Yellowstone North - Wild and Wooly

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I know, I know. I've been writing novellas. I'm trying to be less verbose. To that end this is a combined journal for our first two days in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park. Also, for my friend working on the special project - can I get a halleluia? I'm so happy the mission was accomplished. I want to hear all about it.
Yellowstone...finally! While this trip is a journey vacation rather than a destination vacation, it started out as a trip to Yellowstone. Everything else was added in because we were going to be in the neighborhood...well, except for the Battle of the Little Bighorn. I don't think that area - or Montana in general - are in anyone's neighborhood. Jeez, that's a long way up there! But I'm getting sidetracked again. We didn't get in a big hurry to leave Cody in order for Steve to make some business calls but it's not a far drive to get to Yellowstone from Cody. Even so, it was a nice, but cool, day when we left Cody and it was much colder and drizzly when we got to Yellowstone. I have heard that the park does roadwork somewhere in the park every year. This year one of the places under construction was the east entrance. The road was down to one lane for probably the first 10 miles. Traffic was really backed up and when it finally got moving the top speed was somewhere around 7.4 mph. Or maybe it just felt like it because I had to pee so bad! I'd been up since around 5:00 drinking coffee and watching the sun rise and just hanging out. I didn't think to limit my intake. Ohmygosh did I regret it! So, there we were, backed up in traffic, moving rreeaallyy slowly, with my bladder screaming at me. Finally, I see a building ahead that looks like a bathroom...yes! It is. Nooooo! It's closed due to the construction! So, now I'm really in trouble! I'm looking at the map to check the construction area and where the next restroom would be and trying to judge whether or not I can make it. No way. Unh-unh. Not gonna happen. I was just about to seriously start spying out a good tree to hide behind when up ahead I spot a johny-on-the-spot. Now in normal situations I would only use this kind of potty as a last resort. Well, we were so far from it being a last resort. My dignity was on the line, cause I was just about to pee my pants. So I pulled into the construction area. There were all these big bulldozers, fork lifts, cranes, dump trucks, etc. and our little Dodge Caravan. Big burly construction guys with long pants, long sleeve shirts and hard hats and little ole me (yes, little. When it's your story you can call it anyway you want to.) in capri pants, sleeveless shirt and sandals. I know all the guys working around there wondered what the heck was going on but I just pretended I knew what I was doing and no one said anything. (Kinda along the lines of the saying, “If you walk fast and carry a clip board, you can go anywhere”.) And, oh, did I feel better! Now I could finally concentrate on something else besides my all-consuming need.
We intended to take a look around at things and get the “lay of the land” before heading to our cabin. Driving out of the construction zone one of the first things we saw, of course, was a buffalo walking in the middle of the road. It was really cool. Traffic was still backed up but this time for a different reason. Funny how it was all cars headed into the park that were stopped looking and taking pictures. I guess for everyone leaving the park it was no longer a novelty. How do you get used to seeing buffalo wandering freely down the road? Seriously. The buffalo in Yellowstone are pretty well represented. You see them individually, in pairs, and small groups to large herds. They are all over. As are the buffalo chips! Watch where you step when in the park. And not just because of the bison.
One goal for our time in Yellowstone was to see as many different species of wildlife as we could. And we did! (Note to self - next time invest in a spotting scope!) Besides the buffalo, elk, mule deer and a grizzly we didn't get close enough to anything to see it well without binoculars. Yeah, a grizzly...I'll get to that in a minute.
We've had the same pair of binoculars since time began. I can't even remember the occasion that prompted us to buy them. It must have been some other vacation long ago. Well, every time we saw a group of cars stopped on the road we would check out what was going on. Our first encounter where we needed the binoculars was to spot a pair of bald eagles. The folks with the high powered scopes said they were mating but they just looked like a brown and white blob to me. Maybe that's a good thing though...this blog is G-rated, after all. Anyway, with the naked eye they were just a tiny little pinpoint of white on a small bluff a freakin' long way away. I'm not a good judge of distance. I kind of have to think how many football fields away something is. Well, the eagles looked to be at least 10 fields away. I was thankful for the binoculars we had but sure wished I'd had the foresight to invest in a more powerful pair. But then we don't have much need for high-powered scopes in Springfield, now do we? Well, it wasn't intentional but we ended up getting a new pair anyway. One of the boys, who shall remain nameless 'cause it was an accident and I could have broken them (and the camera) when I fell in the Black Hills, was running and slipped on the gravel and grabbed onto a large rock to keep from going down. Unfortunately, he had the binocs in his hand when he did so. One lens got a chip in it which didn't seem like such a big deal looking at it, but when you looked through it you would think you'd been on a three-day drunk. There were two of everything! Try as you might you just couldn't get the images aligned. (Well maybe if you closed one eye and squinted really hard.) So we needed to replace them as quickly as possible but in the park you're pretty much a captive audience. There are 'general stores' but they are run by the concessionaire and they charge a mint for everything. Where's a Wal-Mart when you need one (and you know my thoughts about Wal-Mart.) We had to drive up to the northern entrance in Gardiner (Montana again!) to get a new pair but these puppies are cool! If you know binoculars, and I don't, ours were 7x35's and the new ones are 10x50's. I really don't know what the heck that means except that I could have seen the bald eagle show if I'd have had them then! All that said, they really were an asset in the park.
Some of the wildlife we saw:
dozens of different kinds of birds not native to Missouri
hundreds of bison (yep, hundreds!)
lots of elk and mule deer
three bald eagles
a wolf (extremely cool!)
ospreys on their nests as well as flying
a coyote
and, yes, grizzles (plural, as in more than one. Six in fact if you count the three babies separately).
The bald eagles we were alerted to by seeing people with spotting scopes on pull-outs along the road. People were always really great to point out where they were seeing what they were seeing. It's what you do. There's a nice camaraderie in the park. Everyone wants everyone else to see the cool stuff. (only it's kind of embarrassing when you point something out to the new person who just walked close to you only to discover that she's the one who pointed it out to you in the first place! Not that that happened to me, of course!) Seeing people with scopes was also how I saw the first grizzly sow with her baby. They were on a hill way across the valley. You couldn't even see them with the naked eye. Looking through some guy's scope (usually those with the big guns would let you see through them) I saw them but couldn't get a handle on where they were to look through the binoculars to see if I could pick them up. By the time the boys and Steve tried to see, she had gone into the woods. I so hoped we would get another chance. And we did just a few minutes later.
Again, a large gathering of cars and people - this one the largest yet! There was a park ranger directing traffic. Someone, and I have no idea how they could have, had spotted a grizzly fighting a coyote for a recent kill. And I'm not talking through the valley and across the hill. I'm talking maybe 100 feet off the road! We stood there looking at this wild grizzly bear eating the flesh from some animal and all the time in my head I'm telling myself how stupid this was. We're animals. With flesh. Probably taste like chicken. I finally decided that we were probably pretty safe. Carnivores in the wild go for the weakest in the herd, right? Well there were some pretty old folks there. I knew I could out run them. (I'm kidding!) Jake got a pretty good view through a professional wildlife photographer's lens at the bear with blood all over its face. Kinda gory but he thought it was really awesome. We stood watching the bear for probably 30 minutes. When he looked at the crowd, and we could see his face straight on, it was really an amazing sight. To be that close to a grizzly in the wild, eating a stolen kill, was really pretty mind-boggling. And scary. When we finally left we hadn't gone very far when we saw another traffic jam. This time a sow with two babies in a meadow a hundred yards off the road. The cubs were adorable! The were rolling around on each other and chasing each other - just like you see in nature shows. It was fantastic! (We also got to share our binoculars with a little old man who didn't speak English and couldn't see what all the fuss was about. That was also very cool.)
So, three grizzles in one day! In about one hour! We've had people tell us that that just doesn't happen. Grizzles aren't as common in the park as black bears so you don't see them that often. And we saw them three times! I really feel blessed to have gotten that opportunity. And all this with the grizzly happened as we were headed back from an area called Lamar Valley. We were told several times that was the area to go to if you wanted to see wildlife.
We planned the Lamar trip for the second day in the northern part of the park. I got everyone up at 5:15 (yes, a.m.) to throw on some clothes and hit the road. The boys - who were agreeable, and even enthusiastic, the night before - were less than thrilled. I don't think Steve was loving it much either. Anyway we stopped at a pull-off overlooking a large expanse of the valley. There were so many buffalo there! (This is where the hundreds number came from.) I got out of the van (the temperature was somewhere around 40 degrees) and started scoping things out. Finally, it paid off! A wolf! Dark brown, maybe? Not the gray I expected. Still, a wolf! I got so excited to see one that I turned my head to tell the boys what I had spotted before I marked the location! Idiot! When I turned back from alerting them I couldn't find it again. I was pretty sure I was looking in the same general area as before but I couldn't spot it. Dang! Now they thought I was nuts! Dreaming it, I suppose, because I wanted to see one so badly. After a few minutes a wildlife viewing expedition stopped at our pull-off and the guide set up his scope. He confirmed that I could very well have seen a wolf as there was a large pack that roamed this area. Vindication!! Well, sort of. I would still have felt better if someone else had seen it too. We looked a little while longer and then headed on out toward the end of the valley. We stopped a little way farther where other spotters were gathered. Sure enough, they had spotted a wolf and knew others were in the area because they had radio collars. HA! Here was my vindication! One of the wolves with a collar that was in the area was wolf # 257! Guess what color she was? HA! Brown! And guess where the tracking device indicated she was? HA! West a little ways... right where I spotted her! I knew I wasn't nuts! However, the boys never got to see a wolf that morning. Too bad, but at least they got to see a moose in the Big Horn mts. I still hadn't seen one!
Some other highlights from the northern part:
Roosevelt Lodge and cabins. The lodge was built forever ago and is more rustic than others in the north. The cabin we stayed in was one of 12 (out of 80) with its own bathroom. That's one of the benefits to reserving 13 months ahead of time, I guess. Still it was pretty rustic, too. One room big enough for 2 beds, a desk, and a sink. The stool and shower were in a separate closet-sized room. So, rustic, but not primitive.
Having a bison walk through the middle of camp early in the morning.
Watching the boys play gunfight with little kids in the camp. They were getting shot right and left and making all the appropriate grunts and moans and falling around. The little kids were eating it up! They were laughing like, well, little kids. It was really sweet.
The “Grand Canyon” of Yellowstone. It was really beautiful! (Looking over the railing at the observation points made me queasy!) The colors were gorgeous, and the waterfalls? Ohmygosh...really amazing.
Spying out osprey nests way out on rocky ledges in the canyon.
Seeing mountains everywhere you looked.
Walking around the mud pots and “Sulpher Cauldron” in a geothermal area.
Animals, animals, and more animals!
The northern part of Yellowstone is just as wild and untamed as I had hoped it to be. It's not as developed (except Mammoth Hot Springs) as other areas in the park. We could walk anywhere and see anything we wanted to without having to fight crowds. I really loved that. I really recommend northern Yellowstone as the place to stay if you ever get over this way. It's really a little slice of heaven on earth. We'll see if the southern area can compare when we head that direction tomorrow.

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Comments

[Christina]

Grizzly
I have not ever seen a Grizzly, what an experience and while eating!!! I am amazed at all the great pictures Jackie. The Canyon shots were so detailed. Continue enjoying and take it that Great Mountain air!!!! See ya soon. Prayers continue

[caroline]

thank you!
we're off to yellowstone in a week or so -- thanks for your insight --- will look forward to the rest of your "hot tips" -- if you had 3 days -- where would you spend the least amount of time?? thanks again!!!

[Quest to the West]

For Caroline
Our preference would be to spend one day in the southern half of the park and the other two days in the northern. While the southern area is great, it just can't be the wildlife and nature hikes availble in the northern area. I would spend the least amount of time in the lodge areas and get out on the trails! Be sure to hit Lamar Valley (on the way to the northeast entrance) one morning or evening. Enjoy!!