buffalo jam, elk jam, bear jam just plain traffic jam.

MOVING DAY! We seem to have a bunch of them coming up. Today we drive up to Devil’s Tower, then Cody the next day. We spend 2 nights there before heading into Yellowstone. Let’s see, that’s 3 days of driving in 4 days then 2 glorious weeks at rest. I don’t think we have ever done 2 weeks in a single spot. I am looking forward to that. We moved around something like that during our Alaskan Adventure but did spend a little more time in places. We spent 2 to 5 days anywhere we went unless we were on a real geography mover. We are just hitting the highlights on this brief jaunt. A day to drive to Devil’s Tower leaves enough time to walk around the Tower and there isn’t enough else to do there to warrant more time unless we take up rock climbing and we all know that isn’t going to happen. I’ll leave that to Brad and his friends.

We woke up to rain in Hot Springs so we got off to a slow start. We headed across country to get up to I 90. Stan had really enjoyed Wind Cave so when we passed by Jewell Cave, we pulled in and signed on for another tour of duty. Jewel cave was several degrees cooler than Wind Cave but we headed down the elevator and out on the tour. We skipped the natural entrance tour and went right for a longer tour. It contained 750 steps so we figured we were in for a climb. It wasn’t all that bad. The cave is filled with crystal formations and had a good example of cave bacon. This my third time here and this tour is not one I have been on. We enjoyed it a lot but soon were back on the road. Eventually we pulled into Gillette and stopped at WalMart to pick up a few things. We had lunch filled up with gas and were back on the road.

We drove up to Sheridan and took Route 14 through Bighorn National Park. This was a beautiful road but was severely up and down and around. The roads were narrow with tight winding turns. We drove up to 9.000 feet and encountered miles and miles of gravel road and were eventually faced with a sign that told us of 18 miles of descending road. We were told to use lower gears. It was a rough descent but we passed into a gorge that was nothing short of spectacular. We drove through several small (tiny) towns and watched the plains morph into a more cattle range environment. As we were pulling into Cody, Wy, I saw a sign noting the KOA Cody.

I pulled over to the side of the road and just stared at the sign. This was definitely not what I expected! Cheryl and I had stayed in Cody 3 years ago. I thought it was a KOA but obviously I was wrong. I pulled in and sure enough, they had my reservation. The campground I was thinking of must have been named something else (later investigation proved I was right and wrong). It was named something else and I was wrong.

We stuck around camp and ended up sleeping late the next morning. We headed into town with some errands to do. We started off at Bubba’s BBQ then I dropped everyone off at the Buffalo Bill Museum and headed off to do the errands. I found the post office and mailed some stuff then drove back to the campground to take my insulin and buy the rodeo tickets for that night and went to WalMart to download my pictures to disk. They had 4 Kodak machines and 4 Fuji machines and everyone was busy. Eventually, one freed up and I started to process my chip. After about 30 minutes of processing, my machine froze up and wouldn’t move. The clerk said she would have to reboot the machine. I knew that would take quite a while so I left.

I caught up with Stan and Cheryl and Stan at the museum and we looked at the Lewis and Clark exhibit and the natural history wing before heading off to a gunfight at the Irma Hotel. The Irma is where Buffalo Bill stayed when he was in town. They have this group that puts on a gunfight every afternoon. It was ok but the Brazos Bottom Cowographers were W A Y better when we saw them down in Bandera Texas last summer.

Soon we were on our way again, got back to camp, changed into our rodeo gear and headed out to the Cody Night Rodeo (every night from the first of June to August 31). We had a ball. We met the Rodeo Clown. He is retired but came back when the normal rodeo clown left. He kept the show moving when it slowed down and was really funny. We saw him again afterwards.

The next morning we got up late (again) and headed to the Buffalo Bill Museum about
Noon. We looked around the rest of the museum and hit the road for Yellowstone. The ever-changing landscape got more and more rugged. We passed through a large section with lots of very picturesque streams and rivers. In them were quite a few people fly fishing. It looked like the cover of a Field and Stream Magazine.

Soon there were cliffs of rocks just covered with hoodoos (a crack develops in the rock and lava forces its way up into it. Eventually, the surrounding rock erodes away leaving towers of the harder rock). We drove up to the East Entrance to Yellowstone, gave them my Senior Pass, got a bunch of brochures and informational papers and proceeded down into the Caldera (Yellowstone National Park is situated in the cone of a volcano. A long long time ago (in a galaxy far away…..no, no that is a different story) the volcano that is now Yellowstone exploded leaving this shallow caldera or cone). Since then everything that is now Yellowstone has developed. It is this volcanic activity that gives Yellowstone its geysers, mud pots, and hot pools. Eventually this will happen again but none of the scientists think it will be anytime soon. One woman in an information place told us that there were more than 10 earthquakes each day. You won’t notice them but they are there. Earlier this year there was a larger earthquake that everyone did notice. The epicenter was located deep underneath Yellowstone Lake.

When we reached the base of the entry road, we came to Yellowstone Lake and stopped at a large stone beach. We drove onto the beach (carefully but there were already some campers parked there and walked along checking the water and skipping rocks and just unwinding a bit before covering the remaining distance to Fishing Bridge. We turned into the road and registered. While we were there, we found a day we could sign up for the Cowboy Dinner and also the trail ride to get to it. We also attempted to get reservations for dinner at one of the restaurants to celebrate Stan’s Birthday. They had nothing but the woman at the desk said not to worry, she would keep on it and was sure that she would be able to accommodate us. She also said she would make arrangements for a cake to be brought to the table at the end of the meal.

We set up. This was not easy. The sites were very small. I studied it for several minutes before trying anything. We unloaded the car then had no place to put it so we left it in the middle of the road blocking traffic so no one would pull up on us while we were trying to park everything. I tried to put the trailer in the site from the wrong side (the road was one way). Soon I realized that this just wasn’t going to work so we moved the car and I drove away letting the backed up campers go on their merry way.

Through a series of crossovers, I turned the rig around and drove the wrong way down the one way street. I was then able to back the trailer into the edge of the space then unhooked it. I was now at completely the wrong angle to get into the other half of the space so I drove down (wrong way) to the next crossover again letting the line of campers through, got turned around and drove up the right way easily backing into the remaining tiny space.

There were posts sunk into the ground to keep the campers from going too far back in the space. Fortunately they were low and I could back over them (the rear of the camper not the wheels). With the trailer pushed way back and the camper pushed way back, we had room for the car in the front. Unfortunately there was no space left for us to have chairs or anything. We had filled every last inch of the space allotted to us (and more). We set our patio up on the trailer. It looks funny but does work. Several people have stopped and told us that we have the only raised deck in the park. It has been a good way to meet people and we have cooked out there and eaten out there. The only down side is that it is on the wrong side of the camper so we have to walk around everything to bring food and drink.

First full day in Yellowstone! We celebrated by getting up late and having breakfast. Today is Stan’s 62nd birthday so we will help him celebrate. I headed down to the store and picked up some eggs. There was a Kodak digital chip processor. I was kind of excited to see it until the clerk told me it didn’t work. He also said most of them in the park didn’t work. We ate and drove over to the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. We had to be back in the middle of the afternoon to get our reservation information so we planned a low key short day. As we approached the basin, we saw Old Faithful erupt over the trees. It erupts about every 90 minutes so we had some time to kill.

We pulled into the parking lot. There is a big lot then a road then a smaller version of the lot. I went for the smaller version of the lot and found that there weren’t any parking spaces available there. When I tried to go back to the large lot, I ended up on the exit road….not what I had intended. I turned into a road that went to a lot behind the Lodge and found a place. Now, this is the confusing part. I wasn’t quite sure where to go. It didn’t look anything like I remembered it from even 3 years ago. There were 2 distinct construction zones going on here where before there were only paths and trees.

The first was a brand new education building. In its “under construction” look, it seemed to replicate the look of the Old Faithful Inn but was not a log building. It had a similar shape but was covered in Tyvec so you had no idea of the final look. The second construction area was a demolition area where they were knocking down several one story buildings. Both areas were fenced off and forced you to walk around which we did and ended up in front of the lodge.

We went inside and marveled once again at the architecture of the building. It is a huge log building with a lobby that was 3 stories high. All of the wood is log and it is all very dark giving the room a dark feeling. The lights are chandeliers mounted on large metal bands with deer horns mounted all around. There is a resident artist painting in the lobby and lots of things going on to give the place a bustling feel.

The large clock on the wall did not seem to be working (it has a large pendulum and is built right into the wall). There is a gift shop which was jammed to the hilt with tourists looking for the great Yellowstone souvenir. We avoided that for the moment and headed upstairs. There is a large deck on the second floor of the front of the lodge which gives you a great view of Old Faithful. We gathered up cappuccinos and a pastry and settled in on the deck to await the next outburst.

That was when I noticed people using their cell phones all over the place. I checked mine and I had a strong signal so I checked in with my mother to see how she was doing. Soon the hour approached and we all waited excitedly. The first signs of water spurting out of the cone brought everyone to attention. It was only a couple of minutes before Old Faithful let loose with a column of water more than a hundred feet into the air. There were some oohs and ahs but mostly people were intent on not missing a bit of the eruption.

I, on the other hand, had my camera battery go dead after the first small splash. I fumbled in my camera bag for my other battery, inserted it into the camera, closed the little battery door and turned on the camera……that battery was dead also?? What did I do, change batteries and forget to charge the other one? I repeated the process using one of the commercial batteries that I keep just for this type of emergency. YES! This time it worked, oh wait, the eruption is on its last legs. The column of water is only 50 feet high and falling. I missed it!!

The good news is that we still have 12 days left and we will return here to see the rest of the basin. There is a great trail around the basin and lots of geysers so we will definitely return and I will get a second shot.

We headed downstairs and were greeted by a ranger circulating through the crowd telling everyone that the Beehive Geyser would be erupting within 10 minutes. The Beehive erupts twice a day. It doesn’t necessarily have a schedule but starts doing some distinct behaviors just before eruption so the rangers have time to notify everyone in the area that it is about to go off. We hurried (along with a couple of hundred other people over to the beehive. There was a small vent to the right of the geyser that was spurting a steady stream of water away from the cone (Beehive has a large thick cone that somewhat resembles the old round beehive. It is 3 feet high and 2 or more feet across the opening.

In a couple of minutes it went off. It produces a very thick column of water that sprays very high. It also makes a loud roaring sound and erupts for a long time (relatively). That over, I suggested that we walk through the lodge to get back to our car. WRONG! I forgot that Old Faithful Lodge has many large wings and soon we were lost in the corridors of the lodge. We ended up in a lot to the right of the hotel when we needed to be on the left. I left everyone there and went in search of. That was when I figured out the layout of the construction zones as I saw plenty of both of them as I circumnavigated both of them. Eventually I found the car and rescued my passengers.

We saw a few animals on our journey. There was a young buck elk with velvet covered horns along with what we assumed was his mother grazing alongside the road. We also saw some buffalo far off in the distance which didn’t stop the normal buffalo traffic jam. The woman at the activities desk in our campground told us that our reservations at Lake Lodge were for 8:00 PM and that the birthday cake for Stan was all arranged.

We returned to camp and had a light lunch then read and otherwise enjoyed the late afternoon. Then we dressed for dinner and popped open a bottle of champagne and started the celebration. We drove the couple of miles to the Lake area of the park. Lake Lodge is an impressive building. It is long and high. You enter through the back as the front faces Yellowstone Lake. We found the dining room in the far right end of the lodge. It has large windows facing the lake but that is somewhat muted by the hustle and bustle of the large dining room. As the sun sets, you lose the feeling of the lake and it is like any other nice dining room.

Everything is nice there. The walls are a light yellow with white. The wait staff is dressed in dark pants with white shirts and a black apron. The floors are wood and each table is draped with a stiff off white tablecloth. It gives you the feeling that everything is just right; really nice but not overdone.

Ready?? We weren’t on the reservation list. This is a big operation and we were a last minute addition but that was not a good start. They reacted like it was an everyday occurrence (which I expect is true). They wrote our name in on the list and immediately took us to a table. (When we first arrived, there was a couple that didn’t have reservations that were told they would try to work them in). We were taken to a table and almost immediately our server arrived welcoming us to the hotel and placing this wonderful dish of crusty bread and fresh crackers on the table with little ramekins of butter and soft goat cheese.

Our server was Edyta, a student from Poland (notice the theme of this trip). She was really nice and soon we had drinks. We had a cheese plate that had cheddar and blue cheese with some glazed walnuts and a fruit compote (not the Flagstones kind but a glazed dried fruit that was very sweet but tasty). I moved the survivors from the bread plate onto the cheese plate and in the end, there were no survivors of either plate.

Our theme of impending disaster continued. Cheryl order a white Russian with raspberry vodka and had to settle for a plain old white Russian as they did not have raspberry vodka in their bar. Then we ordered dinner. Cheryl ordered the halibut special. Edyta once again returned to the table with the news that they had just sold the last special (?).

To avoid later problems, I took our server aside and told her that the same person who made our reservations that were not on the listing also ordered a cake for Stan’s birthday. She said she would check on the cake but that if that also had fallen through the cracks, she would take care of it (that’s what you like to hear rather than the old “we didn’t get the message, the cakes are frozen and there isn’t…you get the picture”.

The dinner was very nice; the medallions of lamb were tasty and perfectly cooked, the surf and turf was nicely presented and the bouillabaisse was good but very delicate rather than hearty and robust (Julia (Child)) would definitely not have approved. The meal was good and the wait staff (Edyta and Christina with the water) was right on the button and very friendly.

When the meal was over, Edyta kind of snuck in and deposited the cake on the tray behind Stan and within a minute several members of the wait staff (including the dining room manager) started to gather around the table. Stan doesn’t like to be singled out and was quite embarrassed when they all began to sing to him. They sang a birthday song based on “Home on the Range”. It was unique and cute and all I could think was “Mission Complete with the embarrassment thrown in for good measure.

We all kind of staggered back to the car and traversed the 2 miles back to camp successfully. It was late but there was still an hour before the scheduled start of the meteor shower (I didn’t mention that did I?) This is the day in August when there is a meteor shower in the night. It was supposed to run between 12 and 5 am. We stayed awake and caught the first hour of it. It was quite good. There were great bright shooting stars with long tails that lingered for seconds before fading. Any other time I have tried to see this shower, it has always been cloudy or rainy or I fell asleep so this was pretty good. Sometime after 1, we gave up, put the chairs away and hit the rack.

I awoke in the middle of the night and opened the window by my bed to see what was going on but was met by a really bright moon that outshined the corner of the sky out my little window.

Wednesday has arrived….well I guess all of the stargazing happened on Wednesday but it seemed like a continuation of Tuesday. We got up really late. No one was hungry so we headed out to West Yellowstone to see if we could get Stan’s glasses fixed. This is a really big place and it takes a long time to get anywhere. We arrived in West Yellowstone (Montana) and found that there was no place to get glasses fixed. Stan made some inquiries at the police station and found that everyone there drove up to Bozeman every couple of weeks to shop and take care of business. We did manage to find a hardware store/home center and bought a piece of PVC gutter to make our sewage system work. The sewer drains around here are very high off the ground and surrounded by cement to protect them. I have wanted to make a trough system to hold the sewer hose. You don’t need it often but when you need it, you need it.

I could do without but you end up with your sewer hose along the ground then up in the air causing sewage to always be in the hose. Should something happen to either the hose or the connection between hoses, the liquid will leak out onto the ground. This trough will support the hose and let it drain constantly.

OK, here comes the notable part of the day. We took route 20 south out of town and within 10 minutes were at the Montana Idaho Border. My last state! I have now visited all 50 states. We documented the occasion with pictures. I have to admit that the “Welcome to Idaho” sign was kind of plain and uninteresting so we walked across the street and did the same thing to the Welcome to Montana sign which was much more colorful and fun but certainly less meaningful.

We reentered the park and took the northern route back to camp. We visited the Artists paintpot basin and the Norris Geyser Basin (or at least part of it. It is quite large). Then we visited Mammoth Hot Springs and saw the massive built up area there before driving back to camp. We didn’t return to camp until after 10 and missed the turn into camp. We caught that in less than a mile and recovered. We fixed a quick supper, reviewed the day’s activities and crashed.

Well, that brings us right up to today. We have driven so much in the last few days that we are going to stick close (geographically). The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is near here so we just might hike the south rim of the canyon and check out the falls close up. First, I have to install my new sewage hose management system. Wish me luck!! See you in a while…Yellowstone out!

Slick! That worked really well. The PVC gutter made a great trough for the sewer hose. I dumped the black water tank and then the grey water tank and not a wiggle. When I used the slinky thing, the whole system used to fall over so this is a great improvement.

We declared a day off. We were all pretty much traveled out and needed to catch up on some stuff. We did laundry. That is always an adventure but hopefully that is our last laundry until we get home. This trip seems to have a totally different feel than our other trips. We have a distinct timetable for the entire trip; all of our stops once we reached South Dakota were reserved before we left home. We pretty much knew where we would be at any time during the trip. We have also had company for nearly 2 weeks with more to come. It has been a lot of fun but not something we are used to. The entire pace of the trip has been more hectic since we only have 6 weeks.

The laundry room here is very nice although they only had single machines. We have gotten used to going out the laundramat and using the double and triple sized machines. It takes about the same amount of time but is easier to manage. There was one place in the laundry room where they had a couple of chairs against the wall blocking the door of the first machine in the row. I moved the chair to get at the machine. Later, a woman from the registration area came in and moved the chair back to block the machine. I moved it again and a few minutes later, she came back in, looked at the chair and moved it back in front of the door. Then she put a basket of wet laundry in the chair as if that would keep the chair from moving. I left it alone until it was time to take the clothes out of that machine and move them to a dryer.

A few minutes after I finished, she came back in and moved the chair in front of the washer’s door once again. Then she tried to open the washer and found she had to move the chair out of the way in order to put the clothes into the machine. When she finished, she put the chair back in front of the door. You guessed it, when the washer was through, she tried to open the door again and banged into the chair. Go figure!

Later in the afternoon, Cheryl and I headed back to Cody for another night at the Rodeo. It was a nice drive but the sky over Cody got darker as we got closer. Then we noticed that the road was wet. We pulled into the rodeo arena just as the sky opened up. The flags were out straight and the wind was howling. We picked up our tickets and sat in the car catching up on our phone calls. As we were climbing towards Sylvan Pass, we seemed to come into a small (very) window of cell phone reception. It was just big enough for us to get our voicemails and to return the first one before the window closed and our friends were left wondering what happened to the call. Just outside of Cody, the phone came alive again. We called our first call back to apologize for dropping them but they forced us to go to the answering machine to leave a message.

The rain started to let up but the wind continued to howl. We headed into the arena when the gates opened but we sat in the normally second class seats. The advantage was that these seats had their backs to the wind (both grandstands are covered). The people who went over to the Buzzard’s Roost sat way up near the middle to keep the rain from hitting them in the face. Soon the wind died down and the rain let up so we headed down and over to the Buzzard’s Roost. The front row was still completely empty so we grabbed what we thought were the best seats, right over chute 4. This was in the middle with the return tunnel just to the left.

These seats gave us a great view of the cowboys preparing for the bareback bronco, saddle bronc and the bull riding. Most everything else happened right in front of us too. After we arrived, the seats in the front started to fill up. More and more cars came and the busses started to arrive. They had a fair crowd but less than they had the last night we came. It was Friday night but they had fewer participants in every event but one; the bull riding.

The cowboy that won the bareback bronco riding was a high school student from Cody. He will be a senior this coming school year and was the 2008 World High School Champion. He won the bareback bronc riding both nights we were there. He got thrown on the saddle bronc both nights and the bull the first night. He didn’t ride the bulls the second night.

They did have a dozen bull riders last night (only about 8 the other night). The first night only one cowboy rode his bull. Last night 9 bulls were ridden. It was a fun night. The losers last night were the ropers. The rope and tie folks were almost a complete washout, the girls roping was the same as was the team roping. I think there were only 1 or 2 good times in each category whereas the other night almost everyone got a time.

After the rodeo, we sat in the parking lot and did some things on the computer. Not having a connection is not a good thing. I had some bills to pay and some medicine to order. Then we checked our email and set off on our return to Yellowstone. The road from Cody to Yellowstone is a dark and dreary road. There are no lights along the road and it is just dark and hard to drive. Fortunately, I followed someone who drove to within a mile of the entrance to the park. Then I was on my own. The road up over Sylvan Pass was a long uphill battle. As I reached the top, I came up on the back of a double tanker truck. I suppose someone has to deliver gas to the park but running up on this double trailer truck carrying gasoline is a little disconcerting.

He pulled right over and let me pass. As we were descending the other side, I went around a hairpin corner and looked over at the truck just a few feet from me but on a different switchback. It was a much longer drive home than it was going but eventually we arrived at the campground, made a quick bite to eat and went to bed. Stan had had a relatively quiet evening. He walked down to the ranger talk and helped the woman in the store chase a bat out of the store.

GOOD MORNING YELLOWSTONE!!!!

Its 6 am (I remember when I got up this early every morning) and we are headed out to see the latest chapter in the drama that seems to have started yesterday morning. We got up at the usual time and headed up into the Hayden Valley to see what we could see for wild animals. It was late to start but we had the opportunity to maybe see something. We checked a couple of areas and found some buffalo (too big to hide) but we did find a buffalo carcass about 300 yards off the road. It was a mother (with a calf). The thought was that she had been hit by a car and wandered off the road to die. The calf stood steadfastly by his (or her) mother for more than a day.

We returned in the afternoon to find 2 coyotes hanging around the carcass. One was trying to get by the calf to get at the carcass and the other was hiding amongst the sagebrush watching very closely. The calf kept between his mother and the coyote. The coyote would back off when the calf came towards him (once again either he or she) and circle around to try from another angle. Finally the calf charged at the coyote and he decided that there was easier food to be had elsewhere.

We watched the coyote leave the carcass area and walk directly towards our vantage point. He circled below us following the edge of the Yellowstone River. At one point, he stopped, stayed perfectly still and then ambushed a small rodent eating it in on bite. He continued on munching down a couple of more of these small animals until he disappeared over a hill to the right.

The calf continued to hang around his mother but would graze in the grasses. As he grazed, he wandered further and further away from mom. He got about a hundred yards away and the coyote hiding in the sagebrush started to make his move. He circled around so that the carcass was between him and the calf. He kept a close eye on the calf while he started to chew on the carcass. He continued to eat the carcass until the calf started to wander back. Once the calf noticed the coyote, he moved toward him. Naturally, since coyotes are cowards, the coyote began to back away from the carcass. The calf checked his mother out and found that there had been some serious chewing (for about 45 minutes).

The calf then returned to grazing and started to wander away from his mother and towards the main part of the herd (about a half mile away). The coyote returned to the mother and no further confrontation took place (at least while we were there.) We eventually left as it was getting dark and we had not eaten for quite some time.

Back to this morning. We got up at 6, packed a portable breakfast and headed up the road. When I got to the car, there was ice on the roof. It had hailed during the evening and was cold but this is ridiculous. The temperature when I started the car was 36.

We arrived to no parking places but used our creative forces and made one. The river had a smoke rising off it and the hill where the carcass was could not be seen at all. There were a lot of people there most of whom had watched the day before at one time or another. People came in and left when there was nothing to see. Many people who didn’t know what was happening there arrived, got out of their cars, took a quick look and moseyed on in the best Griswold tradition.

One van full of Orientals (not trying to be racial here) and tried to park the van where a small car had been (parallel parking). Half of them got out of the car and screamed at the other half who were trying to park the car. Then they came over the place where everyone was trying to see what was going on with the carcass. They talked to each other in very loud voices yelling from one end of the area to the other. People kept sshhssshhhing them but they ignored everyone’s request for quiet and continued to make noise and all of a sudden ran back to their van and pulled out.

All I could think of was the 1960’s book; “The Ugly American” only this time it was the Japanese Tourists turn to take the brunt of the ugliness.

Soon, the fog began to clear and we got our first glimpse of the carcass. It had been chewed on some but looked pretty good. When we arrived, the temperature at the site was 31 degrees. The carcass was fairly hard to find with the binoculars as it was covered with frost. That seemed to be fairly reasonable as the animal was cold and not warm enough to melt the frost. Just as a note: later on we were driving north and came across the main herd and found several buffalo with frost on their heads so warmth is not the only criteria for melting frost (mid august and we have had a frost on the car…..whoa!

Te carcass was pretty quiet. It seemed obvious that the bears and wolves had not found it yet. We waited for quite some time for something to happen but all remained quiet. A ranger arrived on the spot at some point. She said she figured to be there all day to watch what happened and keep the tourists from doing their stupid best to disturb the site and get hurt or worse. She offered the theory that the buffalo (bison to the people in Yellowstone and buffalo to those in Custer State Park) had been hit by a car and wandered over there to die (have I said that already?). She said the big predators (bear and wolves) did not seem to have found the carcass yet. The cold and the freshness of the carcass had slowed the decomposition and since the predator’s best tool is their sense of smell, they hadn’t found it yet. That would eventually happen (different opinion than a later ranger we met but more on that later).

We headed off in search of the very large animals (bears and elk). We drove up towards Tower. We had been told that Dunraven Pass was a good place to look for bear. We had also been told that the elk had migrated up to the northern part of the park to avoid the wolves so that seemed like a good place to go. We drove and drove and went up through Dunraven Pass and started down the other side. The bears have gone to the higher parts of the park looking for white pine nuts and Dunraven Pass is one of the highest parts of the park (with a road at least).

Well, we didn’t see a thing so I decided to change our approach. I found a dirt road that purported to climb up part of Mt. Washburn. We took the road up to its top where a trail took you up the last 1100 feet of the mountain. There was a beautiful view of the surrounding mountain peaks and we were totally enthralled. I noticed a bird kind of shaped like a partridge lurking down at the end of the parking lot. I got out my camera and wile watching the bird noticed that there was a second bird near the first.

All of a sudden, the second bird flew away with considerable gusto. What’s up wit dat? Just then, a coyote came walking up over the edge of the parking lot. It looked at the other bird (who flew immediately away) and then began to saunter through the parking lot. I called to Cheryl and Stan to come see the coyote. I handed the camera to Cheryl as the coyote was headed straight for me. He walked by me about 10 feet away. He kept a close watch on me and as a result was startled by a tiny bird that flew up from a patch of weeds near him.

He walked up the lot and turned right to head up towards Mt. Washburn. In a minute he came to a complete stop. He didn’t move for a bit as there was a ground squirrel near him. He finally turned and ran after the squirrel through the remnants of the 1988 fire. The squirrel won and was soon in his den chirping out his warning to whoever could hear it.

We continued on, checked out a fairly long dirt road over a plateau of land (seeing nothing) then continued on towards Mammoth. Once in Mammoth, we got a bite to eat. As we were finishing, I looked out the window and saw 3 elk coming through the town park. I got everyone’s attention and out the door we went. There was a line of them coming up from Fort Yellowstone and traveling through the park. When we got outside of the restaurant, we noticed that there were 8 of them, all females and young ones. Oh, wait, there are still more. They gathered in the center of the park.

We were standing on the edge of the park and realized that they might be headed our way. We were standing in a heavily traveled path so we moved quite a bit to the side of the trail. Of course, they took a different path and came up our right side instead of our left. They looked a little nervous but soon started to move. They came up the right hand trail and crossed the road. No hesitation, they just walked down the path and walked out into the road bringing traffic (which was heavy) to a complete standstill. A couple of the elk that were in the back of the pack kept looking over their shoulders. We assumed that they were just checking to ensure that no one was coming up behind them.

By now we recounted them and found that there were 12. They finished crossing the road, walked between the stores and started up the hill behind them. Once on the first crest of the hill, they all kind of looked back. We turned around and saw 3 more elk crossing the park. They also walked right into the road and crossed. Once they met up with the rest of the pack, they continued up the hills and disappeared over the top. They never looked back after the last 3 caught up with them.

The traffic meanwhile had not started up again. The people in the cars were mesmerized by the elk and continued to watch them. A ranger car came up through the traffic calling over the loudspeaker for the cars to keep moving. No one paid much attention to him but eventually they all started moving again. Elk Jam dissolved.

We wandered through the gift shop for a while. They had a Pendleton Blanket with a wolf on it. It was a special limited edition blanket to commemorate the repopulation of the wolves in the park back in the 70s. It was beautiful. It had the wolf on the front with a lot of Indian type symbols and on the back, it was a different color and had totally different patterns. It was $250 complete with a really nice mug with the same picture on it for free (if you can call $250 for the mug/blanket free). We passed. We have a nice Pendleton (Beaver Creek) Indian blanket that I have had for 25 years.

As we were driving out of town, we saw a traffic jam just breaking up ahead of us. We asked an escaping man on foot what was happening. He told us that there had been a black bear by the road but that it was now gone. We drove through slowly and looking through the woods to a field right behind them, we saw the bear walking through the field. I parked and hurried back with my camera and managed to get a shot of the bear through the trees. Not as close as the frost covered buffalo but still a good shot.

We drove down the west side of the park until we hit the crossover road in the middle. We took that so that we could return to Hayden Valley to check again on our buffalo carcass. There was nothing going on there. The ravens were pecking away at the carcass but it would take months for a few ravens to pick that body clean. A different ranger was on duty there. She seemed to think that the bear and wolves were at the carcass during the previous night. You couldn’t tell that from looking at it. That was a different story than the morning ranger had given us. Who knows? We will keep an eye on it over the next few days to see what happens.

The night ranger seemed to think that the calf had left the mother eventually and had hooked up with the herd and could very well be ok. The tough part will be the winter. The animal will need help from the herd to survive the winter. She said the herd often took in strays and cared for them. Whether true or not, it was what most of the people wanted to hear. You certainly didn’t want to be told that they calf was toast.

We finished our trip back to camp and just crashed for the rest of the afternoon. I made nachos for happy hour and chicken and roast potatoes for supper. In between, I took a nap which I apparently needed desperately. It had been a long day. After supper, we sat around and talked then retreated into our computers. We considered a DVD but the closest DVD was probably 80 miles away (unless you wanted to go buy National Park DVDs.

The day is done and it was a corker. We all had a good time but it is raining and we figure that the evening ranger program has been cancelled and if it hasn’t, we aren’t going! We are already tired and cold and don’t need to be wet.

Good night for now. See you tomorrow.

C