Bears, Bears Everywhere!

(Posting for Saturday, June 14th)

What an amazing day in our country’s first national park.

The weather forecast looked good today, so we hoped to get an early start to take advantage of the good weather. The weather this morning was beautiful – little wind, high 50’s, very few clouds. We managed to get everyone ready, everything loaded and hit the road shortly before 10am. (Yes, 10am qualifies as an early start for us these days. This is a vacation…)

From Lake, we headed north to Canyon, then west to Madison and on north to Mammoth. Between Madison and Mammoth, we had our first bear sighting of the day – a grizzly hiding in the sagebrush on a ridge off the road (just out of photo range). We also caught a glimpse of a black wolf in the meadow along the road. At Mammoth, we took time to tour the terraces, hot springs and spent some time at the visitors center checking out their movie on the birth of the national park system. We had a great picnic lunch at Mammoth. Shortly after we set up our lunch spread, a young elk started making her was across the meadow to the picnic area. The elk never got really close to us, be we were able to enjoy her strolling across the meadow as we enjoyed the sunshine and our lunch.

From Mammoth, we headed north to the north entrance of the park near Gardner, MT. We drove through the big stone arch that marks the original entrance to Yellowstone and had a family photo op. Afterwards, we headed back into the park and stopped at a small picnic area along the Gardner River so the kids could splash in the cool water on a hot day – the temps had now climbed into the high 70’s. We also let the kids take their first shot at fishing in the park. The river was running a bit too fast for fishing, but we gave it a shot anyway. We didn’t catch anything, but everyone had a great time.

After drying off, we headed back into Mammoth and turned east to make our way to Tower. Along the way, we stopped at Lava Creek to try our hand at fishing again. We found a quiet spot, and the first fly we put in the creek landed us a small brook trout. We didn’t have any more luck fishing, but we had a great time hiking along the creek and splashing in the refreshing water. The kids declared this their best hike thus far.

After our second fishing adventure, we headed on east to Tower Fall. Along the way, we came upon a den of coyotes and enjoyed mom and 4 pups playing in the meadow. We also say mom eat a small varmit for lunch. From Tower Junction, we decided to head northeast toward Cooke City, MT and the park’s northeast entrance. This is a little traveled section of the park that takes you through Lamar Valley, an amazing place to spot wildlife. Today was no exception. We saw hundreds of bison, lots of elk and antelope, a couple of coyote, and two grizzly bears near Soda Butte. We made it as far as Plum Creek before deciding to head back towards Lake.

As we drove through a number of areas of the park that we had seen last week during our first swing through the park, it was amazing how different everything looks without a fresh coat of snow. In most places, the snow has completely retreated into a few deep embankments along the side of the road, or a couple of drifts deep in the woods. The weather today was really amazing – very summer like. It’s hard to believe how this place can swing from winter to summer in just a couple of days. I guess that speaks to what an amazing place this is.

Along the way, we stopped at Tower Falls for a bathroom break. We were treated to a sighting of a black bear and one of her cubs. The bear is Rosie – she’s a well known bear throughout the park and can often be seen tending to her cubs near Tower Falls. From Tower Falls, we headed south to Canyon through Dunraven Pass. We stopped mid way through the drive to snap some pics of the massive snow plow they use to keep the pass clear – it’s one nasty looking machine…

Between Canyon and Lake, we had several other wildlife sightings – another black bear, lots of bison and elk, and our first big horn sheep! Final bear count for today – six! That doubles the total we’ve seen since arriving here over a week ago to 12.

The weary Gray clan finally rolled into Lake Lodge around 8pm or so and headed to the cafeteria at Lake Lodge is search of some grub. We dined on pot roast, fried chicken, corn and mashed potatoes and gravy. Good stick to your ribs food that was much better than expected. I think Trey wanted to lick his plate…

We headed back to our cabin, and the power went out as we arrived. It’s still out as I write this… Luckily, we have lots of flashlights, extra batteries, cold beer and pop tarts, so we should be fine.

The battery on my laptop is fading, so time to sign off. Goodnight!