Yellowstone-Day tripping (06-30-12)

On the days when the weather looks particularly uncooperative,  we look for alternatives to being outside all day. 
Bear Tooth Pass…
The other day was supposed to be really hot, so we decided to drive out of the park, along scenic Beartooth Pass Highway, which took us out of Wyoming and into the high elevations of Montana.

We passed by a cascade waterfall that was screaming down the rocks with such force, I wouldn’t have even put my foot in the water- you could feel the cold breeze coming from the frigid water.

After passing two small resort towns, we headed higher into the hills. As we got above the tree line,  we could see the evidence of the winter snow depth.  If this much snow is left in June…..wow.

The views included mountains all around us, and numerous Alpine lakes, most of which still had ice covering them.

 






  The mountain peaked at about 11,000 feet, and soon thereafter we decided we had gone far enough, and were about to turn around, when we came across a ski lift!   Pretty much out in the middle of nowhere!

Being at such a high elevation, the sun was nice and warm, and the temperature was cool, but not cold, so we hung around to watch for a bit, and were totally entertained watching the skiers make the jumps.  (the little dot on the edge of the cornice is a skier about to make the jump).

Unfortunately one of the skiers fell, and slid all the way down the rocks that were sticking out of the course,  so we waited until the ski patrol took him out on the sled.  We did watch him walk away in the end, so although he was hurt, it wasn’t too bad.

Once the excitement was over, we drove back down the the hill the way we came, and when we got down in the valley, we were surprised to find the temperature  was  90 degrees.  We made a good choice to head to the snow!


West Yellowstone-

Paul’s family has owned property in the West Yellowstone area since the late 1800s.  He used to visit his grandfather at his cabin for many years but he hasn’t been here since 1974, so we took a day trip out to West Yellowstone so he could show me the sights. 

  Although his grandfather’s cabin burned to the ground many years ago, and the land has since been sold,  Paul’s great aunt’s family still owns their cabin, and we had the key to get in!  It brought back many happy memories for Paul and he regaled me with the stories of his childhood visits to Montana.

One of the awesome traditions at the cabin is the guest register. Anyone who visits or uses the cabin is encouraged to write their comments in the register, which dates back to the late 1960s.  After reading through all the previous comments,  Paul left his “we were here” note.







After touring the house, we walked the property and of course Paul had to point out the old Outhouse!  Luckily they’ve had indoor plumbing for quite some time!







In the early days, the cabin had no electricity or running water and one of Paul’s fond memories was driving out with his grandfather to a nearby spring to fill tubs with water for use at the cabin.

It took us a little while to find it, but we did find the spring, which is still in use today.  In fact, while we filled our water bottle, we chatted with a man who showed up with his two sons to fill numerous water containers.  His family still owns their cabin in the hills and he still gets all his water at this spring!

Boating on Lake Yellowstone-A Once In A Lifetime Experience

 why just once?  Well, there’s a rule of thumb for survival in cold water.  It’s called the 50/50 rule. 

 You have a 50% chance of surviving in 50 degree water for 50 minutes.  The water temperature of Lake Yellowstone is in the mid 40s.  That pretty much sums it up, but there were other factors as well.

So here we have this huge lake- one of the largest high altitude lakes in the world….and then we have us, in our tiny little dinghy. The air temperature was in the 80s, which is why we decided it was a good day to spend on the water.  We knew the water was too cold to swim in, so that was no surprise. Whenever we were anchored, we were doing fine, even getting hot sometimes. All we had to do to remedy that was run the boat  for a few minutes and the frigid cold spray soaking us cooled us down very quickly.

In theory it was a perfect day, with the warm temperatures and hardly a cloud in the sky, but the wind would go from 0 to 15 mph in the span of a few minutes.  Then it would die down again, only to start back up again but from a different direction!

There is an island about 2.5 miles offshore that I wanted to check out, because it has a resident Bald Eagle, but there was no way we could get there. We only tried once, and the waves kicked up so fast when the wind picked up that we knew it was just too dangerous.





So we anchored for a while, zipped around in the protected cove for a while and repeated that sequence several times before deciding it was time to head home. We still had a good time, and if the weather gets hot again, we may make another attempt and see what the winds are like.
{That was on Sunday. Today, Tuesday, our plan was to hike a 5 mile trail, but the wind is gusting over 40 mph, and we decided we’re going to be here too many days to torture ourselves by hiking in that kind of wind.  Also, its dangerous because the trees have such shallow roots that they blow over at the drop of a hat.}

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.

Yellowstone-the Caldera (06-19-12)

640,000 years ago, a volcano erupted in the area that is now home to Yellowstone National Park.  What was left behind was a Caldera-by definition, a basin like depression resulting from the explosion or collapse of the center of a volcano. In this particular case, the volcanic activity has never completely subsided. So, Yellowstone sits on a hot spot of volcanic activity, with hot magma just below the surface, providing the basis for the hydrothermal activity that this area is known for. 
   There are several puzzle pieces that are required in order for these features to exist.  The first-heat- is provided by the magma.  The second-water-is provided by the vast amounts of rain and snow that this area receives and the third-underground “plumbing”- naturally exists here in the form of  cracks in the rock, and constantly changes due to the large amount of earthquakes that take place here. The Yellowstone area has more earthquakes per year than anywhere in North America except California.  Most are small enough that they can’t be felt.

What form the heated water takes when it reaches the surface depends on what is directly under it. There are four basic hydrothermal  features.  Hot Springs are the most common, and are created when the “plumbing” under the ground is not constricted, allowing the heated water to rise freely to the surface.  The steam vents (fumaroles) are the hottest surface feature but contain very little water- hence the steam. Mudpots are very acidic, also with very little water.  The combination of gasses and microorganisms create mud/clay.

 

The fourth kind, geysers, are perhaps the most well known. Geysers are created when there is a constriction in the underground plumbing, so the boiling water stays below the constriction until so much pressure is built up that it “blows”.  Most of us are familiar with “Old Faithful”- the Yellowstone Geyser that erupts frequently, and with great predictability. When Old Faithful blows, it spews 3,700, to 8,400 gallons of boiling water into the air over a span of 1-5 minutes. Every 60-90 minutes the process is repeated, making it the geyser with the most frequent eruptions.  There are many other geysers here, some spew quite a bit taller than Old Faithful.  Yellowstone has the highest concentration of geysers in the world.

This one, Sapphire Pool, is my absolute favorite hot spring in the park.  It looks so inviting it makes me want to jump right in. Of course, that wouldn’t be a good idea.

The hot springs are “color coded”.  The different colors that are created, from the beautiful blues to the bright yellows, are actually micro organisms.  Different organisms survive in different water temperatures.  The yellow organisms live in water that is about 120 degrees.  The beautiful white and blue organisms live in water that is about 180 degrees.

This bright yellow river of water comes from Sapphire Pool.

Everywhere you go in the Geyser Basin area of the park, there are beautiful pools, (and some not so beautiful ones too) with steam rising from them. 

Most of the trails in the area are boardwalks.  There are several reasons for that.  First, the ecosystem is very fragile, and with millions of visitors a year, would be easily destroyed.  But also, with boiling water just below the surface, it’s impossible to tell which areas are solid ground and which would collapse when walked on.  One section  had to be closed once because the ground temperature almost reached the boiling point.





An administrative note:  we have no cell service or internet anywhere near the campground we are staying in. I am hoping I will be able to post this as we drive through an area that does. I’ve made the pictures smaller so they’ll hopefully upload easier. We also have no TV, so we’ll see who goes stir crazy first- me or Paul! 24 days suddenly seems like a long time!

Grizzly Country! (Grand Teton National Park) 06-15-12

    Knowing we were entering bear country, I started reading up on the subject of Grizzly bears VS Black bears, and how to handle ourselves while hiking in Grizzly country.  I found out that bear spray is more effective as a Grizzly deterrent than a bullet.  That’s good to know, since it’s easier to buy the bear spray- which we did.  Apparently, even if your hands don’t shake too much to actually hit the bear with a bullet, it could take 3 shots to bring a Grizzly down.  No thanks.  Of course, your best bet is to not get in a Grizzly’s face to begin with.  People hike with “bear bells” that are supposed to warn the bear that there are people in the area, but experts say the sound doesn’t carry far enough, and some say the Grizzlies just think they sound like the dinner bell.

 

The distance at which a hiker typically encounters a grizzly is when they are a mere 15 feet apart.  Most people do not make enough noise, and they look down at the trail too much, not looking to see what’s around them. As surprised as I would feel, I’d hate to think how surprised the bear would be. A startled Grizzly is a dangerous Grizzly.  Rather than bells, they suggest you hike in groups of 4 or more, the theory being that you will be talking, and your voices will carry enough to send the bear in a different direction.  With that in mind, we took our friends Avril and Dave along as our bear bait.

Along the way we discussed the “rules to live by” of a bear encounter.  Don’t Run is rule #1.  Don’t climb a tree to escape a bear unless a) you climb very quickly, and b) you can climb higher than 31 ft up the tree, because bears can climb 30 feet. Don’t drop your backpack- for two reasons.  First, if the bear does get a chance to swipe at you, the pack will protect your back, and second, if the bear gets it and the pack has food in it, the bear has just learned that if he attacks someone, he will get food. If bear spray doesn’t work as a deterrent ( or if you were silly enough to go hiking without it) laying down flat and playing dead, with your hands on the back of your neck to protect it is your best bet, as long as you don’t move until the bear is long gone, because any movement will be perceived as aggression by the bear.

Using our friends as bait must have worked because we did encounter a Grizzly on one of our hikes.  He was quite far away, so the picture isn’t that good, and we were lucky that Dave happened to look back and see him, because we had already passed him.  Of course, after that, we all spent a lot of time looking over our shoulders.

The hike we were on that day was a trail around Two Ocean Lake, with a side trip up  to “Grand View”.  Turns out we couldn’t go all the way around the lake because the trail was closed (we found out later it was due to nesting Bald Eagles) so we had to turn around and go back the way we came.  All in all it was about 8 miles.  We enjoyed the walk but I liked the hike we had done the day before better. 

Our first hike with Avril and Dave was into to Cascade Canyon, via Observation Point.  To get to the trailhead we took a boat across Jenny Lake. Once we got past the short climb to Observation Point, the number of hikers on the trail thinned out

and the 8 mile hike was really enjoyable.

Although there were quite a few snow patches along the way, the air temperature was perfect and the scenery was great.  With the snow melt from the nearby Tetons, there were plenty of waterfalls.

Just about everywhere we went, the Tetons stood in the background. What makes them different from most mountains is that they have no foothills.  They very abruptly rise up from the relatively flat ground that surrounds them.

I would love to go boating with that backdrop!

Of course, one of our primary interests in the Tetons, in addition to hiking, was the wildlife. We headed to the visitor center to learn about the park, and find out where the best wildlife viewing spots are. I really enjoyed one of the of the exhibits- patches of actual animal fur, so I could feel what wolf and bear fur feel like. Throughout our visit, we did see a fair amount of wildlife-in addition to Pronghorn Antelope and Bison, we saw quite a few moose:





Well, I took that picture before we actually saw real moose:

While driving down Moose Wilson Road, we came across a moose jam.  It seemed like cars were strewn everywhere as their occupants tried to get their own pictures of Bullwinkle.

Along the road to our campground turned out to be the best spot for finding moose, and many times when we drove by, they were in the area: 

Yesterday we took a very long drive down a  dirt road along the river, and managed to spot a Bald Eagle flying above the water,  but I didn’t have much time to get the camera set up, so the picture isn’t the best.  Hopefully we’ll see more in Yellowstone.

Naturally, Dozer wanted to see his share of wildlife. Squirrels, mice and other small creatures were abundant in the campground and it wasn’t long before Dozer had a baby squirrel in his mouth, making a beeline for the trailer.  We did get him to drop it, but he immediately went back on the hunt.   A small mouse managed to get into the trailer one night, and Dozer did his job as a mouser and took care of it for us.

Today we spent gearing up for our 3 week stay in Yellowstone.  We did laundry, bought food, and washed the truck. We ate lunch in the small town of Jackson Hole at an excellent restaurant, and wandered the very expensive shops without buying anything.

Flaming Gorge, UT/WY (06-09-12)

It’s official!! We have colored in a new state! Whew, it’s about time- I feel like it’s been ages since we’ve added a new one!  I am hoping we’ll be able to add quite a few more this year as we “tweak” our loop around the country to see new places. 

As we’ve made our way towards Wyoming, I have had to “steel” myself for the change in climate.  Gone are open vistas of red rock, the lizards, and the dryness of the desert.  We have entered into a land of trees, clouds, bubbling brooks, and bugs.  It’s all good except the bugs.  I got used to the bug free southwest (Not really bug free, but it sure does feel that way).

I think, and hope, the more interesting wildlife will help make up for the bugs.  At Flaming Gorge, the Pronghorn wander freely around the campground.

Where’s the boat when you need it?  That’s a rhetorical question.  We have the boat, what we didn’t have was warm enough and wind-free enough weather to put the boat in the water.

Flaming Gorge was on the way to Grand Teton, and we had a couple of spare days (since we found out it was snowing in the Tetons), so we figured it was worth a stop here, and it was. Its not one of those well known places with tons of history and scenic drives etc. but its beautiful, the water is awesome, and there is some good hiking.  If only the weather was a tad bit warmer.  We’d love to come back when we can put the boat in the water.

We went to the visitor center to get the scoop on the area, visit the dam,  then did a 6 mile hike along the rim.  The lake was created by damming the Green River as it meanders south, and is filled with trophy sized trout.  The existence of trout tells the story of how cold the water is, since trout need water between 50 and 60 degrees.

Yup, that’s about it.  It’s a short post, but we have moved on to Grand Teton National Park, and I wanted Flaming Gorge to have more than a sentence in the Teton post.