Day 7

July 8

The weather was hot so we had trouble settling down last night.  The kids, in particular, seemed really uncomfortable and were very vocal about it.  Luckily, no one camped to the left of us, but the people on the right (fellow Northwesterners from Washington) definitely got an earful of our children fighting with each other and refusing to sleep.  In the morning, the man returned Olivia's smile with a dirty look.

Whoops.

Tallis started his countdown to the wedding this day:  "Dad, is it eight days until the wedding?"  "Ummmm, what day is it."  "It's Friday the eighth.  It IS eight days to the wedding".  I guess I had kind of lost track.  

Anyway, we headed out to Yellowstone as early as we could which was probably an hour or two after the bears and wolves retired.  The first animals we saw were a herd of elk hanging out on a lawn by administration building.  I'll guess that the elk realized that the predators were a bit thinner around the administration building.  Besides, the predators had gone to bed.   The administration complex was pretty much right inside the gate.



Then we headed East on the Grand Loop Road to where the bear and wolves would have been. OK, we hoped to see them anyway but were prepared for a lack of carnivores.  

It's worth pointing out that two things happened in Yellowstone before we arrived here.  On the second day of our trip, we heard from Olivia's brother that there had been an oil spill on the Yellowstone River (thank you, Exxon), so we weren't sure what impact that would have on our trip.  A couple of days after that, we heard from my brother that there had been a fatal bear attack in Yellowstone and that it was the fault of the maulee, so they were going to let the mauler survive.  We weren't sure what impact this would have on our trip.  

Back to the road.  Shortly after starting our drive, we saw out first bison.  This being very early in our time at Yellowstone and despite this being a two lane road with no shoulder, we stopped on the road to look.  The bison were majestic if a bit ratty as they shed their winter coat.  

There weren't many cars so I didn't mind just sitting right in the road staring.  A car pulled up behind us.  We had been told that the best way to find animals in Yellowstone was to look and see where the cars were pulled over.  However, this was not another gawker.  We got yelled at by ranger on loudspeaker telling us that it was not safe and we were not allowed to just stop on the road.  We drove up a side road that offered a good view of the bison, too.  

It's probably worth pointing out that these were our first bison.  Over the next two days we would see scores of bison and when we would tell the kids that we were driving past bison, it wasn't even acknowledged by the end.  There are lots of bison in Yellowstone.  

One of the other things we noticed many dead trees.  Between mountain pine beetle infestations (due to climate change) and a few wild fires in the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised if half the trees in Yellowstone were dead.  Granted, there are still a lot of trees but there are surprisingly large stands of dead trees.

Another tree related thing we noticed was the number of trees where bears had scratched away significant areas of bark.  The lecture at Glacier (part of the kids getting a junior ranger badge) described how you could tell that you were sharing space with animals by seeing scratched trees and poop/scat.  We knew about the scat from a children's book we have called "Who Pooped in the Park" but the scratched trees were new.  We hadn't seen any of them in Glacier that we noticed but there were large stands of really scratched up trees here.  I guess they're there to remind you to carry your bear spray.

Next up we stopped along the road where there was a "bear management area".  It wasn't the right time of day but maybe, with some luck, we would get to see some bears here.  We didn't but Ailsa called us over to look at scat.  She informed us that she had found both bison and wolf scat.  The wolf scat was loaded with hair.  I'm guessing elk hair.  We did get into a book store later that day, found Who Pooped in the Park, and confirmed her find.  

We stopped at Sulfur Caldron (hot and stinky) and a waterfall.  It's pretty obvious why this place was chosen as the world's first national park.



We took a hike along the South Rim Trail which was pretty spectacular and went to the Lake Lodge for lunch.  The South Rim Trail is along Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.  The gorge there was incredible and there were elk and bison just kind of milling about.  We discovered later that the fellow who was mauled by the bear days earlier was hiking on a trail leading off the South Rim.  We didn't see or hear anything to suggest that while we were planning on where to hike.  I guess it was probably better not to know.  Outside Lake Lodge, there were a bunch of Rolls Royces about a hundred years old.  They, apparently, belonged to members of a car club who had collectively made the trip from Idaho and were headed to Wyoming.  They were pretty amazing and must have been a lot of fun to drive around Yellowstone.



Also at Lake Lodge we saw one of   Yellowstone's yellow buses like the Glacier red busses.  There are fewer  of them here than at Glacier so I was glad to see one.

At the end of the day we drove to the hotel we'd be staying at near Old Faithful.  We saw it blow while we were trying to figure out how to check in.  We got into our room (at the perfectly serviceable Old Faithful Snow Lodge), had dinner at the restaurant in the "lodge", and went to bed.