Yellowstone Trip Part 3

This final installment covers Thursday  through the following Wednesday.  Thursday morning, we woke to a dusting of snow and temperatures in the low 20's - quite a change from the T-shirt weather we had Monday and Tuesday!

 Just inside the park we stopped to watch a bull elk and his harem.

 Moments later, we stopped at the Gardner River where boiling hot springs flow into the river.  It is a popular soaking spot as you can see above.

 Just downstream we watched this merganser diving for fish.  Many animals appreciate the thermal areas, especially in winter.

 This is a dipper.  Dippers look like song birds, but they fly around under water feeding on water insects.

 A pretty, late bloomer that Gail photographed.

 She also spotted this wasp nest!

 Looking downstream at The Boiling River.

 This is a Gail photo of beautiful mushrooms.

 She also took this photo of mushrooms working on a bison patty.

 Hanging on by its fingernails!

 A few miles up the mountain is Mammoth Terraces, a constantly changing area of mineral deposits from hot springs that form delicate formations.

 Things warmed up in the afternoon, so we took a 6 mile hike to Beaver Ponds.  We saw an otter, ducks, grebes, and mountain bluebirds.

 We also saw this hairy woodpecker.

 A number of mountain bluebirds were flying around in open areas catching insects.

 There were splendid views, too
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 Back at the village of Mammoth, the elk herd was coming down late in the afternoon.  Because the bulls like this one are in rut, they can be very dangerous to humans.  There are rangers that are constantly waving back tourists, directing traffic, and putting out orange cones to keep folks back.  There is even a long cage for people to take shelter in and watch the elk safely.  The bulls were bugling in a high pitched tinny sound.

 On the drive back to our cottage, we saw these two elk up on a ridge.  We were told this was a good place to see big horn sheep, and at first  thought that's what these were.  Tomorrow, we hope to see wolves in the Lamar Valley, a wildlife hot spot.

 This picture doesn't look like much, but it shows a real highlight of our trip.  This is five wolves from the Junction Butte pack, one black adult, and four gray juveniles  We saw seven altogether.

 We got up at four in the morning and drove for about one and a half hours to get to an area that was supposed to be the top spot to see wolves.  We had consulted a ranger, a private park expert, and the internet.  We were the first there, still in the dark, and not sure exactly where to stop on the dirt road. As it started to get light, several guides and enthusiasts began showing up, and they had powerful spotting scopes that they shared with the rest of the arrivals.  With the scopes, you could clearly see the pups playing with each other, and see details like ears.  They were probably about a half to three fourths of a mile away.  The picture above was with my 300 mm lens, and then the image was additionally cropped.  However, we were teary eyed with excitement to see wolves in the wild, and watched them for about an hour before they went out of sight.

 There are about six wolf packs in Yellowstone that control their own areas.  Molly's pack to the south is the only one that specializes in killing bison for food.

 A few minutes after leaving the wolf area, we had a bit of a road block.

 We had to stay put while a bison herd walked past our car, surrounding it.

 This is eighty foot Tower Falls on the way over to the pass on Mt. Washburn.  Our destination was the Upper and Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The canyon is 24 miles long, and ranges from 800 to 1,200 feet deep.

 We decided to climb down Uncle Tom's Trail which goes down 500 feet into the canyon, below the Lower Falls.  It is over 300 steps - a good thigh burner!

 Going down the steps we felt like the whole contraption was pretty fragile on the crumbly cliffs.

 The noise, mist, and colors had us smiling, though.

 Looking down the canyon.

 Goodbye Lower Falls!

 We continued our drive down to huge Yellowstone Lake, and had lunch at a quiet pullout. This was a less traveled part of the park, and we enjoyed seeing hawks, flickers, cormorants, and other birds.

 There was even a small thermal vent bubbling offshore - the white spot you see in the water.

 On the way back we stopped at the Upper Falls Overlook.  Gail had brought a photo of her taken somewhere in the park when she was about nine.  While in the park, we saw photos from this overlook and figured this was the site of the photo.  We recreated the picture with Gail sitting on the exact rock.

 Back "home" at our little cottage in Gardiner.  While at the visitor center at Yellowstone Lake, we learned that there was a good chance of seeing the northern lights this very night, especially around midnight or later.  We set our alarm, got up at midnight, and drove a few miles up a mountain dirt road, and waited and watched.  Nada, no lights.  Saturday, after getting up a little late, we did a seven mile drive on a dirt road that was a one way nature loop on the Blacktail Plateau.  It was scenic, but we saw no exciting wildlife.

 Next, we drove to Mt. Washburn to hike to the peak.  It is so cold much of the year here that the trees that burned in 1988 are still standing in a somewhat preserved state.

 We were hoping to see a grizzly because we learned they go to high areas to eat the pine nuts of the white bark pine.  No grizzlies, but we did see bear scat.

 We couldn't help tossing a few snowballs to honor the Nick tradition of clobbering Dad in the back of the neck or eye.

 It was a six mile round trip.  At the top we saw a pica - inside the base of the lookout tower!

 There was a small group of bighorn sheep near the top.

 On the way down, we came upon this bison who stayed on the road, going in our direction.  We had to just shuffle along without getting closer.  Once we tried to go way around him, but he went off the road to block us.  Eventually, we came to our trail cut-off to the parking area where we parted ways.

We left Yellowstone Sunday morning.  We had been disappointed that we hadn't seen a grizzly (maybe we should have been glad).  As we were driving past the Hayden Valley area where we had taken a long hike on Monday, we saw some people standing on a rise with scopes.  Aha!

We watched this grizzly through spotting scopes and could see him much better than in this photo.  Behind us was the Yellowstone River, and we could see a coyote hunting along the opposite shore.  On the river were two trumpeter swans.  Trumpeter Swans were nearly extirpated from the lower 48 states, but have come back, due in large part to their success in Yellowstone.

 Moving on, we passed a large bison herd, also in the Hayden Valley.

 We decided to head south via Grand Teton National Park instead of going back west the way we came.  There were some fall colors along the way.

 Here I am checking out some white pelicans on the Lewis River.

 We paused at beautiful Jenny Lake.  Unfortunately, there was haze in the air from wildfires as far away as California.

 Jackson Hole has many miles of dedicated bike path.  We were ecstatic to finally have a chance to ride our bikes away from cars in a gorgeous place.

 and perfect weather, too!

 We stayed in Jackson for the night, and explored the town a little.  Each corner of the town square has arches made of elk antlers.

 We couldn't resist going into the Cowboy Bar.

 We had Wyoming whiskey while seated in saddles!

 We had really wanted to see moose and learned that this stretch of the river was a good bet.  We got up in the dark again and headed out.

 It turned out there were several in a campground.  We saw two bulls and a few cows.

 On the way back to town we went by the National Museum of Wildlife Art.  The grounds were amazing, but unfortunately the museum wasn't open yet.

 We started our two day drive back to Carlsbad. Stopping at Peggy Sue's Diner outside of Barstow turned out to be a hoot.

 The diner is huge and filled with no end of 50's memorabilia.

About 35 miles from home we hit a violent storm.  We first had lightening and thunder, then a dust storm that made it hard to see the other cars.  This quickly changed into a deluge of rain with more violent winds.  It was wild - the first time I have seen San Diego county drivers drive cautiously!  An hour later we were home where it was totally dry and 98 degrees.  What a trip!