Listing Through Life

We had two goals at Yellowstone today — to look for wolves and other wildlife in Lamar Valley and to see the falls of the Yellowstone River. To avoid retracing our path from the day before, we drove to the Northeast Entrance of the park via the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. This was 47 miles of paved, nearly empty road with beautiful scenery. And just before we got to the park, the road popped up into Montana, a state my wife hadn’t been in before.

Before long, we were in Lamar Valley. We soon happened upon a couple who were watching Mountain Goats on the cliffs to the north. They said, and I later confirmed, that the goats are not native to the park but have wandered in from introduced populations in Montana.

We saw Mule Deer, Bison, Pronghorns (a few), and way off in the distance, a couple Elk. We did not see any wolves. I found a guy who was set up next to the road with a scope and camera. He didn’t have a lot to say, but he seemed to know what he was doing. He had a dachshund chained to a wire cage. The dog kept dragging the cage off into the sage in pursuit of Uinta Ground Squirrels. The guy told me he’d seen wolves earlier that day, but then he proceeded to tell me why it was unlikely that I’d see any, so he may have been talking through his hat.

It was a beautiful morning, a little chilly but much warmer than the day before. And Lamar Valley was beautiful, even without wolves.

Later in the day, when we’d looked for wolves in all the most likely places and had pretty much resigned ourselves to not seeing any, we were in a gift shop when I heard a woman in neon sweatpants say to a friend, “Did you see that black wolf that was standing in the middle of the road this morning?” I resented her then, and I still resent her now.

We came across a large crowd of people looking at a Black Bear. I pulled over and joined the throng and saw this. It was about 40 yards back in the woods.

The next two photos are the views from two overlooks where we stopped. I’m not sure exactly where we were. At the first site, a pair of Osprey were nesting right across the canyon.

Our drive took us up and over Dunraven Pass (8,859 feet) past Mount Washburn (10,243 feet). Nowhere on this trip did I have any issues with altitude, apart from being a little out of breath a few times when climbing stairs and such.

Just south of Canyon Village, a Black Bear was grazing in the grass right next to the road. People were stopping to look, and a ranger in a little golf cart was honking his horn to get people to keep moving. It was not exactly idyllic. To keep from adding to the problem, I just had my wife take some photos out the car window as we passed.

 A little further, we found another large crowd watching a herd of Elk in a clearing. I noticed, with a lot of these animal sightings, a ranger was right there controlling the people and answering questions. I’m guessing many of the animals are tagged so the park can keep track of them and get to the spot when they get close to people. I took one photo, again without stopping, to prove we saw them. It’s pretty obvious that at least one of them was tagged.

Our next stop was the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. This was indeed impressive. Except maybe for the woman standing next to us who pointed to the people just visible on a platform next to the brink. She said, “Those people, is that where we were? Make sure you get a photo of those people. I’m going to take a photo of those people, those people standing next to the falls. We need to get a photo of them because that’s where we were.” She kept on like this for an annoyingly long time — so long that my wife gave up on the view and wandered off. This falls is 308 feet high.

We drove around to the other side of the rive to see the 109-foot Upper Falls. It wasn’t as impressive, but still pretty.

We drove through Hayden Valley again (we’d been there the day before) without seeing any wildlife more exciting than Sandhill Cranes and Barrow’s Goldeneyes — which wasn’t bad. We stopped at Fishing Bridge to buy stuff at the gift shop and then headed back toward Cody.

We passed Yellowstone Lake and the spot where we’d seen the Grizzly the day before when we happened upon a herd of maybe eight Bighorn Sheep. They were crossing the road and taking their time about it.

A younger one walked out in front of our car, turned around and reared up. I caught it on video and later took a screenshot of that exact moment to make it look like it was walking on its hind legs. Everyone I showed the photo to thought it was photo-shopped.

Just outside the park, just after we’d seen two Grizzly Bears, we pulled over at a picnic area so I could look for a Dipper. I didn’t see one. My wife took over the driving and, a minute later, we saw another Grizzly. More about that here.

We got back to Cody much earlier than we had the night before. We decided on a sit-down meal and ended up at a little place on the backside of town called the Hungry Bear. It served Italian comfort food, and it was very good. It was also obviously a hangout for locals and not a big tourist hotspot, which was nice.

It was 50 miles from Cody to the East Entrance of the park, which sounds like a lot, but the scenery was every bit as good as the scenery in the park.

We got about halfway when it began to snow.

We were half a mile from the entrance when we came to a complete stop. A guy driving the other direction told us the road was temporarily closed for snow removal. We sat in place for about half an hour.

Once things opened up, they moved pretty fast. Our first stop was an outhouse, and we found one none too soon. Next to the parking lot, a waterfall ran through the woods.

When we drove over Sylvan Pass (8,530 ft.) we could see where the snowplows had been working.

The day cleared up shortly after this, but it remained pleasantly cool. At least I thought so. A lot of other people thought it was unpleasantly cold. I think the temperatures may have kept the morning crowds down.

We drove along Yellowstone Lake for several miles. We got out briefly at Steamboat Point, where we saw our first evidence of the caldera responsible for the geysers and other features. But compared to what we saw later, it wasn’t terribly exciting.

We headed toward the center of the park and the Old Faithful area. Along the way, we stopped briefly to see the Kepler Cascades.

I’d always heard about the huge crowds at Yellowstone, and things were decidedly busier the closer we got to Old Faithful, but we were early enough (about 9:45, after a two-hour drive from our hotel) to still easily find a parking place about a quarter mile from the geyser. I looked for signs telling when the next eruption of Old Faithful would happen and learned that we had about an hour to wait. We took a short loop trail around the Upper Geyser Basin. We were nearly to Old Faithful when a young woman told us and everyone around us that another geyser, Beehive, was due to go off in “about seven minutes.” We walked to a spot where we could see it from about 150 yards away and waited. About seven minutes later, it went off. It’s considered one of the more impressive geysers in the park because it shoots up from a small hole and reaches the impressive height of 200 feet. It erupts irregularly, but when it has its groove on, it goes off twice a day. We were lucky to be in the right place at the right time. The water coming out of the hole made an impressive rushing sound.

We were less than half an hour from Old Faithful’s next show. We found seats on one of the benches that circle half of the glacier. It began shooting up steam about 10 minutes before it erupted, and each time people went “oooooo!” By the time it went off, there were several hundred people watching. It was worth the show. A lot of hot water shot up in the air and a lot of steam spread over the area.

We wandered the area looking for lunch. Our search included about three minutes in the old lodge — I’m not sure why we didn’t look around more. We finally ended up in a gift shop buying very expensive sausages and eating them on a bench outside. They were, however, very good sausages.

Then I made a mistake due to lack of preparation.  We walked the boardwalks around the Upper Geyser Basin, and before we were through, Sally’s hip and my knee were very sore. We looked and acted like old people. Anyway, here’s what we saw on that walk in no particular order.

This is Morning Glory Pool. It looks pretty and remote. What you can’t see are the people lined up three deep on the boardwalk taking selfies. Or the woman not far away who was blocking traffic so she could take videos of her daughters doing cartwheels. On the boardwalk. In an area where falling off the boardwalk could kill you.

That’s the old lodge in the background. In the foreground is Beehive Geyser when it’s not erupting.

We limped back to the car and headed west. It was a great deal busier at this point, and we soon ran into a lot of traffic around Midway Geyser Basin. That must be where the best features are, or maybe there just isn’t enough parking. Cars were lined up on both sides of the road for a couple miles, and there was no way were in any shape to walk that far. We soon hit a dead stop for about 15 minutes, then crawled forward. This time it was for a herd of bison that were crossing the road at their own sedate pace.

Eventually we cleared the busy area and were able to enjoy the scenery again. This is Gibbon Falls. I’ll say this about Yellowstone. It lives up to they hype. Features like this — which aren’t even famous — are scattered all over the park.

Looking the other way from where I took the above photo of the falls.

Eventually we made our way around to Hayden Valley. This is one of the places where wolves are sometimes seen, and there was a crowd looking at something. But when I got out and asked, it turned out to be two Coyotes.

We stopped very briefly at the Mud Volcano. The smell of sulfur here was almost overwhelming. It wasn’t one of the prettier spots either.

By this time it was already late in the afternoon. We drove back past Yellowstone Lake, stopping only long enough to see the Grizzly Bear (see separate post). We then had the long, but pretty, drive back to Cody.

We didn’t get back to our hotel until after 8:00 pm. We stopped at Walmart and bought a couple microwave meals to eat in the hotel room.