Half-way through the summer and still not bored

We’ve passed our half way point in our stay here at Yellowstone National Park. There is more to see and do here than can be done even in a entire summer. We have a list of things we want to be sure to do before we leave and in the last few weeks we have been able to cross off some of the listed activities.

Just outside the Park in West Yellowstone, MT there is the Grizzly and Wolf Recovery Center. They have excellent displays on wolves and bears and the outdoor exhibits with live wolves and grizzly bears are wonderful. We have yet to see any wild wolves (one of the items on our list) but we have seen quite a few grizzly bears and a few black bears.

We took a drive around the park a few days ago hoping to see some wolves. Again they eluded us but the trip was far from uneventful. We stopped in the Mammoth area and hiked around the travertine terraces. They are really interesting. We were there near mid-day so the bright sun on the bleach-white terraces made for some difficult picture taking.


From Mammoth we headed east through the Lamar Valley to the Beartooth Highway. What a ride. The Beartooth is considered by many sources as the most scenic highway in the Continental US. It is easy to see why. The pass is nearly 11,000 feet high and the wildflower blankets in the alpine meadows were beautiful. Glacier lakes filled by melting snow (this was in July) and the scattered rock outcroppings make for some real “eye candy” as does the view from the high elevation overlooks.


Returning from the pass we again came through the Lamar Valley. At 6 PM the wildlife was more active and we saw perhaps 300 bison, 4 black bears, 2 coyotes, a dozen pronghorn, and 4 sandhill cranes. The one black bear was feeding on a carcass by the river and the two coyotes were just waiting their turn at the remains. The other bear, a sow with two cubs, was seen way in the distance.

On another outing to the Hayden Valley we experienced the bison rut. Bulls were butting heads, exhibiting strength by pacing with tails raised, and vying for the attention of available females. We stopped at the Otter Creek picnic area where the Hayden Valley wolf pack’s alpha female has frequently been seen with her cubs, but again we were not there at the right time.


We rode out bike back to the Lone Star Geyser and waited and watched the 20 minute eruption. Impressive. The 2 mile bike ride along the Firestone Ricer (creek) is beautiful. Fresh bear scat in the roadway forced us to keep up our vigilance.


My backcountry experience this week was an overnight hike to Shoshone Lake to try to catch my first ever Lake Trout. I did manage to land one but I was very disappointed in the fight.
I have hooked on to sticks that fought better. The fishing may not have been great but seeing otters, eagles, osprey, and geese was more than enough to sustain my euphoric state. The scenery was beautiful and at dusk a nearby ruffed grouse kept strumming. Interesting music to go to sleep with.

Each day has too much to write about and bringing this BLOG up to date after a couple of weeks is going to be a challenge. In addition to the normal volunteer activities, we continue to see more and more of Yellowstone. We have begun to take weekly hikes together and try to do something together other than eat meals. We’ve hiked or ridden bikes on several trails to see geysers and water falls and took an overnighter to Dubois, WY to see a real rodeo. I’ve gone fishing regularly and generally get to take one or two day backpacking trip into the backcountry.
We hiked back to Fairy Falls which is a relatively easy 5 miles round trip stroll. The hike was through an area recovering from the 1988 fire and was almost boring. There is not much shade since the new-growth lodgepole pines are but 4 – 14 feet high so the sun at this 6000’ altitude is hot. The Fairy Falls howeverwere beautiful. Yellowstone is a land of water falls (in addition to many other features). One of the thermal features we passed on the way to Fairy Falls is Grand Prismatic Hot Springs – the largest known hot spring in the world. It is appropriately named because of the prism effect of the rising steam. The colored algae and bacterial mats make the Grand Prismatic a spectacular feature.
The hot springs are beautiful and so are the abundant wildflowers. On every trip we take we find wildflowers that we did not see before. Columbines were blooming near Fairy Falls.
There is too much to see in the Park but we still needed to see a real rodeo so we headed east to Dubose, WY.
Our overnight trip to Dubose took us through the Grand Teton National Park.
These mountains are awesome. We stopped at the lodge for diner and were fortunate to see two cow moose and a calf feeding in the willows. There are more moose in the Tetons than in Yellowstone.
Dubose has a rodeo every week and professional and amateur cowboys and cowgirls travel many miles to participate in everything from barrel racing, calf roping, team roping, bronc and bull riding, and for the youngsters – sheep and cow riding. (Some of these little kids were good.) This was our first rodeo and we enjoyed it better than seeing it on the TV.
This overnighter was a nice break but we are always happy when we are in the park.
My next backpacking trip was to Grebe Lake. Grebe Lake is known for its grayling density. I’ve caught lots of trout in my lifetime but never grayling so I hiked back to the lake intent on hooking and landing my first of these silvery fighters with the large sail-like dorsal fin.
The lake is less than a mile in diameter and has four backcountry campsites – each with a fire ring and a pole from which packs and food can be elevated to keep them out of reach of the black and grizzly bear that call this area home. I’ve camped here earlier without catching any grayling but the rainbow trout fishing was good. This trip started out much the same. In the middle of the day the mosquitoes and fish were both biting. I caught several rainbows (several at 14”) and was beginning to expect that the grayling were again going to skunk me when I actually began catching more grayling than rainbows. At the end of fishing I had landed 27 grayling and 17 rainbows.
The fishing was great but just seeing all the wildlife makes a backcountry trip worthwhile. On this trip I saw Trumpeter Swans, Elk, Barrows Goldeneye (with young), Common Loons, Williamson Sapsuckers, and Short-tailed Weasel.
This place is awesome. The evening sunset was spectacular.
Although I thoroughly enjoy Grebe Lake, my next outing will have to be elsewhere since there are so many more places to go and things to see and do.
On Saturday we headed north toward Bozeman (about 100 miles) to the nearest Wal-Mart to renew some prescriptions. We stopped to look at Quake lake where in 1979 a 5.+ earthquake on the Richter scale caused a land slide that dammed the Madison River. Twenty-six people were killed when the landslide buried a campground along the river. The USACOE immediately dug a spillway to keep the pressure in the lake from breaking the dam. They expect that in years to come the water flow over the spill way will eventually erode the dam away leaving the Madison River in a similar course as it was before the quake.
In route to Bozeman we passed through some old gold mining towns, Virginia City and Nevada City. Virginia City looks like the 1860s residents just closed and locked the doors and left everything behind. The old buildings look just as they must have looked nearly 150 years ago. The shelves and racks and display cases in the stores have the assortment of goods that would have been available at the time.
Although the interior of these stores can only be viewed either through the windows or, in some cases, from open doorways, the feeling one gets is just as if you have taken a step back into time.
Obviously we are still having a good time. We have passed the halfway point of our stay here in Yellowstone. We will depart here around the 3rd of September and will make a short jog up through Montana to see Glacier National Park then head south through North and South Dakota, and Nebraska. We intend to try to fly back East in late September or early October for a quick visit with relatives and then will continue southward to Big Bend National Park in Texas where we have been offered a volunteer position at their visitor center – more on that later. We expect to depart Big Bend in January for the East where we will spend most of the year bouncing back and forth between friends and family.
Life sure has been good.

More Yellowstone - This place is awesome

Life continues to be good. I am still in a state of sensory overload and Yellowstone National Park daily keeps me in that state. Our “work” schedule of 3 days off one week and 4 days off the next gives us ample time to play tourist. Since our duties when at work are predominantly related to helping visitors plan their visits to Yellowstone (in addition to helping with the Junior Ranger Program for 5 – 13 year olds) we find naturally that we can give much better advice if we have actually experienced the hike, or thermal feature, or drive ourselves. What a tough task to have to spend our time off watching geysers and wildlife, fishing world-class trout streams, backpacking into the wilderness-like back country, or just taking a day hike to breathtaking waterfalls and vistas.

This last week has certainly lived up to every imaginable expectation. The Grand canyon of Yellowstone with the huge waterfalls cascading over 300 feet is breathtaking. There are over 14,000 thermal features in Yellowstone. The geysers are the most famous and draw everyone’s attention but the paint pots and the hot pools are no less interesting. The fumaroles are merely steaming holes and do not get much attention but they are the hottest of the thermal features. If waterfalls and spouting or erupting geysers are not sufficient to generate a sense of awe, the abundance of wildlife certainly will. This week provided us with an experience few ever see. A very rare buffalo drive took 300 bison past our visitor station. Although the bison migration occurs annually, this year hundreds of bison were interfering with cattle operations west of the park and “cowboys” on horseback were used to usher these 2000# behemoths eastward toward their summer grounds and breeding area. Seems the lighter than normal snow made living in the West Yellowstone area too comfortable for these beast to leave on their own.
A little urging from the horsemen and the migration began—up the Madison Valley and through the Firehole Canyon to the Nez Pierce River. Seeing 300+ bison amble slowly up the two lane road toward the Mary Mountain area was interesting but made me realize that this migration has been taking place for hundreds of years and these bison were not following our man-made road but in fact, the man-made road was actually engineered along the prehistoric bison trail.

The Firehole Canyon is one of my favorite fishing areas but it is seriously dwarfed by the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.


The Yellowstone River has carved a magnificent canyon that Charles Cook, of the 1869 Folsom Yellowstone expedition, after stopping at the brink of the canyon near what is now Artist Point wrote, “I sat there in amazement, while my companions came up and after that it seemed to me that it was five minutes before anyone spoke.” Nearly 140 years later the first glimpse of this canyon and the waterfalls generates the same sense of awe and leaves viewers speechless.


Everyone knows of Old Faithful Geyser because of its very predictable eruption schedule. Other geysers are far less predictable but put on much more spectacular displays. Compared to Old Faithful’s 5-6 minute demonstration, my favorite (for now anyway) is Lone Star Geyser which erupts with considerable more fanfare shooting tall spouts of hot water and steam and emitting guttural groans for better that 20 minutes every 2.5 – 3 hours.


I took a few days to backpack along the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and spent the night not far from the pristine upper reaches of the Firehole River. Wildlife sign was abundant but except for a Pine Martin that ran through camp and a Grey Jay that stopped to beg or scavenge for tid-bits, I saw little.
I left the campsite around 2PM and another group of campers arrived five hours later for a night out in the wilderness. When they arrived at the campsite “steaming fresh” bear scat, tracks, and other signs convinced them to cancel their plans and depart the wilderness.

Next week I will try to spend several days on the trail. I’m sure every rip will be exciting.

Geyser Photo

We took a side trip to look at a few geysers. This one erupts regularly and is kinda neat looking.