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.