Yellowstone-The Park (07-06-12)

Comprised of 2.2 million acres of land, Yellowstone was designated as our first National Park in the 1800s, in part to protect the fragile thermal areas.  What we didn’t have back then was the National Park Service, so although it was a “park”, poaching and vandalism threatened the area until the cavalry was brought in to police and protect.  32 years later, the National Park Service was started.  If I had decent internet access, I could easily quote their exact purpose, but without it, I will basically say their motto is to “protect and preserve our nation’s parks so that they will suffer no deterioration/damage and will be able to be enjoyed by future generations”.
The main roads in Yellowstone are laid out in a basic figure 8 (called the Grand Loop). Along these roads there are different areas of interest. Several of the distinct areas have their own visitor center, general store, and campground. The Tower Roosevelt area has a lodge, horseback riding, and a resident black bear family (all my close up photos of cubs were taken there).  Why do so many places feel they have to have their own “Grand Canyon”? Yellowstone is no exception.  The Canyon Village area is home to the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone”. We are staying in the Fishing Bridge area.  Although there is still a bridge, there is no more fishing because the bridge is in the spawning area of the Cutthroat Trout, the predominant native fish of Yellowstone River and Lake. In other areas of the lake, if you catch a Cutthroat Trout, it’s a “catch and release” program, but if you catch a non-indigenous trout, you are not allowed to release it back into the water.  They are trying to rid the lake of non-native species and have “pulled out” more than 65,000 trout so far this year.
We’ve now been in Yellowstone for  two weeks, and have established  a “rhythm”.  This park is enormous and because we are staying put in the same spot for the three weeks that we’ll be here, that means a lot of driving, which is pretty tiring for someone in our party.  We try to follow a “long drive” day with something we can do that’s more local and doesn’t mean 3+ hours behind the wheel for Paul.  If we can’t do that, we at least try to get home early, or drive a long distance but not do a long hike.  We’ve also gotten a good feel for the park.  We know, in general, where the wildlife is, we can tell who has just arrived at the park, and we have gotten pretty good at looking at a traffic jam and determining whether it’s just a bison, or its something more exciting, like a bear(at least it’s fun guessing).
The park has gotten more and more crowded over the last week or so, with parking lots that are full to overflowing, and an increasing number of traffic jams.  We have taken to getting up and moving pretty early in the day so we can beat the crowds, and it seems to work pretty well.  We get the added bonus of seeing more wildlife that early in the day- mostly coyotes though.  This guy would NOT get out of the road.  He kept crisscrossing in front of us.  Paul thinks he was using the noise of the truck to flush out any small animals near the road.


There are several “geyser basin'” areas-Norris, Midway Geyser, Lower Geyser, Upper Geyser, Biscuit Basin etc,  all containing a combination of geysers, hot springs and steam vents. I think my favorite so far was Midway Geyser Basin, which contained Grand Prismatic Spring:


One of the oldest areas of the park is Mammoth Hot Springs.  We saved this area for last because it’s the furthest away and we debated moving to a campground closer to it, but decided to stay where we are. 
The Mammoth area contains some of the older springs, and they aren’t as active as those in other areas of the park.  The cascading of the water over the travertine was beautiful in it’s own right though.This area is also more “built up” than the other areas of the park, because it contained the original headquarters and the small village where the Calvary lived so many years ago.

We thought we’d spend more time in this area, but it rained that day and so our plan of hiking some of the trails over there did not happen. Instead, we drove home in the afternoon, passing by our favorite bear cubs on the way!

 

This time around there was a ranger controlling traffic, but that was fine- I stuck my head out the sunroof of the truck and took these pictures.

Yellowstone-The Hikes (06-27-12)

Yellowstone has a huge diversity of hikes available, and we’ve been trying to get to the ones we think have the most “bang for our buck” first.  Two of the trails we want to hike are closed due to Grizzly activity, but they should open soon.

When we first got to Yellowstone, the weather was not the best.  In fact, the first night we had freezing rain and a little snow, and it was cold the next day, but we still decided to hike to Avalanche Peak. We ended up hiking a good portion of the trail in the snow, but we were protected from the fierce wind by all the trees.  Once we got near the ridge however, that changed.

Once we were out in the open, we could feel the wind, and suddenly our jackets weren’t heavy enough.  We stopped right where I took this picture and watched a bunch of kids sledding down the slopes.  Then, instead of heading up to the ridge, we turned tail and ran.

The weather soon improved, although we’ve discovered that they never seem to forecast enough wind. It seems to always blow pretty hard in the afternoon. Anyway, one of our next  hikes took us along the ridge of a canyon, overlooking the Yellowstone River. We walked past two enormous waterfalls, and saw an osprey sitting on a nest.

At one point in the hike we descended Uncle Tom’s Trail, which turned out to be a set of stairs- 328 steps in all- down to a bottoms up view of the lower falls.  Down was fine, coming back up, at an elevation of 8000 feet, was a little slower!The views were great most of the way on that hike, although I was somewhat disappointed that we didn’t see any Bald Eagles.  I have actually seen 3 of them since we’ve been here, but they travel so far so fast, it’s been impossible to get a picture.

One of our favorite hikes was the Clear lake/Ribbon Lake hike.  That’s the hike where we saw the Elk on the trail.  It was about 6 miles or so, with not much elevation gain, but the scenery changed frequently, keeping our interest. We had views of the river for a while, then we walked through a huge meadow, and several times we came to clearings that had steam vents, mud pots and small geysers to watch.

Clear Lake was beautiful and looked very inviting, but around here, you never know if the water is safe or not.  The next lake we came upon proved that point!

Sour Lake looks very inviting as well, but the acidity of the water is similar to battery acid. There are micro-organisms in the water that consume the sulfur, creating sulfuric acid. 

To get ideas for which hikes to choose, we have spoken to several rangers, seeking their opinions.  The Washburn Peak trail was one that a ranger recommended to us.  She said it’s common to see bighorn sheep and sometimes grizzlies, but we saw neither. The day we hiked it the wind was howling and I think all the animals were hunkered down.

Once we reached the peak, the views of the surrounding mountains, including Grand Teton, were unbeatable.  The picture would probably have come out better if I had been outside to take it but it was so cold and windy, I took it from inside the observation tower.

We had an elevation gain of about 1900 ft, but the entire trail was essentially a dirt road, which made it seem easier.  Sort of. This trail was a first for me.  It’s the first time I have hiked to an elevation over 10,000 feet.  I felt like I accomplished something until we met another couple at the top.  He is 78 and she is 76.  We chatted with them all the way down the hill. Hiking 6.5 miles, at 10,000 feet at age 78? Now that’s an accomplishment!

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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