Yellowstone- Our Last Few Days (07-09-12)

When we first arrived in Yellowstone 3 weeks ago, we sat down and made a list of things we’d like to see and do.  A few days ago we revisited the list, tweaked it, and put together a shorter list of things that we wanted to make sure to do before we leave on July 10th.
We went back to the Old Faithful area to see if we could catch some of the other spectacular geysers as they erupted.  Old Faithful is popular, not because it’s the best or biggest, but because it’s predictable. We decided to dedicate one more day trying to see some more spewing, and we were pretty successful.  In fact, 3 of the geysers we managed to see put Old Faithful to shame!!  Especially Beehive.  Beehive and Grand are two of the tallest active geysers in North America.  We first witnessed Grand’s eruption, at around 10 in the morning:

We were lucky with that one that we didn’t have to wait more than 30 minutes.  The next eruption we wanted to see was Beehive, but it’s not known for it’s predictability. It can be anywhere from 11-18 hours between eruptions. We stood around for a while, then debated whether we should wait, when one of the Geyser Geezers (people who are addicted to watching the geysers spew) told us that no matter how long we had to wait, it would be worth it.  So, wait we did- for almost 2 hours, but the time passed by very quickly because we were chatting with a couple from New Jersey that we met.


Beehive Geyser

 Beehive has a “Tell”.  About 10-20 minutes before it erupts, a smaller nearby geyser, appropriately called Beehive Indicator erupts. Finally, at 12:35, Beehive let loose.  Now that’s a geyser! 
The water erupted with incredible force.  You could hear and see the power behind the eruption- I think partly because we were a lot closer to the action.  In fact, with the wind shifting every few seconds, we got quite wet.

That same day we managed to see Great Fountain geyser erupt as well.  This geyser pretty much exploded into the air.  It’s very difficult to capture all the action, even with video.

We’ve made a last minute push to see as much wildlife as we can, so once again we got up at 5:30 and headed out the door. This time, instead of Lamar Valley, we went to the closer Hayden Valley, to look for wolves and grizzlies.  Because of the rain, the fog was pretty thick and didn’t lift until we had been standing around for an hour or so.  We were with a bunch of people, some who had scopes, and we all chatted, so it was fun. 



Bison swimming across the river

   We ended up seeing a Bald Eagle (no picture- he flew too fast) and several bison who decided to swim across the river.








We all had our scopes and binoculars trained far into the distance, where the local wolf den is.  Eventually, the alpha female came into view, along with two pups.  I have to take the word of the people with scopes that there were pups- all I saw was a blob of fur, they were so far away (in fairness, they did let us look through the scopes, but it didn’t help much).

Later in the morning we went for a (boring) hike and came across some black bear tracks that were old, but still very visible.

On the way home we checked out the river rapids where the fish jump during spawning, but didn’t see any jump.  What we did see was another Bald Eagle.  This time I managed to snap a few shots as he flew over.

We did end up taking the boat out on the lake a total of three times, exploring new areas every time. We found a few thermal areas where the water temperature is considerably warmer than the rest of the lake.  This is overflow from a hot spring, and the water was about 85 degrees in that area.

The wildlife was plentiful- I took this picture of a grizzly from the truck as we drove by.

Bison like to take dirt baths.  This was along one of the trails we hiked.

This black bear was about 200 feet from the road, just minding his own business while we all took his picture.

I mostly took this picture because it shows just how huge bison are.  This guy is taller than the car. Hard to believe people approach them, thinking they are “tame”.  Two weeks ago someone was gored and landed in the hospital because he didn’t move out of the way of a bison. He just assumed that since the animal approached him, that he was used to being around people.

As we were leaving the park we got one more chance to enjoy the wildlife, although since we were towing and they kept crossing the road in front of us, I am not sure the word “enjoy” is appropriate.

The day before we left, we had our most incredible wildlife show, but I am going to put that in another post….more soon…..

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.