Big Sky Country Happenings

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On Saturday, I went for a drive with my Dad and husband south of East Fork Reservoir up the Carp Ridge Road up to the  Maloney Basin trailhead  (now labeled Co Rd 5141 — why oh why must we replace names with numbers — but that’s another story).  The area has enjoyed plentiful rainfall this year allowing wild flowers that are often dead and gone by mid-July (on a good year) to still be flourishing in August.  We saw lupine, paintbrush, sulfur buckwheat, field pussytoes, praire smoke, sticky geranium, gaillardia, bog orchid, sitka valerian, shooting stars, mountain death camas — and mariposa lilies.

Mariposa lilies at Carp Ridge will always be tied in my mind to a day in July of 2006 when I was photographing mariposa lilies on Carp Ridge.

On Saturday July 15, 2006, my great uncle (in his seventies at the time), married his high-school sweetheart.  My sister, a professional floral designer, created their floral pieces for the wedding.   Southwest Montana enjoyed plentiful rain that summer, too, and so there was still beargrass (the grass, not the flower head) aplenty.  The commercially grown long grasses that my sister had ordered for use in the wedding pieces was yucky, so on Thursday, July 13, my sister sent me on a mission to collect some good bear grass.  I had been up in the Carp Ridge area a few days before and knew I would be able to collect some there, so I headed off on my mission, accompanied by my uncle.

We enjoyed a leisurely drive, stopping to enjoy wild flowers and the scenery.  When we arrived at Carp Ridge the slope was beautifully carpeted with mariposa lilies.  I had attached my Raynox DCR-250 macro adapter to my Fuji Finepix s5000, and was happily engaged in photographing the lilies and their pollinators while my uncle strolled around enjoying the variety of wild flowers and collecting bear grass.

Our attention was diverted by a screaming/bleating noise. My uncle said “What was that?!” I replied that there had been open range cattle in the area the previous week that had since been rounded up. Perhaps a calf had been left behind. I surmised the noise was the bleating/crying of a lonely, forlorn calf. Back to photographing and collecting we went.

Shortly thereafter we heard the sound of heavy, labored, struggled breathing. We looked all around but could see nothing that was making that noise. However, the noises now had our full attention. We were up the slope a short way from the road. We walked back down onto the road and started walking back toward the parked vehicle, eyes and heads constantly moving, searching for the source of the noise — me leading and my uncle following. We could hear something struggling to breathe but still couldn’t see it, which was beginning to cause some apprehension on our parts. Then the struggled breathing noises ceased.

As I neared the vehicle, looking down the road and straight west into the setting sun — partially blinded by the sun and haze, I saw a shape come up the slope and up onto the road about 10 yards in front of me. It was an odd, unfamiliar shape. It was a head with curved somethings on the side. My first thought was that it was a large bighorn ram – perhaps sick, dying, struggling… That brief thought was shortly thereafter dispelled when a long tail stretched out, almost entirely across the road.

In the same moment that recognition dawned and I hissed “Cat!” back at my uncle, the mountain lion, for that’s what it was, with it’s front paws wrapped around the neck/head of the large mule deer doe it was dragging, realized that it wasn’t alone. It bolted.

Do I have photos? No. Despite that fact that my camera was around my neck I had two problems: 1) the macro adapter and 2) in the excitement of that briefest of moments of opportunity I quite forgot I even owned a camera. In all honesty I probably wouldn’t have achieved a photo no matter what, shooting straight into the sun, but, there you have it…

So, there we were: the still body of a doe, my uncle and me. No cat. I wanted to see the cat again. I WANTED PHOTOS. I suggested to my uncle that we get in the vehicle and move away then sneak back, but keeping our distance, with hopes that if we distanced ourselves the cat would return for its kill.

My uncle agreed. However, he thought that if we went out of sight the cat could return and drag the deer off and we’d miss it. He feared no one back home would believe our tale. He wanted some evidence to back our story. And so, I circled around the deer to take a photo of it without the sun directly on my lens. Just as I was pressing the shutter for a second photo, the deer jumped up and almost ran right over me. Apparently it had lost consciousness, being strangled by the cat, but had not yet expired before we interrupted the act.

So, my uncle and I left, continued on to the Maloney Basin trailhead, photographed a porcupine, then returned to Anaconda with photos of flowers and the porcupine, a bucket of bear grass, a story, and the memory of an evening we’ll never forget.

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I spent last weekend in Glacier (July 24-25, 2010).  While I would have wished for some clouds to break the monotonous blue sky and add a bit of interest (trust a photographer to whine about clear blue skies!), it was, nonetheless, a glorious weekend.

Because all of the campgrounds in Glacier were full, I accepted a generous offer to spend the night at the home of a friend who lives west of Kalispell.  Saturday morning I got up before the sun and headed for the Park.  The day was off to an auspicious start when the sun rose casting golden rays through the trees and fog along Hwy 40.

As I headed up Going to the Sun it seemed I had the road and the Park briefly all to myself. Beating the sun up also means beating the crowds! Having left behind morning valley fog, I was under brilliant blue skies. I think this cloud whisping by Mount Reynolds might have been the last cloud I saw all day.

I parked at the almost empty parking lot at Logan Pass Visitor Center and headed up the trail to the Hidden Lake Overlook. The trail to the overlook is 1.5 miles long. I’d hazard an estimate that 1.25 miles of it is still under snow.

I was glad my Yak Trax were in my backpack and handy. While the trail was most certainly passable to people in reasonable shoes, I enjoyed the additional traction afforded by being “chained up.”

As per usual, there were mountain goats along the trail and around the Overlook area. And, also per usual this time of year, the billies are looking sleek, the nannies are ragged looking and the kids are cute as buttons.

When I got back in view of the Garden Wall the red shale fragments, the emerald green carpet on the mountainsides and the sapphire blue sky were just popping.

I made my way down the east side of Logan Pass to the Rising Sun campground where I think I snagged the very last campsite (except for one reserved for bicycle/motorcycles) then made my way toward Two Medicine, enjoying the lush green and wildflower speckled carpet.

Next stop was at Running Eagle Fall. Running Eagle Fall bears the name of a legendary historic (by which I mean to communicate that she was a real historical person, not a person of myth) Blackfoot woman. Running Eagle was a rare female warrior chief.

The waterfall, located in the Two Medicine area of Glacier National Park, is a “trick” fall. In the spring, during high runoff, the water falls over the upper lip and the fall looks like a fairly typical waterfall. However, as the snow melt runoff slows with summer, the stream stops flowing over the upper lip of the fall and instead only pours out from the hole in the rock wall.

I also enjoyed a life bird along the short trail to Running Eagle Fall — a Nashville warbler.

Having visited late the night before and risen early followed by a day spent on the go, I was a bit tired. I was hopeful that the afternoon winds would bring in some clouds to add interest to the sky for sunset from the Wild Goose Island overlook so I headed for camp to take a nap to rest up for another late night. I spotted a black bear right at the edge of the campground so did stop to report it to a Ranger (it didn’t seem likely to enter camp or cause problems, being quite flighty, but I made the report just out of general principal) before crawling in the tent and immediately falling asleep and enjoying an early evening nap.

After my nap, I headed for the Wild Goose Island Overlook for sunset.  9:16 (sunset time) came and went  with no color in the sky whatsoever. Ah, well… at least I enjoyed the company of other visitors as we chatted while hoping for color that wasn’t to be. Back to camp for a late dinner and a late night to bed.

I woke at 3:00am with a raging migraine. I tried to drown it in imitrex, Excedrin and caffeine and turned off the pre-sunrise alarm, knowing that rising before the sun was definitely not in the cards. Thankfully, when next I woke, around 7:30, the migraine was gone. Since I was getting a late start anyway, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before breaking camp and heading for Many Glacier.

The Many Glacier area, particularly the meadow along Lake Sherburne, could have been well named “Many Flower.” It was lush with wildflowers — lupine, gaillardia, sticky geranium, nodding onion, prairie smoke, sulfur buckwheat, and more…Heavenly!

Reluctantly I left Many Glacier to begin the trek southward for home (with more stops and detours along the way, of course).

St. Mary Lake

Mountain goats were browsing and the kids were playing in the construction area on the west side of the pass.

Last stop of the day was the Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Gorge

Watch my Flickr photostream for more photos from this and other trips.  They’ll make it up on my photo gallery page some day later when I’m not out playing or processing new photos.  :^)

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“the quawmash is now in blume
and from the colour of its bloom at
a short distance it resembles lakes
of fine clear water, so complete is
this deseption that on first sight I
could have swoarn it was water.”

So said Captain Meriwether Lewis on June 12, 1806. He also noted that “Musquetoes our old companions have become very troublesome.”

L & C journal entries for June 12, 1806

libxml1a.unl.edu/lewisandclark/read/?_xmlsrc=1806-06-12&a…

I missed peak bloom this year but I didn’t miss peak mosquito hatch. As per usual, they were quite troublesome.
Last year I was there on June 13 and the bloom hadn’t really started yet. This year on June 23 it was a bit past peak but there would have been many prime specimens to photograph had the petals not been rain stained.

There’s been so much rain that those petals that weren’t already wilted were rain stained. It was hard to find any stems to photograph.

I left Packer Meadows somewhat, but not entirely, disappointed, and raced along Elk Meadows Road to Lily Lake to make it for sunset. My timing was good. I arrived in plenty of time for sunset and in plenty of time to watch a young cow moose — I’d guess the now two-year-old calf that I saw in company of mom the last two years. Plenty of time, also, to discover that my favorite foreground trees have been destroyed by the falling of a large tree. I’ll miss them. A photo of them from last year:

Plenty of time, as well, to get an uneasy feeling waiting for the sun to dip. The cause of my uneasiness was some huffing noises as well as some screeches — sounds reminiscent of my mountain lion encounter of a few years back up on Carp Ridge. I didn’t become uneasy enough to depart, but I did practice drawing bear spray and pulling the safety off and getting my thumb on the button — working on muscle memory. I also stayed alert and when my eye wasn’t to the camera viewfinder, I kept my eyes, neck and body moving looking around.

I did find another tree to use as a foreground tree but as it happened, the sun hid behind clouds before dipping below the horizon. I made the best I could out of it:

The drive from Lily Lake to where Elk Meadows Road comes out on the Montana side on Hwy 12 a few miles west of Fort Fizzle was rough. There were stretches of road where one couldn’t avoid big deep holes. I had to work hard at not rubbing the belly of the car. I failed once (didn’t hit hard, though). I miss my 4×4 Pathfinder! I didn’t need four wheel drive — not by a long stretch — but more clearance would have been welcome, indeed. I also passed some heavy machinery parked such that it partially blocked the road. I didn’t have any trouble squeezing past it but I was mentally critical of the parking job.

And then I came up on this:

So… had I come in from the Montana side, I’d have reached this sign and turned around. However, I’d already driven the closed road from the other end by the time I came to the closure, so…

The last sighting of the evening was one I found encouraging in the light of low recruitment rate of calves in elk herds (low cow/calf ratios) — a nursery herd with 32 cows and 15 calves that I could see. There could easily have been even more calves (or cows, for that matter). The heads of standing calves were just visible over the tall grass. Bedded calves would have been invisible.

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The last half day of my solo camping trip in Yellowstone National Park came too soon.  I was still having fun!

After putting away the tent, etc., I, like the previous 3 mornings, headed for the Swan Lake area hoping, once again, to see the mama griz with four cubs.  I spotted a familiar vehicle at a pullout and pulled in next to Dave Shumway.  He told me they’d been seen but were currently out of site.  After a not-too-long wait, they emerged from behind a rise, but still much obscured by the sagebrush.  By that time Dave and I were at different pullouts.

I had set up Dad’s scope and was watching the fivesome “up close and personal” at 78x and visiting with a family watching through their scope.  When the bears got close enough that I became optimistic of photos I set up my camera tripod.  Upon seeing my Canon camera, the man I was visiting with asked if I knew much about Canon cameras and then asked if I knew what a “CF Error” meant.  He was afraid his camera was dead.  I told him I was fairly sure it was his CF card that had crapped out and offered to loan him one of mine for a test and so he’d be able to get photos of the bear family.  He most gratefully accepted my offer. A quick test proved his camera to be fine.  I told him 2GB CF cards were conveniently available at the Mammoth Gas Station for twenty bucks (more expensive than elsewhere but well worth the price to be able to take photos of the family trip to Yellowstone) and that he could use mine for the bears, download to his notebook, return it to me  and go get a replacement there in Mammoth.

That settled, optimism reigned.  The bears were headed straight for us and showing every indication that they’d cross the road right where we were.  Then…  a little red car pulled off the road on the bear’s side, dragging muffler/tailpipe.  The screech was painful to everyone present, and changed the bears’ course.  The uncharitable and unworthy thought “I hope it’s an expensive repair” crossed my mind, I’ll confess.

Nonetheless, I did get to see the family at a reasonably close distance.  The hopes for a closer encounter and good photos that I had so briefly held were crushed by the red car.

Dave Shumway, meanwhile, had trotted down to the next pullout, where the family DID cross, and has much better photos in his online gallery for his trip.

Nonetheless, I’m mindful that it’s a rare treat to see a grizzly with four cubs and I’m grateful for the experience.  Speaking of grateful, the guy with my CF card was beyond grateful for its use allowing him to get pictures of the griz family (he hoofed down to the same pullout as Dave so probably has some good photos, too). Instead of taking time to download before parting company, he asked if I had enough cards that I could part with one and just sell it to him. Deal.

I pulled out happy to have seen the bears and happy to have done my good deed for the day and headed for the Lamar.

Just around the curve in the road to the east of the Yellowstone Picnic Area I came upon a small but growing bear jam where I met and had a nice visit with fellow YNETTER photosbycharleen before continuing east as far as the Pebble Creek CG before turning west to begin to head in a generally homeward direction.

Along the way, I stopped briefly to take the photo of these rule breakers on the Soda Butte Geyser cone.

I trust they can read (Alabama plates, so I’m confident English is their primary language) so I’m completely baffled as to why they think the rules against climbing on the feature, clearly posted on signage right there at Soda Butte, don’t apply to them. Shame! I took a photo of their license plate, too, hoping to come upon a Ranger but as luck would have it I didn’t see a single Ranger all day.

My “generally homeward” course of travel took me over Dunraven Pass where I was attacked by the nap monster and was forced to pull over. I set my iPod alarm to go off in one hour and it was immediately lights out. When I woke up I discovered I had slept through a bear jam caused by the Dunraven sow and pair of cubs who had just gone out of sight. Doh!

I then went south as far as Fishing Bridger where I turned east to see if Circus Bear was putting on a show. A storm was brewing over Yellowstone Lake.

Circus Bear was a no-show, so after quick detour up to Lake Butte Overlook, I turned around. In just that brief period of time the storm had passed and blue skies were making a return.

My drive back to Canyon, west to Norris, south to Madison and out via the West gate was uneventful. Herds of bison along the Madison saw me off until next time.

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On the third day of my solo camping trip to Yellowstone I got a good dose of the ‘sunshine vitamin’ despite a frosty start.  It was 24 degrees Fahrenheit as I rolled out of camp at 6:30 and the world was glazed with frost.

It was a bright and beautiful morning. I hadn’t taken the Upper Terrace Drive yet this trip. Besides having great thermals, we’ve had some memorable wildlife encounters there on previous trips so I thought I better check it out this morning. No wildlife on this day, but the morning colors were fantastic.

I decided to head for the Upper Geyser Basin, via Dunraven -> Hayden -> West Thumb. I couldn’t resist a detour east to the Sedge Bay area to check for Circus Bear. He had a three-ring circus going, too, despite being 150 yards or so from the road and obscured by standing dead timber. I didn’t linger.

I enjoyed the beautiful day and made frequent stops to enjoy the views.

I dallied enough on the way that it was about 2:00 when I arrived at the Upper Geyser Basin. I made a stop at the temporary Visitor’s Center to check for predicted geyser eruption times and discovered that an eruption of Grand Geyser was imminent. I started hoofing it for Grand, noting as I did that the Beehive Indicator was erupting. I was torn. I decided that watching Beehive from the bridge on the way to Grand would allow me to see both if they erupted at the same time.

As it turns out, I could have detoured to Beehive and made it back to Grand with about 15 minutes or so to spare. Oh, well. Hindsight and all that… Saw the plumes of Old Faithful, Daisy and Grotto from the benches at Grand Geyser.

After enjoying a Grand eruption, I headed over to Riverside Geyser, stopping along the way to watch Grotto for a few minutes.

I had a bit of a wait there — about an hour — but was rewarded with rainbows (can you see the faint upper rainbow)?

After the Riverside eruption, there was another moment of indecision — head go Great Fountain (a 15 minute or so drive) or wait for Daisy Geyser? I decided to leave directly. Good call. I made it to Great Fountain with just five minutes to spare. Checking the exterior temperature as I drove off, I noted that it was 74 degrees Fahrenheit. I had traded the frost of the morning for a sun burn and gained 50 degrees.

While a wait-free eruption is a treat, I had actually hoped that Great Fountain would erupt at the end of its predicted eruption window or run late — I so wanted a sunset eruption! Greedy! I didn’t get the sunset eruption I hoped for, but the eruption of Pink Cone was a nice consolation prize.

So, counting those geysers of which I saw the plumes if not a full view of the eruption, I witnessed 8 geyser eruptions in about 3.5 hours. No complaints!

Before calling it a night, I checked in with my pika pal again.

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Day 2 of my 4 day solo camping trip to Yellowstone…

I started out by re-tracing my path of the day before to a certain extent to hit the bear likely hotspots with a mid-morning detour stop on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to walk the trail out to Red Rock which is a 3/8 mile offshoot with a 500 foot elevation gain that is accessed from the Lookout Point overlook. 

Of course, I spent a few minutes at the Lookout Point overlook, too.

By early afternoon I had come to the conclusion that it is written in the hidden book of rules that I may have either bears or good weather.  It was a beautiful day.  I resigned myself to the lack of bears. No sooner did I have that thought, and express it via Facebook text post (having, by this time, found my phone in the bag of rice cracker mix), that I came upon a forming bear jam.  The grizzly bear known to regulars as ‘Circus Bear’ was between Steamboat Point and Sedge Bay.  I arrived just in time for him to cross the road just feet in front of my front bumper.

Having crossed the road, his nose was to the ground, seemingly searching for something upon which to browse.

Apparently there was nothing appetizing at that particular spot so he traveled about half a mile to the east, paralleled for a while by an idiot with a phone cam at a distance of 15 yards from the bear. I, too, was paralleling the bear’s path, but from within my car while trying to take photos, not run over the idiot, and encourage the idiot to gain some sense. Words of caution went unnoticed so I resorted to insults which brought him to a stop at least long enough for the travel of the griz to increase the distance between the two to about 60 yards.

After Circus Bear had moved into the timber across the road from Sedge Bay, I turned around and headed for the Storm Point trail head. The trail head was liberally posted with ‘Warning, Bear Frequenting Area’ signs, but the novelty of those signs had already worn off as the Indian Creek Campground was similarly liberally adorned. I donned the backpack and headed out.

The trail starts out along Indian Pond (an interesting hydrothermal explosion crater) but soon enters an old growth stand littered with matchstick dead fall, sometimes as deep as chest high.

The views from the point are well worth the short (and pretty darn flat!) hike and I enjoyed taking them in.

After finishing my walk at Storm Point, I proceeded south as far as the Gull Point Drive along the west shore of Yellowstone Lake before turning back for a bit earlier night to camp, stopping along the way to observe the osprey nest on a spire in the Grand Canyon just down from Tower where I enjoyed watching the parents feed three chicks and also at the peregrine falcon nest just up from Calcite Springs at which I saw the falcon with one hatchling and one unhatched egg. My last stop of the evening was made in search of pika, a search which met with success.

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Friday night  through Tuesday evening I enjoyed my first solo camping trip to Yellowstone National Park.  I had a wonderful time!

I drove through the Roosevelt Arch around 10:00 on Friday night, headed for the Indian Creek Campground, having received a kind and well-timed message from Dave Shumway that there were open campsites to be found there.  Indian Creek CG also had the advantage of being a short drive in from Gardiner and also smack dab between two promising bear areas — the territory of the grizzly sow with four cubs of the Swan Lake area and the grizzly sow with two cubs of the Norris area. I found the campground 2/3 empty (while the others in the Park were full).  I made camp in the dark under the very dim light of a sputtering Coleman lantern and climbed into the tent where I enjoyed the lullaby of romantic frogs.

Following the late night arrival I didn’t get a super early start, but early enough (around 7:30am) to enjoy morning light at Swan Lake Flats.

And if that view weren’t enough, I was also privileged with my first look of the family of five as the mama griz and her four youngsters were briefly visible before they dropped over the ridge down into Gardiner’s Hole. At 78x with Dad’s PF-100ED and variable eyepiece, I was able to enjoy a good look. The day and trip was off to a GREAT start!

After the bear family dropped out of sight I headed east toward Tower. Between Roosevelt and Rainy Lake I saw a black bear immediately next to the road. It was in a high contrast sun/shade poor light spot and there was no where to park so I continued onward and headed up Dunraven. Had I lingered there at the black bear I would have missed my next grizzly family of the day, a sow with two cubs on Dunraven Pass.

I drove through the Hayden Valley and then turned east at Fishing Bridge and went as far as Sylvan Lake before turning around to head for the Lamar Valley and then Trout Lake.

As I rounded the bend approaching the bridge over the Yellowstone River (across from ‘Wrecker’), I ran into a small collection of cars parked off the road and people with cameras and binoculars trained on the hillside to the north. The object of their attention: a fox sitting still as a statue with eyes trained on a marmot sunning itself on a flat-topped boulder. I joined the audience. After a few moments the fox made a move on the marmot. I was not surprised to see that endeavor fail. However, the fox immediately grabbed a consolation prize.

The fox carried its Columbian ground squirrel take out across the road and down into the gulch on the other side after some misadventure with a jerk with Ontario plates who tried to prevent it from crossing the road by blocking its path with his moving vehicle, angering the fox’s audience and prompting me to shout out “Hey! Ontario! KNOCK IT OFF!!!” which earned me a finger out the window. Oh, well…

I enjoyed a pretty, but uneventful drive through the Lamar Valley to the Trout Lake trail head. I packed up the backpack with water, snacks and rain gear and headed up the trail. I planned, originally, to wait up to an hour for otters. However, I found the lake so peaceful and was adequately entertained by Audubon’s yellow-rumped warblers, tree swallows, rough-winged swallows and muskrats that I sat in the light rain and just enjoyed the peace for three and a half hours.

I was hanging out near the inlet and the ‘dining log’ from which vantage I had watched an otter fish in the area, swim alongside the log (teasing me), and have a roll and a poo about 50 yards from me. What a tease! When she did catch a fish, she ate it partially under the roots of a tree on the east bank. Between the dark clouds, the rain and the shade of that hollow, she couldn’t have picked a tougher spot for photo light. Okay, maybe she could have, but it was bad enough. ISO 1600 makes noisey photos.

After finishing her dinner, she swam across to the west shore where she slid up on a grass covered log, rubbed her belly, took a look around, then slid back into the water.

I took that as my cue to leave. I got back to the car and started my drive back west to Indian Creek. Shortly thereafter I discovered that my cell phone was missing and that checking in with family and friends for the next three days was going to be sketchy.

I arrived back at camp just before dark and enjoyed a burger and a couple beers at my campfire before turning in for the night.

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In the blue corner, weighing in at approximately 1500 pounds, “The Big Dude.”

In the red corner, weighing in at approximately 12 pounds, “Little Red.”

I was enjoying a close encounter with “The Big Dude,” trying to keep the legal (by Yellowstone regulation) 25 yards between us (but no more), backpedaling when he closed the gap. He was minding his own business, browsing, oblivious to me and the handful of other people present.

Suddenly, he got spooked. Immediately prior he had taken a few steps in my direction, narrowing the gap to about 15 yards. I was just starting to backpedal to increase the distance when he reacted. I didn’t know what he was reacting to. It’s spooky being that close to a 1500 pound animal ready to bolt. I about crapped my pants thinking I might be in his escape path. He was looking up the gulch along the game trail. At first I thought perhaps some fool had gone down there and got too close. I was carefully stepping backwards and keeping my eye on him when it occurred to me I should see what the threat was and if that was something else for me to worry about. I was relieved to see the fox trotting down the game trail, feeling it, at least, wasn’t another source of danger for me to worry about. I continued to increase my distance…

Then the fox picked up the pace and started running at the moose wearing a rather shit-eating grin, if you ask me.

The moose bolted and took off as though pursued by the hounds of Hell.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud.

The fox, having chased off the moose, then began to do a balance beam act on deadfall in the gulch then stopped and cocked his head in the posture of a canine mousing.

And, hearing what those keen ears were listening for, pounced

And came up with a mouse or vole

Which he carried it few feet over to his al fresco dining room

What fun!!!

The fox did the balance beam act for a while longer to the great entertainment of the kids.

This action, as those “in the know,” can probably guess, took place off the spur road to the Petrified Tree.

After being thoroughly entertained there, we continued eastward. We saw a black bear with a second year cub in Little America. Another small bear, I theorize perhaps her other second year cub, was up in an aspen tree about a quarter of a mile away. Won’t be long before mom tells them it’s time for them to make a living on their own.

After a trip as far east as Soda Butte we turned around to head for home via Dunraven Pass and out the West gate, having received a welcome phone call from Stacy telling us that the pass had opened that morning.

We detoured up Slough Creek so I could check for wildflowers. There was a beautiful big patch of pasqueflowers.

[IMG]http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y254/kalamitykatie/YNP%20May%202010/IMG_1698-edit600l.jpg[/IMG]

It was a fun three days!

(but I hate how Photobucket butchers photos –gonna have to stop using it)

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On Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, I suggested that since the kids’ trip to Old Faithful with Mom and Laura the previous day had been aborted due to snow/slush/rain, I’d take the kids and make it a hydrothermal feature day including West Thumb, Old Faithful, Black Sand Basin and Firehole Lake Drive. I also planned to get Elisha and Reannan started on their Junior Ranger bear badge and Bridger started on his Junior Ranger wolf badge. Laura joined me on this mission. We got a late start into the Park after rearranging which van had which food and gear.

We headed south from Mammoth on the lookout for the griz with four cubs that had been in the area between the Hoodoos and Sheepeater Cliffs. Near miss, I’m guessing from the traffic jam in that area. Foiled again. Ah, well…

When we got to the area near the Museum of the National Park Ranger I thought we’d had another near miss. However, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this time our timing was just right.

The kids enjoyed that trio almost as much as I did. 4GB of photos later we continued south and turned east at Norris Junction. Passing through the Hayden Valley I stopped at an overlook to see what the people set up with scopes there were looking at. Sleeping griz. Not terribly exciting but it added another griz to the day’s tally. One of the guys I visited with there during that brief stop said there’d been a griz around Steamboat Point earlier in the day.

When we got to Fishing Bridge I wrestled with indecision. That detour would take enough time that we’d be short for hitting all the thermal areas I had in mind for that day. I couldn’t resist. Good call. We enjoyed this griz for another 4GB worth of photos, sometimes as close as 25 yards from the car. The kids don’t get very excited about binocular or scope bears but bears they can actually see well with the naked eye are another matter! That brought our griz count of the day to five.

Time now being a bit short, we skipped West Thumb and proceeded directly to the Upper Geyser Basin with fingers crossed for good timing and a short wait for Old Faithful. Predicted eruption was about 40 minutes away. Laura and the kids decided to hit the OFI gift store while I went to check out Castle Geyser. I visited with a guy there who told me that Grand Geyser was at the end of its predicted eruption period. Luck had been so good thus far that day and I have, despite all my trips to Yellowstone, never had the right timing to catch a Grand eruption. Over to Grand I went and waited, and was rewarded.

Given the lateness of the day, we decided to skip Black Sand Basin. We did take Firehole Lake Drive as we headed back north to Gardiner. A bit north of Tuff Cliffs there were a few cars pulled over and people looking across the Gibbon River. The people there, an Indian family, told me a black bear had disappeared into the trees. We proceeded slowly north with eyes peeled. I spotted the bear. Black bear my butt! It was a very dark griz, but a griz nonetheless, as was apparent to me when I first spotted it, with half of it concealed by a tree. The half I could see was the rear half but clearly too big to be a black bear. When it emerged Bridger agreed with me (nice to have a 9 year old agree!). Griz. Our sixth of the day, and another “naked eye bear,” prompting Bridger to declare “We are grizzly stinkin’ rich!” I couldn’t agree more!

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