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.

Driving the Absaroka Range in Montana and Wyoming, August 14, 2014

With having to go to Cody for a water heater drain plug and inclement weather threatening, a drive over the Beartooth All-American Highway appeared doubtful early in the day.

Heading up toward Dead Indian Pass on Chief Joseph Highway, the tops of nearby mountains were hidden in the clouds.

In Cody, we finally found an RV repair shop, which wasn’t where the GPS and iPhone Seri thought it should be.  The technician had a hot water heater plug that was a bit more in size and expense than we needed, but we needed the plug.

The extra length of metal is a zinc anode.  It’s job is to corrode away in a tank instead of the iron of the tank corroding. It’s sometimes called a sacrificial anode, because it is sacrificed to protect the tank.  However, since our water heater is aluminum, the zinc is not necessary.  A cheap plastic plug would have worked just fine.   Oh, well.

After lunch at Pizza Hut,  we decided that the weather had cleared enough that we could go back to the campground by way of Red Lodge Montana, in red, and, then, Beartooth Highway, in blue.

The route to Red Lodge took us past the old Smith Mine, the site of the worst coal mining disaster in Montana – February 27, 1943. (Wikipedia)

The Beartooth Highway was once called “the most beautiful drive in America,” by the late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt. Because of heavy snowfall at the top, the pass is usually open each year only from mid May through mid October, weather conditions permitting.  (Wikipedia)

We travelled the Beartooth back in 2007, after which I wrote, “The drive from our campground to Cooke City was 125 miles. We’ll probably do it again someday, but we’ll be staying someplace closer — because it was also 125 miles back to Billings.”

Despite the extra mileage to Cody and then to Red Lodge, our 2014 driving day was much shorter than the 2007 visit.

Not too far from the campground, we came across a beautiful waterfall I remembered from our drive across Beartooth in 2007.

Next: We head into Yellowstone

Reflections on bear safety, Fox Creek Campground, August 13 &14, 2014

On July 28, 2010, three bear attacks, two with injuries and one a fatality, occurred at Soda Butte campground,  just a few miles from our 2014 site at Fox Creek campground. The bears involved were a grizzly sow and her three cubs.

The week after that 2010 attack, we camped a few days near Livingston, Montana, less than 100 miles as the crows flies from Soda Butte campground, and, after that, moved down into Yellowstone to the Fishing Bridge campground.  I wrote about the incident on August 2, 2010 in Grizzly Country.

Wanting to know more about the event, I came across a couple of very good references.  The first is Terror at Soda Butte, by Scott McMillion.  The other, a bit dryer and quite repetitive, is the Investigation Team Report – Bear Attacks in the Soda Butte Campground on July 28, 2010.

The bear safety takeaway from both of these sources is.

• the people who were attacked did everything right with regard to bear safety.
• the mother grizzly’s behavior in attacking and killing was highly abnormal and authorities have been unable to identify any specific reason for it.
  • From the team report: “The summary morphological diagnosis was a bear with a thin body condition, moderate to numerous numbers of tapeworms and roundworms, and enteritis (inflammation) of the small intestine probably associated with the parasite load.“ The report declines to identify the bear’s physical condition as even a contributing cause.

Knowing that we were going to be in bear country and that this incident had occurred made little difference in our plans.  We always keep a clean campsite and try to be aware of our surrounding on the trails.

Next – I still need to replace that pesky heater plug.