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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