July 22, 2008 – More Wildlife in Yellowstone

Since I have been in Montana, I have really seen almost all of the major animals. I’ve seen 7 or 8 moose (incredibly neat), so many Buffalo (or Bison as they call them here) I could start my own herd, big horn sheet, mountain goats, marmots (cute, large rodents), elk, deer, pronghorns, antelope, etc. But I have not seen a bear. I read a blog on Yahoo by someone who was taking his son on a vacation. And they had been in Yellowstone and the Beartooths at the very same time I was, but they got to Lamar Valley in Yellowstone at DAWN and they saw a grizzly. So I thought….what the heck. I wanted to make one more trip through the national park, and why not get there at dawn (I tried this 3 days in a row before I could actually get up at 3:00 AM).

I left the carriage house about 4:00 AM, and made it to Lamar Valley a little after dawn. I’m driving slowly, hoping to see a bear (or even a wolf), but no such luck. But I did see a coyote (top picture), an elk herd (2nd picture -- I do need a zoom), and several male deer (3rd picture). But no bear – bummer.

So I headed out of the park and had a very large breakfast in Cooke City. I’ve included a couple of pictures – this city always reminds me of a rustic gold mining town. And in fact, in July of 1870 the first gold was discovered in Cooke City, but at the time, this area was part of the Crow Indian Reservation. Write-up’s say the “reservation boundaries were released” and opened up to prospectors. My guess is this is a nice way of saying we took the Indian’s land because there was gold and we wanted it. In 1882 it was named Cooke City and had 227 residents. Today there are about 100 people who live in the town and area (you can learn anything on the Internet). In the winter, I believe it is probably only open to snowmobiles. Now THIS is remote.

This year, the state is building a new road between Silver Gate and Cooke City. The old road is gone, and it is being totally rebuilt. I always say you can’t be in a hurry when you are going through Yellowstone, and this year the same was true when trying to get to Cooke City. The cars are stopped and usually have a 15 minute wait. I always have a book in the truck, so I just turn off the motor and read.

After breakfast at the Prospector Restaurant, I headed back into Yellowstone (read the book some more), and went back to the Yellowstone Canyon. The canyon and the Yellowstone River with the Lower and Upper Falls is just sooooo beautiful. Even though my hip was killing me, I had to hike just part of the South Rim Trail. I wanted to see the falls close-up one more time.

Then I continued to Old Faithful. I had seen the many geysers around Old Faithful, but had not actually seen this geyser this year (I've seen it on the other 6 years I've been in Yellowstone). I also found a "web cam"on the Internet where you can watch Old Faithful erupt – live on your computer. While I am writing this, it is 5:01 PM and Old Faithful is due to erupt at 5:14PM. So I’m going to see how this works. If you are interested, go to www.nps.gov/archive/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm. It updates every 30 seconds. NOTE: I just saw Old Faithful erupt at 5:16PM and it lasted less than 2 minutes, so there was one shot where it started, 30 seconds later it was at full eruption, shooting up about 150 feet, and by the 3^rd screen, it was almost over. Not exactly the same as being there, but interesting.

I was done for the day, and heading back to Bozeman, so I decided to go back through the Gallatin Canyon, or Hwy 191. At one point, this road heads back into the side of Yellowstone, and this is where I saw some cars pulled over. I turned around, went back, and it was a MOMMA MOOSE AND HER LITTLE BABY MOOSE. I had my binoculars, and stayed a while to watch (until the mosquitoes started eating me up). They were in the woods, and too far away for my camera to get a picture (I really need to get a better camera with a big lens). But it was neat to watch.