Yellowstone - Part 3

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.