Exploring Yellowstone National Park, August 19, 2014.

Every day we were in the park this time, we drove past LeHardy Rapids, a cascade on the Yellowstone River, three miles north of Fishing Bridge.

We were thrilled to finally see wolves in Yellowstone.  In the same area we had seen the four grizzlies the day before, a single grizzly was defending possession  of a buffalo carcass from a pair of gray wolves.

We later learned that one or two buffalo had been hit on the road the night before and had wandered off into the sage.  If animals die on or near the road after being hit, park employees dispose of the carcass.  When an injured animal wanders away from the road and dies, the carcass is left for carrion-eaters.

It was hard to see what was going on, even with the camera zoom lens.  The image below is the result of  digital cropping and enhancement.  Another couple had a nice spotting scope set up and asked us if we wanted to look.  I wish I could get photos from that distance as clear as what we saw in that scope.

Gray wolves are “predominantly a mottled gray in color, although nearly pure white, red, or brown to black also occur.” (Wikipedia)

Initially, we thought the wolves were a white and a black, but the black turned out to be a mix of dark colors.

At one point, the white wolf got too close to the buffalo carcass – and the grizzly charged!

Our first destination of the day was the Porcelain Basin trail at Norris Geyser Basin.

It was still the summer tourist season, so after 10 AM or so, parking lots to the most popular spots are full with vehicles waiting for someone to pull out.  When we got to Norris, there was plenty of parking spots open.  By the time we finished the trail, the parking lot was packed.

Our next destination was Firehole Lake Road, whose closure had been in the news the previous month.

Yellowstone National Park road melts into ‘soupy mess’

Extreme heat from surrounding thermal areas has created a hot spot in Yellowstone National Park, melting a portion of a road and causing temporary closures in the park during the peak summer tourist season. (LA Times)

In a press release, the National Park Service said, “The road will remain closed for the next several days while maintenance crews make repairs. The date for reopening the road is uncertain at this time, and will be determined after crews assess the effectiveness of their efforts.”

Other than a newly paved stretch of road, we didn’t see any sign of the “melted road” problem.

Next up – we head out of the park into Montana.

Exploring Yellowstone National Park, August 18, 2014

After we were back to the car, we decided to drive the northern part of the Grand Loop Road, driving north from Canyon to Mammoth Hot Springs on the east side, then to Norris on the west side and back across the middle of the park on Norris Canyon Road to Canyon.

The route goes up over Dunraven Pass, on the southern flank of Mt. Washburn.  An unpaved spur, Chittenden Road, goes up on the north side, ending in a parking lot – at an elevation of about 8,800 feet – for a trail that goes to the top of Washburn.  We drove to the parking lot for the view, not the trail, as we had already done a strenuous, for us, trail earlier in the day.

While we were up there, a lone bull buffalo came meandering into view and walked up to the door of the rest room that Karen had just been in a few minutes before.

We have no idea how many buffalo we have seen this trip and most certainly not over the many years we have been visiting these western parks.  We still always find them fascinating.

We did take one relatively short trail to a viewing area that overlooks Calcite Springs and the Yellowstone River canyon.

The heat source below Calcite Springs is hot enough to liquefy large quantities of sulfur found here.  Occasionally the molten sulfur oozes to the surface where it flows like molasses.

The heat of underground fractures releases deposits of oil from rocks deep below the surface.  The oil then slowly and sporadically seeps to the surface.

Contact with air causes the liquid sulfur to turn black.  As a result, it is impossible to tell from a distance if the dark areas around Calcite Springs are oil or sulfur.

The Calcite Springs hydrothermal area is closed to visitors.

At Mammoth Hot Springs, the sky was dark and threatening.

After a rest room break and browsing one of the park stores, we headed over to the Terrace Grill for some huckleberry ice cream as the storm breaks.  A lightning bolt strikes and in the distance we see people scurrying off the terrace trails and boardwalks.

After finishing the ice cream, we decided the rain wouldn’t be ending soon.  So we made a dash for the car to start the long drive back to the campground.

Along the way, we spotted a a couple of elk – and Karen got a picture (below).   We saw very few elk in Yellowstone this trip.  With the reintroduction of wolves, the number of elk has been reduced.  As well, the presence of predators has altered elk grazing and migration patterns.

Next – will we see a wolf?

Exploring Yellowstone National Park, August 18, 2014

These motorcycle riders are doing the right thing, getting off their bikes for the parade coming from the other direction.

Of course, motoring on through might have been just as right, but getting off and putting their bikes between them and the buffalo is better that what we’ve seen some motorcyclists do around buffalo.

We’ve come across lone buffalo, always a bull, meandering down the road leading a parade of vehicles a number of times in our past visits.  A couple of times, we’ve been in the column following one.

After we got into Hayden Valley on our way to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, we came across a critter caused traffic jam.

More bear! – 4 grizzlies!

At the time, we thought there were 3 bears, possibly 4. I determined that there was, in fact, a 4th bear after comparing several of the images that I took .   In the photo below, 3 are easily identified.  There are also 2 other dark brown areas.  In comparisons with other photos, the brown area on the left never changes.  I believe it may be a carcass the bears have been feeding on.  The brown area on the right, however,  turns into a bear in other images, with the brown area gone, though only one or other bears in the picture with it at the same time.  This is the only photo with all 4 bears in it at the same time.

This time our plan was to take the South Rim trail to Artist Point and back.

Along the way we came across a sign with some Presidential history.

At Artist Point before heading back.

After the hike, we decided to head further north in the park, which I’ll share in the next post.

Exploring Yellowstone National Park, August 17, 2014.

Walking from the Old Faithful Inn parking lot towards Old Faithful, from the all the people crowding the benches, we could tell that it was get close to eruption time.

We didn’t even have time to look for someplace to sit before it went.  In all the many times we’ve seen Old Faithful, this was the first time we never had to wait.

We had actually come to the Old Faithful area to try to get online using our phones’ mobile hotspot feature.  Unfortunately, we were just barely able to take care of what we needed to.  Cell phone service is very limited in Yellowstone and, overall, we had worse luck than we did in 2010 – which I wrote about in How we are posting in Yellowstone National Park, complete with photos.

After taking care of our online activities, our plan was to drive back over to the Canyon area of the park and take the Uncle Tom trail.

H.F. Richardson, affectionately called “Uncle Tom” by his contemporaries, engineered a trail and pioneered a guiding service in 1898 to lead Yellowstone visitors into the canyon.  Today’s modernized trail still bears Uncle Tom’s name.  (from trail sign)

The original trail had 528 steps and rope ladders and went almost to the canyon floor.  The modern trail is asphalt with switchbacks and steps, terminating in a metal staircase with 328 steps and a view platform about 3/4 of the way down into the canyon.

Uncle Tom’s Trail was busy and, for some, its resting spots were a welcome relief.

The trail offers unique views of the canyon. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is about 24 miles (39 km) long, between 800 and 1,200 feet (240 and 370 m) deep and from .25 to .75 miles (0.40 to 1.21 km) wide.[

Lower Yellowstone Falls drops 308 feet (94 m), almost twice as high as Niagara.  It is the largest volume major waterfall in the United States Rocky Mountains.

At Old Faithful geyser, in Yellowstone National Park, benches are along the boardwalk in those areas with the best view of the geyser when it erupts.

Old Faithful is very predictable, to within ten minutes or so, most of the time.

If you haven’t had a chance to find out its predicted time, a full crowd on the benches is another good indicator that the geyser will be erupting soon.  We were walking over from Old Faithful Inn parking lot and hadn’t checked the prediction time, yet.

This image was digitally rendered from a photo taken just before the 10:26 Old Faithful eruption on August 17, 2014.

Yellowstone – and a detour into Idaho by way of West Yellowstone, Montana , August 16, 2014

It was still  chilly when we left the campground, having dropped to 39°F during the night.  On our drive over to Norris Geyser basin, we saw the usual buffalo in Hayden Valley along with some pelicans and other water fowl.

We took the 1.7 Back Basin loop trail.  While there are many thermal features along this trail, I didn’t get as many photos as I intended.  I did get a bit of video footage, which I’ll use later.

After Norris we drove out along the Madison River hoping to spot some elk.  This was an area where, in previous visits, we had usually seen elk.  We ended up going out of the park into the town of West Yellowstone.

That was a mistake!

I had lost track of days and we found ourselves outside one of the most popular entrances to the park on a Saturday morning in August.  The traffic backup was huge.  We decided to take an alternate route – another mistake on my part.

Along the way, we visited a favorite scenic spot. Upper Mesa Falls are 114 feet high, dropping over a ledge of 1.3 million years old compressed volcanic ash. (see much more about this scenic area from our 2007 visit)

Scotch (or Cotton) Thistle – an invasive species originally introduced in the late 19th century to many countries as an ornamental plant, and now considered a major agricultural and wildland noxious weed.

Purple Aster

Some kind of sunflower.

Cave Falls – I took the wrong road, thinking that I was on the road that went from Ashton, Idaho to Flagg Ranch, between Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park.  The road I took ended at these falls in the remote, extreme southwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park.

After backtracking, we found the road that I had intended to go on.  That was another mistake.  It was far longer, far rougher, and more convoluted than I remembered from having driven back in the late 1970s. Of course, we were in our late 20s and were driving a four-wheel drive vehicle with much higher clearance.

We should have gone back through West Yellowstone.

We actually follow the rules in the parks we visit.

It shouldn’t, but it often surprises us when others don’t, like the fellow below.  The area he is standing in is a thermal area off the trail at Norris Geyser basin.

People have stepped and fallen through fragile surfaces that look very solid. Some have been injured by scalding hot liquids that may lie under any of the thermal areas off the designated trails.

Writing his 1995 book Death in Yellowstone, park historical archivist Lee H. Whittlesey sifted through National Park Service records to identify 19 human fatalities from falling into thermal features. – Geothermal Attractions Can Be Dangerous

About 20 minutes after I shot the picture above, I spotted a hole in the surface of the thermal area about the same distance off the trail.

The surface of these areas often looks perfectly safe, but looks can be very deceiving.

Driving into Yellowstone, August 15, 2014

Leaving Fox Creek campground, the air was clear and the sky was beautiful.  This morning was the first time we’ve used the heat.  Karen’s quilts kept us snug and warm, with the outside temperature about 38°.  Out of bed at about 5:30, though, the temperature inside was 58°F, a bit chilly for sitting at the computer editing pictures and writing.

View from inside the camper, standing up, looking out through skylight:

The drive into Yellowstone took us through Lamar Valley, one of the places in the where buffalo (American bison) often congregate.

Turning onto Yellowstone’s Grand Loop Road at Tower Junction, our drive took us over Dunraven Pass near Mt. Washburn.

Further down the road, we cam across the first of what we call “critter jams” – vehicles pulled over as well as slowed down because someone has spotted a wild animal, usually something large.

“That’s a bear!” and I pulled over and joined the critter jam.

The image resolution isn’t as good as I’d like, but, without a doubt, it was a grizzly.

We’ve visited Yellowstone a number of times over the years.  We’ve very seldom seen a bear and, though they were reintroduced into the park in the 90s, we hadn’t seen any wolves.

Our campsite for the next five days would be at Bridge Bay Campground, which is across the highway from the north shore of Yellowstone Lake.  We couldn’t see the lake from our campsite, but we could from a couple of points when we took a walk through the campground after supper.

The next day, we took a drive to Norris Geyser Basin and more.

Currently blog posts are running about 4 weeks behind because of poor (or no) internet and/or cell connections.  This post is published out-of-order because of the adverse winter weather we are experiencing.  We are now just north of Casper, Wyoming, sitting out an unseasonably early snow storm.

After leaving Grand Teton National Park, our original plans were to spend last night at a public campground without hookups and travel into Nebraska today.  After Karen checked the forecast, we decided to drive further yesterday and camp in an RV park with hookups.  The original forecast had called for snow last night through tomorrow morning. It held off so we might have been okay with our original plans, but we had electric heat last night, as we will tonight, without using our propane. It’s supposed to warm up tomorrow, getting into the 70s on the weekend when we’ll be over in a national forest in Nebraska.

We’re not planning to get an early start tomorrow.  With the car and camper windows covered with wet snow and the temperature dropping to 27°F or lower, it may take a bit of effort to get cleared off.