We had our last day off on Wednesday the 14th and decided to drive around the lower loop one last time. We saw a bunch of bison and one male elk. We were able to get a picture that shows just how stupid some of the people that visit Yellowstone are. Fortunately, the rut was over, so the guy in the photo did not get attacked by the elk.

 

We also stopped at a turnout just north of the campground and climbed down the hill to the bank of the Gibbon River. With water levels at their lowest for the year, you can see the results of thousands of years of erosion on a rock in the middle of a river.

I also made a panorama of the river.

 

We left Yellowstone for the season Tuesday, October 20th. We only went about 130 miles and decided to stop in Declo, a place we've stayed a couple of other times. Penny was able to get a few photos of the sunset, looking across the Snake River.

 

We will be heading towards eastern Oregon today and will stay at Farewell Bend State Park for a couple of nights.

Wednesday September 30th, Penny found a couple of squirrels playing "leapfrog" on our porch and got a few pictures.

 

photo   2747 crop

 

The next day, one of the herd of elk that have been hanging around the campground came in for a snack and a nap. In the evenings the guy below has been bugling up a storm.

 

photo   Bull Elk (6) crop

 

On Sunday the 4th, we went into West Yellowstone. We made our way back to camp around sunset. Along the way, we noticed a beautiful sunset in our rear view mirror, so we stopped to take a couple pictures.

 

photo   Sunset (3)   Sunset (6) crop

 

Tuesday October 6th, we hiked the Hoodoos just south of Mammoth Hot Springs with our regular hiking buddies and another coworker. We did this same hike last year and there are photos in the section from last year below. Penny did find an old log that squirrels have been stocking up a store of pine cones for winter.

 

photo   Squirrel Food (1) crop

 

Last year, our camera battery went dead before we finished the hike, so we didn't get any photos of the hot springs area. Because of movement of the hot spot below the ground surface, the water outflow has moved to an area that is only viewable from the trail behind the terraces. Most visitors don't get to this area because they don't want to get out of their car.

 

photo   Thermal Features (6)   Thermal Features (31)   Thermal Features 54

 

At the end of the hike, we had to walk between a creek and a building. As we got to the back side of the building, we noticed a few elk enjoying the green grass. The smallest elk was taking a siesta. Even though we were closer than we normally would have gotten, it didn't seem too bothered by us.

 

photo   Elk (4)

 

Penny and I decided to go to the Canyon area to take a short hike Wednesday afternoon. We were thinking of doing Uncle Tom's Trail but since we hadn't done the Red Rock Trail this year, that's what we decided to do. I recently bought a copy of Adobe Elements, so I was able to make a panorama view from the bottom of the trail.

 

photo   Panorama1

I also went back and made a panorama of some Riddle Lake photos I had taken.

 

photo   Riddle Lake Panorama

 

Though not as good as it might be otherwise, I also made a panorama of some of the shots we took at Beartooth Pass

 

photo   Merged panorama

 

We have about a week left before we head west. Because they are reducing staff now, we may have to work more hours than we have been. Penny will only get one day off this week, so we probably won't be doing a lot of hiking. Our next blog post may not happen until we get back to Puyallup for our doctor's appointments in late October.

Wednesday September 30th, Penny found a couple of squirrels playing "leapfrog" on our porch and got a few pictures.

 

 The next day, one of the herd of elk that have been hanging around the campground came in for a snack and a nap. In the evenings the guy below has been bugling up a storm.

 

On Sunday the 4th, we went into West Yellowstone. We made our way back to camp around sunset. Along the way, we noticed a beautiful sunset in our rear view mirror, so we stopped to take a couple pictures.

 

Tuesday October 6th, we hiked the Hoodoos just south of Mammoth Hot Springs with our regular hiking buddies and another coworker. We did this same hike last year and there are photos in the section from last year below. Penny did find an old log that squirrels have been stocking up a store of pine cones for winter.

Last year, our camera battery went dead before we finished the hike, so we didn't get any photos of the hot springs area. Because of movement of the hot spot below the ground surface, the water outflow has moved to an area that is only viewable from the trail behind the terraces. Most visitors don't get to this area because they don't want to get out of their car.

At the end of the hike, we had to walk between a creek and a building. As we got to the back side of the building, we noticed a few elk enjoying the green grass. The smallest elk was taking a siesta. Even though we were closer than we normally would have gotten, it didn't seem too bothered by us.

Penny and I decided to go to the Canyon area to take a short hike Wednesday afternoon. We were thinking of doing Uncle Tom's Trail but since we hadn't done the Red Rock Trail this year, that's what we decided to do. I recently bought a copy of Adobe Elements, so I was able to make a panorama view from the bottom of the trail.

 

I also went back and made a panorama of some Riddle Lake photos I had taken.

 

Though not as good as it might be otherwise, I also made a panorama of some of the shots we took at Beartooth Pass

 

We have about a week left before we head west. Because they are reducing staff now, we may have to work more hours than we have been. Penny will only get one day off this week, so we likely won't be doing a lot of hiking. Our next blog post may not happen until we get back to Puyallup for our doctor's appointments in late October.

The snow I talked about in my last post seems to have doused both the wildfires that were burning in the park. One had been burning for three weeks but was only 16 acres, the other had burned for a little over a week and was over 2500 acres. Both were started by lightening strikes. The fire danger is now down to low. It had been at high since July.

Tuesday the 22nd we took a couple of co-workers on a hike up Mt Washburn. Our normal hiking buddies couldn't go with us. It's the most popular hike in the park and is about seven and a half miles long, round trip. The hike starts at a pull out at Dunraven Pass, at an elevation of a little less than 9900 feet and climbs up the old fire tower access road to the tower at 10,243 feet. There is another trail up the other side of the mountain that follows the new access road to the tower.

The tower on the top of the peak in the picture below was our goal.

 

The photo below was taken near the beginning of the hike. It shows the Hayden Valley and the thermal features at Mud Volcano.

Farther up the trail we came across what we think is a Grouse. If you think it is some other kind of bird, let us know. We haven't found a description in our Audubon book that exactly matches the bird we saw but Grouse seems to come closest.

 

The photo below shows the trail as it leads up to the fire tower, along the spine of Mt. Washburn. Beyond is the Hayden Valley and Yellowstone Lake. At the bottom of the photo you can see the trail just below the tower. The trail actually spirals up to the tower by circling the peak one and a half times. 

One of our hikers has a fear of heights, so she had some trouble crossing the saddle-backs that have drop off on both sides of the trail in that photo, but she made it by staying in the middle of the trail and concentrating on her feet. After a rest and bite to eat in the tower, the three women took the trail down the other side of the mountain while I hiked down the original trail to the truck. I drove around to the other side to pick them up and they were just getting down to the trailhead as I drove up to the parking area. While they were hiking down they came across a herd of big horn sheep.

 

Our calves were very sore for the next couple of days, since we hadn't been hiking much recently due to our sinus infections.

I got an extra day off this week, so Monday the 28th I went hiking with a coworker from last year and her husband, who had come for a visit on the way to the Grand Tetons. We did a short hike down Uncle Tom's trail. The only picture I took was of our friends that I went hiking with. It turns out they both grew up near where I grew up and at about the same time.

 

On Tuesday the 29th Penny and I went with six of our coworkers on a hike to Riddle Lake. Riddle Lake is a few miles south of Yellowstone Lake, near Grant Campground. The trail doesn't open until July, because the lake is a breeding ground for trumpeter swans. It is also an area that has many grizzly bears.

 

We didn't see any grizzly bears but we did see a mating pair of swans with one young swan. We also saw an eagle, in a tree, across the lake.

 

Wednesday we made what we hope is our last trip to Costco, in Bozeman.

In late August we both caught a sinus infection that was going around the crew, so we didn't do any hiking for a couple of weeks. We did go on a couple drives while we were in no condition to hike. On September 2nd, went on a drive to Great Fountain Geyser and were rewarded with an eruption - they occur approximately every twelve hours, plus or minus two hours, so being there at the right time can mean waiting a long time or having a lot of luck. Along the way we saw an eagle and a herd of bison. We were sitting on the downwind side of the geyser, so got doused with the water being ejected a few times. You can see the height of the eruption, compared to the people sitting on the benches to the left, in the photo below.

 

September 6th we decided to go out for a drive at sunset between the campground and Old Faithful. There was a little more cloud cover than makes for a perfect sunset, but it was still nice.

 

Once we got over the infection (more or less), we went on a short hike with our hiking buddies, to get back into condition again. Our hiking buddies had not been to Trout Lake before, so we decided it would be a good starting hike. We went to Mammoth on our way and saw quite a few elk resting on the groomed lawns around the buildings. Between Mammoth and the Tower-Roosevelt Junction we saw a herd of bison, some of which were crossing the road causing a traffic jam. In the Lamar Valley we saw a half dozen pronghorn near the road.

 

At the lake, all the fishermen were fisherwomen. Based on the wildlife we saw at the lake, it should be called Duck Lake instead of Trout Lake.

 

This last weekend, it started raining the night before our first day off and isn't supposed to quit for another day or two. Maybe we'll get a hike in next weekend. We did go on a drive around the lower loop on Wednesday the 16th, to see if the rain had helped put out a fire in the Hayden Valley that had burned 2500 acres. It had doused it pretty well and we couldn't see any smoke from two miles away. The trees are showing that fall is coming.

 

We also had our first snow since spring, this afternoon. It left a light dusting on the hills above 7000 feet. We are at 6800 feet, so the snow melted as it hit the ground in the campground.

Tuesday August 18th Penny and I drove out to the east side of the Lamar Valley to hike around Trout Lake. Our hiking buddies went to the Tetons to meet up with some of their friends from San Diego. Along the way we saw some animals walking along a ridgeline less than a mile away. We couldn't quite figure out what they were with just our eyes, so we took a couple pictures. We zoomed in on the pictures and determined that it was an entire PACK of wolves. Usually people see only one wolf at a time, so seeing seven of them at the same time was quite a treat. I couldn't get all seven in one shot but I did get six of them in one of our photos (well, most of the six).

 

We spent about 15 minutes watching them until they went behind the hill and could no longer be seen.

Not far down the road was Trout Lake. It's a cute little lake up in the hills north of the valley. It's a short hike but it is steep for the first quarter mile. They have a hybrid breed of fish in this lake that is a cross between Rainbow and Cutthroat trout. There were a couple of fishermen there but otherwise there were very few people. The scenery is quite beautiful.

 

This Tuesday is Christmas in Yellowstone, so I'm not sure if we will be hiking or not.

Tuesday, August 4th, we took a drive to Quake Lake with our hiking buddies. Quake Lake was formed on August 17th, 1959, when a magnitude 7.3+ earthquake - in the hills a few miles west of Yellowstone National Park - caused a mountain side to fall into the valley where the Madison River flowed, creating a dam over 100 feet high, across the entire valley.

A dirt road a few miles east of the epicenter of the earthquake and just north of Hebgen Lake, takes you to a half mile trail that leads to a place where a fault fractured and was displaced up to 20+ feet.

 

The hike follows a nice little creek, sometimes choked with dead fall trees.

There are also a few secluded camp sites, large enough for tents or a small trailer.

The same drop in the ground level north of Hebgen Lake caused the lake itself to tip towards the northeast. That tipping caused the lake to slosh back and forth for about 39 minutes, with the water overtopping the man made Hebgen Dam. Many people believed the dam would fail completely. Fortunately, there were only a few cracks in the dam.

About seven miles farther west is an area that slumped into Hebgen Lake during the earthquake. It was the location of a cabin resort called the Hilgard Lodge. The lakeside cabins slid into the lake while people scrambled out of them. There are remnants of a couple of the cabins and an outhouse left.

In the same area, a section of the highway also collapsed into Hebgen Lake.

A few miles up the road from Hebgen Lake is the Quake Lake visitor's center, which sits on the debris that fell from the mountain across the river and flowed up the other side of the valley. The visitors center was an interesting display of stories from people that lived or were camping in the area the night the earthquake occurred.

As the water rose behind the material that dammed the river, it began to over-top the new dam. The Army Corp of Engineers quickly went to work excavating a spillway, to prevent the collapse of the new dam, which could have caused massive flooding downstream. The photo below shoes the spillway dug through the debris that slid down from the treeless area on the mountain in the background.

On Tuesday, August 11th, we took our last company sponsored tour. This one took us and our hiking buddies out to the Beartooth Pass, somewhere we had never been before but always wanted to go. We had to meet the tour van at Roosevelt Lodge in the north part of Yellowstone at 8:30 a.m., so we left the campground a little after 5. That gave us plenty of time to get there and allowed us to have breakfast at the Roosevelt Lodge before we had to get on the van. It was a beautiful morning for a drive and the traffic was great at that time of the morning.

The tour took us out the northeast entrance of the park. We got caught in a small bison jam as we passed through the Lamar Valley, but it didn't delay us too much. The bison are in the early stages of their rut so we got to see a little bit the fighting the males do.

Outside the park, you pass through Cooke City, a quaint little town that was founded during the mining days starting in the 1870's. The surrounding mountains are very interesting, even on a somewhat hazy day. The geologic history of the mountains is visible in the different layers of rock.

From just east of the town you can see Pilot and Index Peaks. Pilot Peak is over 11,700 feet tall and Index Peak is over 11,300 feet tall. They look very similar to the Matterhorn in Switzerland because they were formed in exactly the same way, with glaciers eroding the steep sides of the mountains as they slid down.

A little ways up the road is a waterfall. One of many that flow down joints in the rocks. This one is unnamed but has the advantage of having an abandoned bridge that you can walk to, to get a view of it from directly above and below. The group of people to the left of the falls is a University of Wisconsin geology class doing field work. We got the chance to listen in on the professor's talk at the next stop. 

 

A bit farther up the road you arrive at Beartooth Plateau. On it sits a lake, directly in front of Beartooth Butte. It was a calm day, so the reflection of the butte was almost completely undisturbed by ripples.

As we continued up to the 11,000 foot summit of Beartooth Pass, the road wound around many glacial lakes.

Beyond the pass is a turnout that gives you a look up and down the Beartooth Valley.

 

Also at this turnout are a bunch of friendly chipmunks that will eat out of your hand.

The peak the mountains and pass are actually named after can be seen easier on your way back towards Yellowstone. Because of the haze and the distance to the Bear's Tooth Peak, we couldn't get a great photo of it, but it is still fascinating.

 

We got home about 6:30 that evening. We had a great time.