We’ve had two busy, great days in
Yellowstone. While Mike was
participating in a conference call for work Tuesday morning in the RV at the
campground in Gardiner, (remember, he is semi-retired!) I drove the Jeep into
Yellowstone to Mammoth Campground to see if we could get a spot. We got in!
I made a quick stop at the post office inside Yellowstone at Mammoth
Springs. I tell our niece’s husband (who
is a postmaster back in Michigan) that we are providing him with job security
with all the postcards we send to the grandkids. At least 2 each per week!
We had 2 hours to get the
motorhome packed up, drive the 5 miles into the campground and get set up as
Mike had another call at noon (local time).
There are no hook-ups at Mammoth.
Meaning no water, sewer or electricity.
We are allowed to run our generator from 8 am to 8pm. The little thing we are thankful for today is
that we do not need power to have heat and it is not warm enough outside that
we would want to run the air conditioning.
The rest is a logistical thing. I
should have Mike write this part, but basically we run the generator right up
to 8 pm and start it right up again at 8 am. to recharge everything (like the
frig). We don’t run it while we are gone
during the day doing things, so we make sure we are back by 6 or 7 to run it
for a while before the 8pm curfew. We do have water from our holding tank. We don’t take long showers or I can’t do any
laundry because it would drain our water tank and fill our gray water holding
tank too quickly. (actually, no laundry is something to be thankful for, too!)
This is as “roughing it” as we
get, folks. In fact, many people will
say what we do in the RV is not even really camping. My brother Tim used to say his idea of
camping is a Holiday Inn with a tree out front.
We are pretty close to that concept in our motorhome. We have all the comforts of home.
But we wanted to have the
experience of camping inside Yellowstone and we are loving it.
While Mike was on his afternoon
call, I went into the little “town” of Mammoth.
It has a hotel, restaurant, post office, medical clinic, justice
building, gas station and general store, along with National Park services like
a visitor center and the administration building where Janice works. She told me to call her when I got there because
an elk had a baby (probably the night before) and it chose to lie down by her
car and she would show me. The mom was
out on the lawn, but the baby was right next to her rear tire! Park personnel were keeping people away
because the mom could get very upset. I
got as close as allowed and took the picture so I hope you can see it.
Janice half-jokingly said she
hoped the elk moves the baby along by noon because she had to leave for a
doctor’s appointment in Bozeman with Bill.
She gave me a tour of her office and when I left I offered to give her a
ride back into Gardiner if she needed it.
Sure enough, as I was at the register in the gift shop paying for my
postcards, my phone rang and the baby had not moved. Giving her a ride was the least I could do
for everything her and Bill have done for us.
(more on that later).
Mike was free about 2, and acting
on a tip from our Yellowstone expert (a.k.a. Janice) that bears had been
sighted in Lamar Valley that morning, we took off. The Lamar Valley was one of the areas we did
not make it to the day before.
Before we even got to the
“official Lamar Valley” area, we were treated to a show. The bison must have listened to my comments
about the safety of the buddy system (just call me The Buffalo Whisperer)
because there was a parade! With traffic
stopped on both sides of the road, big bisons and baby bisons ran single file
down the shoulder, coming toward us. It
was like when the circus came to town and they unloaded the elephants off the
train cars and paraded them into town for advertising. (I’m not that old to have personally witnessed
that, I read it in a book).
I took pictures, and Mike has it
on video.
Remember in my last post, after we
saw a grizzly bear, Mike said he wanted to see a black bear? Ask and you shall receive. Or dreams really do come true. Take your pick because farther up the road,
traffic came to a halt again, with cars pulled over (there is very little
shoulder on these roads, so when cars pull over, they are still partially
blocking the road). I jumped out and ran
ahead to the crowd and asked, “What is it?”
A black bear! I had a difficult
time seeing it. A nice gentleman was
trying to point him out, to no avail. I
heard a group to my left say, “There it is” so I moved over a little, and there
it was! I looked back at the road and
the Jeep was right behind me with Mike inside and he said he could see it. He was a happy camper!
When traffic is at a dead stop,
you know there is some sort of wildlife close.
Other times, cars will be pulled over and you look in the direction
their heads or binoculars are pointed, wondering, “What are they looking
at?”
There was a large crowd, with
cameras aimed at a hill. Janice had told
us about “wolf watchers” and this was just such a group. These people are pros. Their cameras are the size of bazookas, on
tripods, many with camo coverings. We
walked up to someone with a regular camera around her neck and whispered, “What
is it?” The lady said she thought there
was a den of baby wolves, although she had been there a while and had not seen
anything. The “pros” were saying the
adult wolves would be coming back. (2
hours later when we came back by, the cameras were still pointed at the hill,
but nobody was looking through the lenses.
They were standing around talking.)
The Lamar Valley is a feast for
the eyes. I sure hope the parents of the
little boy that was next to me at Old Faithful drove through this valley
because there were buffalo EVERYWHERE.
Herds dotted the green valley, along with elk and pronghorns.
What a treat!
Right before we reached the
northeast entrance of the park (or exit in our case), there were more cars
pulled off to the side. We even have to
ask as we could see the bear down in a clearing. We drove to a safe spot to pull over and
walked back to see the black bear.
Again, I took pictures and Mike took a video.
We exited the park and one mile
down the road was the town of Silvergate.
I think it might have 4 buildings.
But one was a general store so we stopped to get a bottled water. When we got back in the car, we had to wait
to leave for a bison that was walking behind the Jeep.
We were pumped with all the
wildlife we had seen but the day was not over.
Driving back along the same road we just traveled, in a different spot
the traffic was stopped again. There was
not only a black bear, but also 2 cubs! We didn't have a good angle to take a picture, so you won't see the cubs. We sat in the car and watched as one was trying to get over a fallen
log. He or she made it. It was so cute.
We got back to the RV in time to
run the generator for an hour, turned it off at 7 and had dinner with Bill and
Janice again. This time they treated us
to a wonderful meal at their home in Gardiner.
Bill grilled brats that he had made himself – delicious! Janice told stories about happenings in
Yellowstone – some good and some tragic.
When we left she said for us to have fun, but she didn’t want to see our
names on the Daily Report. This would be
a report that chronicles incidences the prior day in the park. We figured that would be like when each of
our kids opened their first checking account at the bank and Mike would warn
them – “I don’t want to see your name on the Overdraft List!”
Since we couldn’t start the
generator until 8 am on Wednesday morning, it was the perfect excuse to sleep in until then. Not that I need an excuse to sleep in, but
I’ll take it! (Mike was up at 6:30). It was raining, and the forecast was rain all
day. So once again, nature had a hand in
determining what to do. We opted for the
Lamar Valley again as we saw so much without having to get out of the car the
day before and planned to exit the park again at that northeast entrance and
try the Beartooth Pass. This is a scenic
drive of switchbacks rising to an elevation of over 10,000 ft. Bill and Janice told us about it at dinner
the first night and a couple at the next table overheard them and the guy came
over and chimed in with his endorsement.
Charles Kuralt called it America’s most scenic drive. (my kids are saying, “Who’s Charles
Kuralt?”) But most of you reading this
are over 45 years old and should remember the CBS newsman who did “On the Road
with Charles Kuralt”. He crisscrossed
the United States in an RV looking for stories about extraordinary people and
places. I guess you could say we are
following his footprint with all the wonderful places we have seen.
If we didn’t see anything else
today, we would have been more than satisfied with all the different wildlife
we experienced at Yellowstone. But just
to put a marchino cherry on top of our whipped cream, we came across another
herd of bison in the valley. But this
time, we watched several of them enter the river to cross it. We witnessed them struggle against the strong
current with just their large heads above water and emerge on the other
side.
I said that I am slow to see
things, but I was proud of myself when I spotted an osprey eagle perched on a
tree limb. We could see it with our
naked eyes, but got a really good look with the binoculars.
A sign as we exited the park on to
the Beartooth Highway (which leads to the Pass) said the Pass was closed due to
weather. We decided to continue as far as we could in hopes of seeing what
everyone raved about. We got 17
miles. By now it was snowing quite
hard. We knew we were high up and got a
small glimpse of the promise of what the views on Beartooth Pass would be like.
Heading back to Mammoth, we came
across that sure-fire sign that something worthwhile was ahead. We pulled up next to a car that was pulled
over. The guy rolled down his window, so
I rolled down mine and he said, “There is a bear!” He sounded as excited as we did every
time. This bear was much closer to the
road. A few cars prevented me from
getting a good picture, but we both got great looks. As we drove away, I looked behind as saw the
bear running down a hill!
We stopped at the Visitor Center
at Mammoth and the rain had let up some, so we decided (or I should say I
suggested) to go to the Norris Geyser Basin.
This really would be the last part of Yellowstone that we hadn’t
seen. The Norris Basin is home to the
park’s largest geyser – Steamboat. We
walked back to it. The display said it’s
eruption time frame is anywhere from 4 days to 50 years! Mike said he wasn’t waiting around that
long. To me, that just shows the miracle
of Old Faithful.
When Steamboat does erupt,
its height is two to three times that of Old Faithful.
We also walked around a large part
of the geyser basin, seeing all shapes and sizes of hydrothermal features. The rain came back, but again, we were really
happy with what we did see, even if we didn’t see it all.
We are back at the motorhome in
time to fix dinner before the generator goes off. Dessert tonight is going to be Blue Fairways
Sundaes. While on a boat trip with Greg
and Karen (brother and sister-in-law), we invented these sundaes and christened
them with the name of Greg’s boat. As Mike
and I listened to Willie Robertson’s audio book on this trip, Willie would
share a recipe at the end of every chapter, so I’ll share this recipe with you:
Break up a Klondike ice cream bar
in a bowl. Add sliced bananas and
crushed strawberries. Top with whipped
cream.
Since this post is quite lengthy
already, I’ll put down some final thoughts about Yellowstone Thursday or
Friday. We leave Thursday morning for
our windshield wiper appointment in Billings, Montana and on to Cody, Wyoming
from there.
Willie also shared a scripture
verse at the beginning of every chapter and these came to mind today:
“In the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth.”
“And God said, ‘Let the land
produce living creatures according to their kinds; livestock, creatures that
move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their
kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move
along the ground according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:1, 24 -25.
Lots of pictures from the last two
days: Janice’s car with the baby elk by
the rear tire; boxes in the campground from people in tents to keep their food
from attracting bears; the buffalo parade; the first black bear; an example of how people gather to
look at something. This was at the wolf
hill; two shots of the second black bear; the bison behind our car - see our bike tires; a look at
Mammoth Hot Springs; our RV in the campground;
an example of people who are REALLY roughing it; close-up of a baby bison; the bison crossing
the river; the snow on Beartooth Pass; stopped for lunch in Silvergate. In our quest to “eat local”, this is what we
get!” close-up of a bull elk; 3 pronghorn; Mike at Steamboat geyser; me at the
geyser basin; and the varied colors in the basin.
