Today is Sunday, July 12. We arrived in Yellowstone National Park Thursday afternoon. We are staying in a nice campground with bear warnings posted everywhere. If anything is left outside that has any odor attached to it the bears will find it. The campground furnishes secure steel lock boxes to put food in if campers do not have hard sided camping units. Garbage cans have heavy steel lids that can not be removed by the bears and the dumpsters provided are bear proof.
We took a drive to Old Faithful on our first afternoon and also got a chance to see part of Yellowstone Lake. There are lots of wild flowers and the scenery is beautiful. There was a large crowd at the geyser waiting to see the show and Old Faithful performed as expected. The time between eruptions has been increasing and there is some speculation that it is caused by tourists throwing coins and other debris into the geyser and blocking and changing the vents. Friday, we drove east around the park to Mammoth Hot Springs. There you are only five miles from Gardiner, Montana. The Hot Springs are beautiful but if my memory serves there is a greatly diminished wet area from the Hot Springs I first saw in 1965. They say that the amount of thermal activity has remained rather constant but that it does change from place to place where the springs are currently flowing.
Animals are not as plentiful as they have been in the past, most are just farther from the roads. We did get to see some unusual sights however. On our way past Tower Canyon we saw a grizzly bear feeding on an elk that it had recently killed. It was about 200 yards from the road behind a pond and on a steep hillside. The rangers had marked the area off limits and were not allowing any cars to stop. I set the camera on zoom and snapped one picture and the elk is visible but the bear is mostly behind a tree. We also saw a black bear cooling off in a pond and on our way back to the campground we saw many cars stopped to take a picture of two bull elk. We also stopped when we saw a coyote trotting towards the road and all the tourists lined up there. It seemed unusual that a coyote would approach so near. Suddenly the coyote made an abrupt turn running and leaping as a bird tried to fly but the coyote had it and immediately turned and ran away into the trees. We saw it again several minutes later after the snack was consumed, trotting away from the crowds. We are enjoying the park immensely! It is hot during the day and cold at night, we need to break out our down comforter. It was 48 in our motor home Saturday morning. Right now the heater is running and so is the generator, replenishing the batteries. We have cell service here and since we use our cell service to access the Internet we are wired!
We took a drive to Old Faithful on our first afternoon and also got a chance to see part of Yellowstone Lake. There are lots of wild flowers and the scenery is beautiful. There was a large crowd at the geyser waiting to see the show and Old Faithful performed as expected. The time between eruptions has been increasing and there is some speculation that it is caused by tourists throwing coins and other debris into the geyser and blocking and changing the vents. Friday, we drove east around the park to Mammoth Hot Springs. There you are only five miles from Gardiner, Montana. The Hot Springs are beautiful but if my memory serves there is a greatly diminished wet area from the Hot Springs I first saw in 1965. They say that the amount of thermal activity has remained rather constant but that it does change from place to place where the springs are currently flowing.
Animals are not as plentiful as they have been in the past, most are just farther from the roads. We did get to see some unusual sights however. On our way past Tower Canyon we saw a grizzly bear feeding on an elk that it had recently killed. It was about 200 yards from the road behind a pond and on a steep hillside. The rangers had marked the area off limits and were not allowing any cars to stop. I set the camera on zoom and snapped one picture and the elk is visible but the bear is mostly behind a tree. We also saw a black bear cooling off in a pond and on our way back to the campground we saw many cars stopped to take a picture of two bull elk. We also stopped when we saw a coyote trotting towards the road and all the tourists lined up there. It seemed unusual that a coyote would approach so near. Suddenly the coyote made an abrupt turn running and leaping as a bird tried to fly but the coyote had it and immediately turned and ran away into the trees. We saw it again several minutes later after the snack was consumed, trotting away from the crowds. We are enjoying the park immensely! It is hot during the day and cold at night, we need to break out our down comforter. It was 48 in our motor home Saturday morning. Right now the heater is running and so is the generator, replenishing the batteries. We have cell service here and since we use our cell service to access the Internet we are wired!
Yesterday, Saturday, we drove westward around the Yellowstone loop to Madison and then on to Mammoth. That took us through much of the geyser basins and other thermal areas. From Mammoth we continued on the same route we had been on the day before. When we arrived at the site where the bear had killed the elk the previous day, we saw many cars parked and lots of cameras and glasses out. We also stopped. We were told that the bear was still there feeding and that earlier it had come down the hill to drink, take a soak in the pond and then had gone back up on the hill. We watched for awhile when a small grizzly appeared, ambling along towards us at the base of the hill. The smaller bear stopped just below the elk which was not visible to it and we were sure the bear smelled the kill because it turned and slowly climbed the steep slope. We could all predict what happened next. After a short period the smaller bear came racing down the hill towards the pond with the larger bear hot on it's heels. The chase probably only took 150 yards but the smaller bear got the message to leave. The larger bear went back up the hill, checking over its shoulder occasionally and disappeared into the trees. The smaller bear then decided to take a swim. The bear entered the water and swam across the pond towards the road which made the rangers very nervous. One ranger was on foot directing traffic to keep moving and she started to retreat as the bear climbed the bank towards the road. Another ranger had a rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol on his belt and he headed towards the bear but then the bear turned back down the bank and ambled away. Every time we have seen a bear the park rangers have quickly appeared and closed the area to hiking, stopping and parking. Evidently they are enforcing a minimum people/bear contact policy. Quite a show we had!
Hope you all are having a great summer. We are enjoying living and traveling in our “wobble box”!
Hope you all are having a great summer. We are enjoying living and traveling in our “wobble box”!
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1 comment:
Live it up, you are doing great, we love your pictures. Four corners would be unbearable this time of year but don't miss it, I enjoyed it as much as any of that region. There is a nice RV park at Monument Valley called Goulding Valley Resort and RV park.
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