YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

After 4 long days of driving we got to Yellowstone this last Saturday. Finally home!! We didn’t go into the park until Sunday morning. We have been to Yellowstone almost every summer for the last 41 years and for the last 6 years we have been spending more time here than we do at home.

Suddenly I realized a rush of memories. There was the spot I saw 3 wolves, a black one, a white one, and a grey, all really close to Gardiner. There was the spot we saw the dipper nest glued to the side of a rock with some unknown, to me anyway, dipper glue. There is where I saw a beaver next to the road at about 6:00 am in Gardner Canyon. And there was the spot an instructor from the Yellowstone Institute told us about a lady that went up to a ranger and said “Oh my God there is a bird trying to commit suicide!” The ranger asked her for more details and she said she saw a little drab, gray bird diving into the fast water of the Gardner River so she knew it was trying to kill itself. The ranger, trying not to laugh, told her she had just seen a dipper dive into the water to walk on the bottom while picking up the insects it eats. There was the spot where we saw wolves and coyotes feeding on an elk carcass, at different times. And where 2 coyotes successfully chased a wolf away. There was the place where the herd of elk were standing in the river to cool off and 2 young ones started a splashing game with their front feet. There is where we saw a young male elk walking around with the black netting they use to keep elk from eating the flower at Mammoth. He was wearing it as a rather rakish scarf on his antlers. There is where we saw a white-tailed jack rabbit running. (Still don’t have a picture of one of those guys.) There was the spot we saw a grizzly sow and 2 little cubs coming off a hill and go right into a pond to cool off. The cubs dutifully followed mom into the water but didn’t like it and immediately jumped on her back. There was the spot we saw a mated pair of grizzlies falling asleep until suddenly a wolf walked right at them. The grizzlies walked up to the wolf and basically escorted it out of their area. That must have wakened them enough because then they started mating.

I could go on and on. My point is this, if you have been to Yellowstone enough times you don’t have to see a bear or a wolf around every corner because if you come enough times you will have seen a bear or a wolf around almost every corner and you get to relive those memories. It is a fun game to play when you aren’t seeing much wildlife.

As many of you know the only road open in Yellowstone now is the one from Gardiner to Cooke City (The west side opens this Friday.) I love being here now not because of the fantastic wildlife but because there are moments when I can really feel we have the park to ourselves.

So here is what we saw today: sandhill cranes, people looking at wolves (we didn’t get out to see them because we were too embarrassed that we had forgotten our binoculars) 2 mature bald eagles, 2 osprey, robins, mt. bluebirds, 1 dipper, elk, bison, mule deer, pronghorns, a small coyote running across the road and disappearing into some trees, 1/2 a black bear (the black bear was fine but it was down in a ravine and we would have been too close if we got out to look at it), and a bunch of bighorn sheep. The only ones we photographed were the bighorns.