On this day I would have to head home — but not before having some more fun in the Park.

I pulled up my tent stakes and packed up, then headed south from the Norris Campground as far as the Gibbon Meadows. I caught a quick glimpse of a grizzly bear through the morning fog, but he disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

I headed back north to make one last (of this trip) swing through the Northern Range.

It was a peaceful, quiet morning.

Once again, I took the old stagecoach gravel road from Mammoth Hot Springs to the North Entrance and, once again, found only cow elk.
This lovely cow elk, posing with the sun highlighting the gold tones in her beautiful coat, is a view guaranteed to entice any bull elk thereabouts, but the bulls were not to be found on this morning.

I drove back up the Gardiner Canyon main road and headed east.

I never drive by the Petrified Tree turnout without taking that little spur road.  I’ve seen moose, foxes, many black bears, and occasional mule deer there.  I was a bit surprised to see this whitetail deer doe, along with two fawns with fading spots.  That’s mule deer country!

There was some interesting bison activity in the Lamar Valley.  There was quite a dust-up occurring in one herd, with a double header of two pairs of bulls sparring at the same time, while other members of the herd were stampeding about.

Just a little east of the Soda Butte geyser cone, I was excited to find an undiscovered bull bison carcass just about 100 yards from the road — only magpies and I had found it thus far.  I watched as magpies landed on the carcass and pecked at it.  I resigned myself to getting home VERY late that night (or perhaps even calling my boss and asking to extend my vacation).  I positioned the car better so I could comfortably watch and wait for bears, wolves or coyotes to discover the carcass.  The magpies continued to work at it.  I sent a text message to my dad, who was also in the Park, to alert him of the existence of this carcass, which was sure to become an active hotspot soon.  Then there was a flurry of activity as the carcass lifted its head and the magpies took off.   Alrighty, then.  Not dead.  Sick?  Dying?  I debated with myself.  Wait and see what might happen?  Head home?  I decided heading home was the more prudent course.  In the end, that proved to be the right call.  Nothing ever happened there I found in checking with others that were in the Park in the following days.

I wanted to re-visit the talus slope where I had seen the weasel make a strike on a pika earlier in the trip, hoping for a repeat performance.  I didn’t get a repeat performance, but I DID get a great pika show.

Pika eat stems of currant leaves just like kids  (of all ages) eat spaghetti noodles.  Slurp!

I dared this pika to try the noodle routine with a long stem of thistle leaf, but he ultimately used a different technique.

My dare prompted this pika to make a smart-aleck remark.

This pika almost ran over my feet.

Not to be outdone, this pika demonstrated his talent for fire eating.

Meanwhile, a more serious and industrious pika, like any good haymaker, was busy making hay while the sun shines.   Pikas don’t hibernate – rather, they store hay in their dens to get them through lean winter days.

When a red-tailed hawk circled overhead, sending the pikas deep into hiding, I decided it was time for me to head home before my imagination ran entirely away with me.

After a night of very poor sleep, having spent it in the car where it was parked at White Dome Geyser, even though my tent was pitched at Norris Campground, because I was too tired to drive back to camp, I got in motion again before sunrise.

I figured, since I was in the neighborhood, and since I haven’t taken any photos there in ages, I’d hit Firehole Falls…

…then the cascades on the Firehole River near the end of Firehole Lake Drive.

I made a brief stop at Norris Campground to re-register for a couple more nights, then headed over to Canyon.  I turned on to the road to Artist Point, as I had several times before, to see if that herd I had seen from the Wapiti Lake Trail Head might be around.  They weren’t.  But, once again, I figured that as long as I was in the neighborhood, at it was getting to be that time, I might as well park and see how the morning rainbow in the spray of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone displayed on this day.  Not the best rainbow there, not by a long shot…

I turned north after the visit to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, driving slowly over Dunraven and stopping for several minutes at each pullout, searching for bears in the white pines.  Nothin’.

I turned east for a trip to the Lamar Valley.  Near the bridge over the Yellowstone River I saw 3 mule deer bedded down on the other side of the ravine. This doe didn’t seem impressed or amused when I said “My, what big ears you have!”

After an uneventful tour of the Northern Range, I again drove the old stagecoach gravel road from Mammoth Hot Springs to Gardiner.
I came upon a few cow elk, one of which seemed to be calling “Romeo, Romeo, where art thou, Romeo,” but Romeo was nowhere to be found.

For my last stop of the day, I visited a large herd of elk near Canyon Junction, about 800 yards from the road, at the timber line.  I walked out about 600 yards.  The harem bull was very wary of me and it was clear that 200 yards was as close as I was going to get and the light was fading anyway, and I was whipped after the previous night’s lack of sleep, so I headed to camp to cook a real meal and hit the sack early.

I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the day.  I pulled up my tent stakes at Lewis Lake Campground before sunrise and made the short drive to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, fingers crossed that the harem that had been there on the evening of the 10th would making a sunrise show.  I was not disappointed.  It was a different bull on this morning, and with only one cow, but he posed beautifully.

I mentioned in passing in my trip report for Sept 8-10 that the bull that evening had chased off a spike bull and menaced visitors on the boardwalk.  I neglected to mention, then, that what saved the visitors on the boardwalk was the obstacle of hot spring pools.  The bull on that evening charged at them (from well over 50 yards away), and skidded to a stop when he came to a hot spring pool.  I kept that in mind on this morning, keeping a Black Pool (a large hot spring pool) between this bull and me.  He never made any menacing motions, but I am wary of bulls in rut.  Without the barrier of Black Pool between us, his stare would have made me uneasy.

He sure is a handsome gent.

The view was pretty good looking the other direction, too.

After the sun rose, the elk moved off to the west and I walked around the rest of the geyser basin.  Pulling out of the parking lot, and heading north, I encountered the pair again.  The bull was grazing amongst pearly everlasting wild flowers.

The bulls get most of the human attention this time of year, so I feel compelled to point out how gorgeous his companion was looking with her hide glowing with radiance in the morning sunlight.

I went north as far as the Norris Campground, where I put my tent stakes down again before turning south again, but this time along the western side of the Great Loop.  I haven’t stopped to check out The Chocolate Pots for a while, so I stopped at that pullout.

The light was right for granting a good view of the red streambed of the Gibbon River.  The streambed is red there and at other sections.  I always intended to do a long exposure of a section of ripples over the red streambed along the Gibbon.  I blew my opportunity to do so easily when I failed to do so before the road was re-routed.  I remain curious as to what makes the stream bed red there.  I asked a retired Ranger who, in turn, asked some former colleagues.  No definitive answer.  I’ll pose my question to a Park geologist next, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

In the afternoon I visited a talus slope where I have photographed pika in the past, like the baby pika last May.  At first I was occasionally hearing pika, but not seeing any.  I waited.  Eventually, I saw some pika.  I took a few photos, but I was hoping they would move closer to me, as they had in May.  There was one pika perched on the top of a rock, sunning.  I had my camera aimed at him when he suddenly became alert and ducked into a rock crevice.  Then – a flash of orange colored fur!  A weasel made a strike on that pika!  He emerged from the crevice almost immediately.   His strike had, apparently, been a miss.  He missed the pika, but I caught him!

The pika were apparently not taking any chances on coming out of their hidey-holes after that, so eventually I moved on and found another hunter – a coyote hunting ground squirrels.  He caught 4-5 in a 20 minute period.

A trip to Gardiner was in order to restock my beverage supply so I headed in that direction.  I took the old gravel stagecoach one-way road from Mammoth Hot Springs to Gardiner, hoping I’d find a herd of elk.  I found a small herd of cows, but no bull.  Meanwhile, I could tell there was some excitement on the main road down below me, as I could see stopped cars lining the road near the parking lot for the Boiling River trailhead.  Whatever was there then was gone by the time I had made my purchases in Gardiner and was headed up that road.

I made an evening trip to visit the Lamar Valley and found it relatively quiet but enjoyed the peace.

I opted to drive back to Mammoth before heading south instead of going over Dunraven Pass, as I found that route quite depressing this trip, with the mess of construction around Calcite Springs almost bringing tears to my eyes when I went through it.  It’s painful to me to see what they are doing there.

Returning to the south, I saw that the Cygnet Complex fires had been quite active.  I drove the Norris-Canyon road just to check it out and stopped and visited with a fire information officer who told me that it had, indeed, been a very active afternoon for fire growth and that the fire had hopped the road.  Then I retired to spend a very smokey night in my tent at the Norris Campground.