Since our last update, we continued to have a great time in Yellowstone. The park truly is special. The abundance of wildlife is amazing and the scenery is good, but the geothermal features are really what set it apart. Going in, I knew about Old Faithful and all the geysers, but what I didn't realize is that the entire park is basically one big still active volcano. There are bubbling puddles of mud and gurgling hot springs everywhere. I went exploring around our campground to a beautiful little meadow in a valley with a small river snaking through, and almost walked into a big boiling pit of water that spilled into the river. Apparently it's all going to erupt again one day, so anyone who hasn't been there needs to plan a trip. The clock is ticking...
One thing about Yellowstone is that it is HUGE. We literally drove at least 300 miles in our 3 days in the park. From the east entrance, that we came in to, our campground was 55 miles away, and our campground is "centrally located". The main road is basically shaped like a big "8", so we spent one day exploring the north loop and the next circling the south. We saw Old Faithful erupt, of course, which was cool but not all that great since you know what is coming. Gotta see it though. I guess that's why there were about 1000 people watching it with us. I actually found the best parts of the park to be some of the least visited. The Lamar Valley in the northeast corner was probably my favorite, and not coincidentally its one of the best places to spot wildlife, especially bears and wolves (though we saw neither while we were there).
A running joke that we had was that when you see somebody pulled over taking hundreds of pictures of a lone bison or elk, "they must have just got here." There are something like 15-25 thousand elk in the park, and about 3-4 thousand bison. You're going to see them, and a lot of them. You'll probably get within 10 feet of the bison too, as they seem to like to stand in the road. At some point you almost stop caring and become obsessed with finding the bears, wolves, and other hard-to-spot animals. That being said, seeing the huge herds of bison was pretty neat and you couldn't help but think about the old days when there were millions of them roaming the plains.
Luckily we do have some more good wildlife spotting to report. On Monday we did a hike up Mount Washburn, where you can get great panoramic views of the park and beyond. We were told that this was a great place to see the Bighorn Sheep, but didn't spot any on the way up. There are actually 2 trails to get to the peak, and we talked to a couple who had just come up the other way and seen lots of sheep. So naturally we were pretty disappointed since we couldn't go back down the way they had hiked since it would put us too far from our car. Of course we still didn't see any on the way back down (I can't see sheep!). Then, as we round a corner of the path, about 40 yards in front of us was a big stinkin Grizzly standing in the path. Luckily we didn't startle him or anything, and he slowly moved off the path. Steph frantically looked for a stick, Taylor whipped out her camera and started walking towards the bear, and I tried to remember what the rangers told us to do. We waited a minute and made a lot of noise as we moved down the path (there was no way around), and the bear moved of the trail and disappeared in the trees. It was definitely the highlight of the trip, so far...
Aside from the grizzlies, elk, and bison, we saw pronghorn antelope, bald eagles, a coyote, a black bear, an otter, sandhill cranes, and an osprey. We woke up and broke camp early on Wednesday, our last day, since Taylor had a flight to catch at about 5 and we hadn't even seen Grand Teton Nat'l Park yet. As we drove out of the park, though, we saw a ray of hope. There is a group of people who watch the wolves of the park almost constantly. They study their habits, keep track of the family structures, and follow the dynamics between the different packs. We hadn't seen them yet in all our driving around the park, but there they were, in a part of the park we had been through tons of times. We got out and they informed us that the wolves should be there soon as this was their "rendezvous point." And by this I mean at least a half mile away down in a valley. So we waited. And waited. Finally one guy said he saw the alpha female come out of the trees, but she went back in before any of us could spot her. After about 15 more minutes of waiting and watching, I saw a little movement of gray from my $15 Target binoculars (everybody else had expensive spotting scopes). Sure enough, it was the alpha female with her little pup in tow. We couldn't see much from the binoculars, but one of the wolf guys was nice enough to let us look through his scope. The female was a light gray color and the little pup chasing behind her was jet black. Even though we only saw them for a few seconds each through the scope, it was really a cool moment and probably our favorite spotting we had.
After that we had to head down to Grand Teton so we could spend some time in the park, but construction and a good hour delay really set us back. Still, it was a beautiful day and the mountains are spectacular, and we found a great lunch spot right on the shore of Jenny Lake with Grand Teton right in front of us. Steph even exclaimed that it was one of her top 5 favorite spots in the world (so far..). After a very short time in the park, including a brief chilling swim in of the lakes by me, we drove down to Jackson and dropped Taylor off at the airport. The next time we see her will hopefully be in New Zealand...
I've been to Jackson Hole in the winter for skiing and thought it was fairly crowded, but during the summer it is absolutely packed. We lucked into a parking spot right in town and walked around a bit and checked out some of the shops. It didn't take long for me to be sick of the crowds, so we headed south along the Snake River towards our budget motel in Montpelier. As you may have figured out, we didn't quite make it. The office was closed by the time we got there (the place looked shady anyways), so we came back up the road a bit to this KOA. It turned out good since they have showers and free internet. Today we'll drive down to Salt Lake City for a couple nights, do a little sightseeing, but mostly rest, do some laundry, stuff like that. Oh ya, it's Steph's birthday tomorrow so we'll have to go do something fun.
UPDATE: Photos are posted on Picassa. We'll put more on the blog tonight.
Bear on trail
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