A Four and a Half Bear Weekend

How do you like my weekend rating system? Actually, four and a half bears has nothing to do with how good my weekend was. Four and a half bears are what I saw this weekend.

Started out as one of those days...you know the ones. You wake up somewhat early on your day off, and you know you want to do something, you just don't know what it is. Well, that was me yesterday. I seriously just loaded my camera stuff into the car, picked a direction and drove.

I ended up heading up the east side of the park, through Hayden Valley and over Dunraven Pass to the Lamar Valley and then Cooke City for lunch. Pretty productive trip. I saw three black bears: two of them between Tower Falls and Roosevelt Lodge and one in Lamar Valley across from the Pebble Creek campground. Bear four was a grizzly bear, the half a bear was one of her cubs. Okay, maybe I should have said it was a four and a third bear day, because the griz did have three cubs; I only got to see one of them. I had to look through a kind man's spotting scope to see them.

There are two fires burning in or near the park now. I was in the smoke of one of them when I got up into the northeastern part of Lamar Valley. The smoke, and the resulting poor visibility, kept me from driving up the Chief Joseph Highway and on down to Cody yesterday. Besides, it was getting to be mid-day with really lousy light for photography. Some other time, I guess.

The tiny little town of Cooke City is not without its own drama. I stopped for lunch at a little place called (get this) Buns N Beds. They have a really good hamburger and homemade potato chips. While I was waiting for my burger, a woman came in to call 911. I didn't hear the first part of her conversation to know where she had been hiking. All I heard was her saying something about a collapsed tent with a body inside; that she had poked at it with her walking stick and got no response, she had shouted at it and still received no response, and she didn't have the nerve to actually lift the tent and look inside. Creepy.

This morning was another of those unplanned days, so I headed over to West Yellowstone, and ended up right in the middle of the smoke from fire number two. It was awful. I don't have breathing problems, but the smoke was so thick that I had trouble breathing. I can't imagine how bad it was for people who do have respiratory problems. I asked the ranger at the entrance station where the fire was, and she said it was outside the park and heading north. It's only the end of June. This is, unfortunately, only the beginning...

What's New

Ok, maybe I'm posting today because I realized I hadn't posted anything in almost two weeks. No update on last week's adventures, and it's almost my weekend again!

So, these cute little coyote pups live in the rocks next to the road near Gibbon Meadows, which is on the grand loop road between Madison and Norris. Aren't they just the cutest?! I just love the baby animals here... They weren't too active, though. They ended up finding a nice shady spot in the dirt near their den, curling up into a giant fuzzy ball (there were six of them involved), and going to sleep.

It was a beautiful day in Yellowstone that day; warm enough to open up the t-top in my car and cruise the lower loop. Whoo hoo!

Went to Grand Teton on Thursday with my friend Susan. We got to see a lot of wildflowers in bloom, but not a lot of wildlife. Mostly saw bison, though strangely enough there weren't any babies in the herd (it was a gi-normous herd, too). We also saw a couple pronghorn, and a bull moose! Yippee! Finally, a moose. Don't see them very often, so it's exciting when they make an appearance. In fact, I think they're the most asked about animal in the park. Everyone asks at the front desk where they can see moose.

My Day Off

Well, the snow wasn't as bad as predicted. I had about an inch or so piled on my car this morning, but the roads were good. There was crime scene tape stretched along the parking lot at the restaurant/ employee dining room this morning. Turns out, the grizzly bear came in last night and killed a baby elk in the woods. The mother bear and her cubs were in there this morning, but I didn't get to see them. I did see the upset mother elk. Very sad.

I got out into the park this morning, traveling up to Canyon, then across the center of the park to Norris, turning south to Old Faithful and then ultimately back to Grant Village. In short, I just toured the lower loop. Once again, examples of brainless tourists filled the roadways, with the dumbest of the dumb approaching bison--these people were no more than 10 feet away. And when I very nicely asked them (from my car) to please move away, they ignored me! I didn't know whether I should just leave them to their fate or stop to take photographs so the rangers would have something to help these morons' kids identify the bodies. I left them there. Maybe they survived.

How cute is this little guy? My first baby elk of the season! Unfortunately, it lives in the danger zone of Grant Village. Fingers crossed that this little baby makes it.

No News...

There really isn't anything new to report this time. The weather has turned cold, and there's a predicton of 6-10" of snow overnight. Figures. I have tomorrow off, and it looks like I'll be stranded here. Not that this is really all bad. I suppose I could always bundle up, take my camera and walk to the lake for some pictures. Or maybe hang out on the edge of the forest behind the dorm and wait for the cow elk to come out. Maybe one of them will even bring a baby along for the ride. Still haven't seen any baby elk. I'm a little disappointed about that.

Today at work was a little scary, if only because I must be starting to know what I'm doing. I didn't get behind with any of my reports today (like I usually do), and I was really pretty much done with everything by 1:30 this afternoon. Yipee! Made for kind of a boring afternoon, though. Oh well. Can't have everything, right?

The Baby Bear Drought

Well, I've finally seen baby bears. Baby grizzly bears, no less!

I had yesterday off and spent it in the park. I drove up to Old Faithful to check the geyser prediction list for Great Fountain Geyser, which is located on the Firehole Lake Drive down near Fountain Paint Pots. I arrived at the visitor center at about 9:00 a.m. and saw the eruption was predicted for 9:00, plus or minus about two hours. So I drove up to see if it had gone yet. It hadn't; I waited about an hour before it finally went, and when it did, the best part of the eruption was obscured by the steam. It's still one of the prettiest geysers in the park and probably my favorite.

From there, I headed out the west entrance to West Yellowstone, Montana. I got to see lots (and I do mean "lots") of bison (and baby bison) on the way. Lunch in West, with a stop at the railroad museum and time spent wandering around all of the souvenier shops before heading back into the park.

The baby bears were at the West Thumb Geyser Basin.

It was just dumb luck that I got to see them. All of the bear watchers were on the lower loop road near the parking lot, and I just happened to look down that way as I drove past. So I turned around, went back, looked through the trees and there they were. Huge grizzly sow with her two little cubs. Little being a relative term. They're already pretty good size, but when they were next to their mother, they were just tiny! And so cute! I couldn't get a shot with both cubs in it, and I was in such a hurry to get out of the car, I didn't grab a second memory card, so I finished the one that was in the camera and had no more space when they finally were together and visible for pictures. Oh well. Next time.