Yellowstone National Park (08-17-17)

We were lucky enough to get a spot in Yellowstone, with some help from our friends Liz and Randy.

Randy is a park Ranger, and Liz volunteers in several capacities.

The last time we were here, we were in a crowded RV park with electric, water, sewer hook up, and hundreds of other RVers. This time we were in a very small, out of the way campground, and THIS was the view out our window.  We fell in love immediately!

While we are here we will have only the water in our tank, no sewer hook up, and we aren’t allowed to use a generator, so the only power we have is what we can generate with our two solar panels.

We arrived on the weekend, so Randy and Liz were able to go hiking with us and hang out for a couple of days.

Our hike to Trout Lake was an adventure.  The lake was beautiful and we hiked past it and came across two other lakes- a Trifecta!















On the way back, we looked behind us and discovered a bison had moved onto the trail, and down to the lake for a drink of water.















Getting around the park to explore can be a challenge.  There are numerous traffic jams.














One day we were up on a hill, looking for some wildlife in the river when we noticed a bison causing a traffic issue.










Soon we saw him start across the bridge.
With the amount of bison scat on the hill we were on, we were concerned that he was headed in our direction, and in any case, once he crossed the bridge, he would be between us and the truck. 



So we booked it, and made it back to the truck just in time to see him lumber up the hill we had been on!

Of course, looking for wildlife is one of the most fun things to do in Yellowstone. We had heard that there was a pack of wolves feeding on a bison-  see the wolves? No? Me either.  This kill was so far away, we couldn’t really see anything.  But…. the next day, there was a bison kill closer to the road.

I would have loved it if we were the only ones who knew about this kill but the traffic jam was intense.  People don’t even bother to pull all the way off the road!

We gave up that first day, but got up at 5 am the next morning and headed out, hoping we would be able to find a place to park our beast.

Although we weren’t the first to arrive, we did find a spot.  It was too dark to see, but we heard that there was a grizzly at the kill site.  

Once the sun came up, the bear was gone and a wolf arrived.  Even though it was pretty close, “close” is a relative term and it was hard to get a good picture.

We were rather disappointed that we never saw any bears in Yellowstone.  Liz said its a little too warm for them and they went to higher elevations. We did see lots of other animals though…

We took a nice ride down a dirt road, looking for bears.  We didn’t see any, but this beautiful fox trotted down the road, seemingly oblivious to the 5 cars following him.

We also saw several Osprey- some were in a nest and some were soaring in the sky…

There were a few elk in the park and a few we saw up north, in Gardiner, when we went exploring..

And of course there were many, many bison.

This is getting too long so……To Be Continued…..

And Then There Were Wolves (Yellowstone, 07-10-12)

  

On our last day in Yellowstone we spent the afternoon prepping to leave after a 3 week stay.  We finished early and headed one last time to Hayden Valley to watch for wildlife.  We figured we might as well give it one last shot.  We felt like we were greeting old friends when we got there- we’ve spent several hours with the same people, chatting while we scan the meadow with our binoculars.  These people come year after year to watch for wolves. They eat sandwiches for dinner because dinner time and prime wolf watching time coincide. When they see a wolf, they are quick to share their scope with anyone interested.  They love to share the excitement. When we arrived, they were quick to tell us that they had seen the wolf pack, with pups, about an hour before we got there.

The area we are watching is called a rendezvous site. Once wolf pups are weaned, at about 6-8 weeks of age, the wolf pack leaves the den behind and uses 4-6 different areas to meet and watch over and protect the pups. All adults in the pack are responsible for the pups.

This particular pack is called the Canyon Pack.  The alpha female is well known here because she still, even at the age of 6 (not young, for a wolf) prefers to find and kill prey by herself.  Lately though, she has let the males help her. When she goes off on a hunt, she leaves “babysitters” behind to take care of the pups.

  After a very short time we were rewarded with the sight of the alpha female leaving the rendezvous site, which is hidden from our sight by trees.  Along with her came two pups and a few minutes later, several other other adults.  They took the pups to the water, so they could all cool off. Between our binoculars and viewing through other people’s scopes, we had a pretty good view, and the pictures I got don’t do it justice, but at least I got some this time!



the Canyon Pack, down by the water



 

We thought that was awesome, but then we noticed the small herd of elk.  They had been calmly munching their dinner, but suddenly we could see them perk up and come to attention.  They gathered together, and a few seconds later started running.



The wolves are on the right of the elk, just in the water



The wolves had decided to chase the herd!

The wolves are behind the elk now

 The wolves do that to see if any of the elk are weak or sick and don’t keep up with the herd. The elk ran through the stream to the other side, but didn’t go any further than that. They turned and watched to see what the wolves were doing.


Finally, the elk are on the side of the stream, looking back at the wolves, who are still in the water, on the left.

 The wolves weren’t giving serious pursuit, just checking to see if they could catch an easy dinner.

Once things calmed down a little, the elk started eating again, and we realized we had lost sight of the pups and two of the adult wolves.  Apparently they brought the pups back to the rendezvous point when we weren’t looking.  The other 5 wolves, including the alpha female- she is the large white wolf, headed off towards the road, on the hunt.  Paul and I decided to cross the road and climb the nearby hill to see if we could catch sight of them again, and we did. 


too bad the wolves snuck past everyone when they were looking the other way! (black wolf is in the foreground)



This is the kind of traffic jam you get when people have sighted a bear or wolf. What was really funny to us is that all of the people are looking off to the right, and if you look in the foreground, you can see one of the wolves just after he crossed the road.

 

We watched them cross the meadow and approach two bison off in the distance.  Like with the elk, they approached and tested the bison to see if they could grab an easy dinner, but in the end they left them alone and went off to seek easier prey.

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.