hill Crane-2

Grizzly and two cubs

Grizzly

black bear

Yellowstone-Lamar Valley: a Wildlife Extravaganza

We had so much fun the day we got up early to go to Lamar Valley, that we did it again!

We were up and out the door by 5:30 AM this time- a little bit earlier .  It’s well over an hour drive to get to Lamar Valley, but the drive is fun because we are on the lookout for wildlife. Everything is so still and eerie at that time of the morning. With the colder air temperatures, the steam from all the thermal activity is more noticeable.

We first passed by a herd of Elk.  We’ve seen this herd before- they migrate back and forth across the road from hill to valley and back again.  There was no where to pull off, so no pictures, but here’s one of a different herd I took the other day:

About a half hour into the trip, we hit the jackpot. Luckily traffic is very light at that hour, so we were able to stop in the road so I could lean out the window and snap a few pictures of the black bear and two cubs.

 

Mom was eating breakfast by the side of the road. One of her cubs was outside of our field of vision, but one was not!

 

  

After we watched him eat for a little while, he climbed down from the rock he was on:

Well, needless to say, that made our day. Which was good, because we didn’t get to see any wolves today. At least we saw them last time. We did come across our first moose in Yellowstone, and lucky for us, she had a calf with her::

 

We soon passed the usual Bison herd.

   At that hour of the morning they seem to always be doing their migration from one side of the road to the other. 

This time, there were lots of babies near the road, and we got to watch them play: 

Once it got to be around 9 AM, we knew we probably wouldn’t be seeing any wolves, so we headed to the nearby trail to hike 1.5 miles to some petrified tree stumps.
Along the trail, we still had a chance to see some wildlife:

This ground squirrel was really enjoying the wildflowers.

While in the forest, we heard a strange thumping/vibrating sound, which sort of perturbed us because we had been diligent about doing our “here bear” calling, and this sound was really close.  We soon discovered the source.  I had no idea what this bird was until someone told me later that it’s a grouse.

We glanced behind us to the next hill over and just caught sight of another black bear with two small cubs.  I really wish they had been closer.  One of the cubs is dark brown and one is cinnamon. 

They’re so small in these pictures, I put in arrows.  You’d have to make the photo bigger to really even see them, but we still had fun watching them.  One of the things I love about Yellowstone, is that we are watching these animals in their environment, just going about their daily lives. It’s an awesome way to see them.

 

At the top of the mountain, after climbing what seemed like straight up for 2 hours, we did find the petrified stumps, complete with petrified roots.  Paul was impressed!

These petrified trees date back 50 million years.  This one appears to be a Sequoia tree.

We’re not sure what type of trees these two “stumps” are, but we’ve never seen such huge examples of petrified wood- especially still standing!

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Yellowstone- Wildlife Watching (06-23-12)

    There are several ways of finding wildlife to watch and photograph in Yellowstone National Park.  The easiest, and definitely the laziest, is to do a “drive by”. You can literally snap pictures as you happen to drive by the animals.  I took these photos as we were driving by:

Of course, the odds of the picture looking good are pretty slim, and you aren’t really spending any time observing the animal, so other methods are usually better.

The most popular method is one that involves 3 steps.  The first step is to find a stretch of road that has an unusual amount of cars (at least some of which appear to be on the side of the road).  Once that is found, then you have to ask yourself several questions.  First- are the cars strewn around in a haphazard fashion, as if they were parked in a rush (or not parked at all), or are they all carefully parked in actual parking spaces.  If the latter is true, move on.  There is no wildlife to see here.  If they are strewn around, the next step is to see if all of the scopes, binoculars, and cameras are all facing the same direction.  If they aren’t- move along-no one knows what they are supposed to be looking at. Many times one person will stop to look at something, and others will soon stop to see what’s up.  Pretty soon everyone is frantically looking around to see what the original person is looking at. It’s probably a flower or a tree stump that resembles a bear. However, If all the viewing apparatuses are facing the same direction, the next thing to do is to determine if everyone looks beside themselves with excitement.  If they don’t- move along- it’s probably Canadian Geese or Bison.  However, if everyone looks like they can barely contain themselves- PULL OVER!  Of course, that’s not easy to do in a huge honking truck like we have. This afternoon we came across a huge “bear jam” of cars and it turns out a grizzly bear was meandering in the meadow:

 

An easy, but largely hit or miss way of watching for wildlife is to “watch” for wildlife.  This involves constantly scanning your eyes around, everywhere you happen to be, in the hopes of seeing an animal.  That’s how I saw this wolf:  Unfortunately she was trotting across a small clearing, so it was difficult to get any photo at all, never mind a good one!





Another hit or miss method is to hike into the wilderness, away from crowds, in areas that have signs posted such as “CAUTION: GRIZZLY HABITAT”.  The problem with this method is that sure, you want a picture of a grizzly, but not as he is about to open his mouth to take a bite out of you. I did, however, take these photos while hiking on a trail:

 
That Elk really didn’t care that we were hiking on a trail about 50 feet away from him. Every once in a while he would lift his head as if he were posing for pictures.
The most time consuming method of observing wildlife is to actually get up (horror of horrors) at the crack of dawn and drive over an hour to get to a place where the animals hang out first thing in the morning. Wild animals are most active around dawn and dusk, and wolves in particular, are most active just after dawn.

So, yesterday we got up really early, packed breakfast and lunch into the cooler, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out to Lamar Valley where a pack of wolves has their den. 
The drive to the valley was beautiful and eerie, with a layer of fog and steam rising into the cold morning air:

There were more Bison than cars on the roads:
We weren’t sure exactly where in Lamar Valley we were supposed to look for the wolves, but we were hoping that the most popular method (see above) would help us figure out where to look.  As it turned out, we came across a group of people with large scopes, all hanging out in the same area.  We parked the truck and figured we were in a good spot when we saw that someone’s truck had a license plate that read: YNP WOLF.  Sure enough, these people even had walkie talkies so they could compare notes with another group further up the road.
Within minutes of being there we had the privilege of hearing what a howling pack of wolves sounds like.  Not just once, but several times. The sound came from the nearby hills, and echoed down into the valley.  It was….amazing.  The “pros” with the scopes were catching glimpses of wolves moving in the hills, but none of them stayed out in the open long enough for others to see them.  And then Paul says “hey, what’s that over there?” and he points in the complete opposite direction from where everyone else was looking.  There, across stream and in the distant meadow, was a lone wolf.  We watched her walk across the field for about 15 minutes, as she looked for breakfast.  She finally disappeared into the tall brush.
There was something incredibly special about the entire experience.  Not just the wolves-although that was the highlight, but just being out and about early in the day when the animals are at their most active.  The amount of wildlife we saw today was amazing- 2 herds of elk, a wolf, a grizzly bear, thousands of bison, Pronghorn antelope, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.
One comment about the pictures.  In many of them, the animals are far away.  If you try to enlarge the picture, you’ll lose the clarity, because the animals were actually SO far away (except the bison and the elk) that I am surprised I was able to get anything recognizable at all. Add to that the fact that I didn’t have a tripod, and I really feel lucky. To give you an idea- although the wolf isn’t in the shot below- she was walking on the other side of the stream, just below where the hill starts to go up.  You can see that in the first picture of her.
  Many people use a scope-more powerful than binoculars- to watch and photograph wildlife.  Paul and I are just using the two pairs of binoculars we brought with us.  A scope needs to be on a tripod to be effective and we just wouldn’t use it often enough.   Today the “pros” let everyone look through their scopes at the wolf- they let Paul go first, since he “found” her.

SLC and LDS (06-05-12)

We had a dual purpose for visiting Salt Lake City. The first was to do our usual exploring, but Paul's mom wanted to visit the city where she spent her teenage years, so she flew in the day after we got there.

Having never seen Great Salt Lake (me, that is), which is surprisingly the largest lake west of the Mississippi river, one of our first outings was to Antelope Island. The views of the lake from the island were excellent, and we spent a few hours thoroughly enjoying the wildlife.

There were quite a few antelope, as well as Pelicans and assorted other birds, but the really fascinating viewing was the bison.

As we drove the scenic loop on the island, we saw quite a few solitary bison and were quite happy with that, but then we came across the whole herd!

We watched as hundreds of Bison came down the nearby hills and headed for the lakefront. Some sauntered, and some literally ran down the hill.  Most of them were cows with their calves, with lots of adolescent males following them. The older bulls are more solitary and tend to keep to themselves. Some of the herd crossed the road right in front of us, allowing us to get a good look at them.

It was a unique experience to be able to watch them for quite a while, in their own element, just “doing their own thing.”

Bison were re-introduced to the island many years ago and the herd has grown to the point that every year, when they round them all up in the spring for their inoculations, they sell off some of the bison to manage the herd size.

  

Temple Square is where you can find out about all things Mormon- or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). I was extremely impressed with everything about this place. The church provides free shuttle service, innumerable free tours, free access to libraries, the trolley system, museums, the tabernacle, musical programs etc.  There are many missionaries available to answer any and all questions you may have.They give tours in about 20 languages.  And no, no one tried to “convert” us or hassled us in any way at all.  Everyone was smiling and helpful. Wow. It was very clear that they are very willing to teach visitors about who they are and the history of their church.

The gardens in the square are beautiful and make for great place to stroll. There are tons of interesting sculptures.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the gold “Angel Moroni” at the top of the Temple, was sculpted by Cyrus E. Dallin. I am familiar with Dallin’s work because he lived in Arlington, the town I grew up in, and several of his sculptures are showcased throughout the town- there is also a library and a school named after him.  I did not know that he also lived in Utah at one time.

Of course, no visit to SLC would be complete without hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Our only (slight) disappointment was when we learned the short service, called The Spoken Word, would take place in the Conference Center, due to the crowds that attend in the summer time. Still, the service, and the music, was beyond amazing.

The service takes place on Sunday morning.  The doors open at least an hour before the service, during which time we could listen to the choir practice, and take any pictures we wanted.  Once the service, which is broadcast live on the radio, starts, no more pictures are allowed. 

We actually did still get to see the Tabernacle, and hear the 11,000 pipe organ, when we attended the 2 pm organ recital.

Only church members are allowed in the Temple itself, which is used for religious and enrichment programs.

We headed to “This is the Place” Heritage Park, where we enjoyed the monuments and the small visitor’s center/museum that tells the story about the arrival of the Mormons in Salt Lake City in the mid 1800s.

In the 1840s, the Mormons living in the mid west were persecuted to the point that they began a mass exodus from the state of Illinois and other nearby states. Led by spiritual leader Brigham Young, who had researched potential areas to settle, they took handcarts full of their belongings and headed west. After 1300 miles and over 3 months of traveling, they crested the hill overlooking Salt Lake valley, and Brigham Young declared “This is the right place”.  Over the next 22 years, over 70,000 Mormons made the trek to the Salt Lake area in the largest exodus of a single group in American history.

Paul’s family has been in the Salt Lake area since the early days of Mormon settlement. The medallion on this grave signifies that the person buried there (Paul’s great-great-great Grandfather) was one of the original Mormon pioneers to come across the country.

Driving around Salt Lake City visiting the old family home and gravesites gave us all the genealogy bug. We spent quite a bit of time researching in the Family History Library.  This is an incredibly well run library. As first time researchers, we were shown a movie about what the library has to offer, then we were handed forms to use for the information we found, and were escorted to computers so we could get to work! Paul and his mom worked on their family, with the help of a woman missionary.   I was curious about my dad’s family because  I didn’t know that much about them. I also had someone helping me for the first hour or so. I discovered that after my great-grandfather died, my great-grandmother remarried.  I had no idea! (If you get the bug, familysearch.org is a good place to start)

Before leaving the area, we met up with some of Paul and Gerry’s family for dinner.  Everyone had stories and pictures to share, and we all had a great time!