With all the rain and snow we've been getting the past month, the fires are pretty much out, to the point that the park service is no longer giving us information on them and the restricted areas have been opened again.

Since my last post, we've taken a few drives around the park but have also been recovering from sinus infections and most recently, a 24 hour bug that takes 4 days to clear up.

On a drive around the lower loop on September 6th, we saw a buck blacktail deer in the woods near Yellowstone Lake.

 

 

On September 7th we took a day drive down to the Tetons, in part to see some friends we worked with our first year here. They are working at Gros Ventre campground south of Tetons National Park. On our way to the campground we saw a male moose in a meadow by a river.

One of the fires that occurred last month was between Yellowstone and the Tetons. During the fire, one of the campgrounds in that area was evacuated at five in the morning and the road between Yellowstone and the Tetons was closed for a while. By the time we went through the area, enough rain had come to knock down the fire but there were still some hotspots that could be seen from the road.

We could also see some of the results of the fire where it crossed the road.

 

On September 12th we woke up to about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

Fall colors started coming out about that time and we have been getting around to see them too. We took a short drive out towards West Yellowstone on the 13th and saw a few deciduous trees turning yellow and orange, amongst the hills highlighted with snow.

 

On the 14th we went out to the Hayden Valley, in the middle of the park, along the way we saw two bald eagles near the Gibbon River.

 

 

 

More fall colors were coming out as we drove farther north.

 

Back out to West Yellowstone on the 19th, the colors were becoming even more vivid.

 

Tuesday, September 20th, we decided to drive up the Beartooth Highway, then down to Cody and back home through the east entrance of the park. On the way over Dunraven Pass to the northeast entrance of the park, we came across a sow black bear and her two cubs looking for mushrooms and grubs on the hill above the road.

 

The Beartooth highway is always a beautiful drive, especially with the trees changing colors.

 

Driving south from the Beartooth to Cody, we drove the Chief Joseph highway. We had never been on that road before. It also has some beautiful features.

 

From Cody to the east entrance of Yellowstone were more colors.

 

We stopped at the Old Faithful area on our way home and a geyser we had not seen erupt before was erupting. I'm still trying to figure out what the name of the geyser is.

 

On September 28th, we drove to Mammoth. It's a long drive at the moment. Since the road between Norris and Mammoth is closed due to construction you have to drive over Dunraven Pass which adds an hour or more to the trip. It was the elk rut season and there was one bull elk, with a harem of most of the female elk in the area, resting behind the post office in Mammoth.

 

On October 5th we took another drive around the lower loop after stopping at the Old Faithful Inn for a buffet breakfast provided by Xanterra. We stopped at West Thumb to walk around the boardwalk. It had snowed the night before and there were still a few inches of snow on the ground and trees. As we drove into the parking area, we noticed a bull elk lying in the trees. He seemed to still be half asleep.

A new hot spring had opened up in the middle of the West Thumb geyser basin. It had drained much of the water out of the adjacent hot springs. With the reduction of moisture in the mud pots, the mud was thickening up. We were able to get a photo of a large bubble in the mud pot.

The snow in the area made the area even more beautiful along the lake shore.

 

The snow had fallen above 7000 feet, so we didn't have any at the campground, but the hills were beautiful.

We stopped at the Sulphur Caldrons on the way around the loop. With the rain and snow we've been getting, the mud pots are a lot wetter. The sulphur fumes coming up through the fluid made for many bubbles.

This is likely our last blog post from Yellowstone this season, since we will be leaving here around October 18th, depending on the weather.

August 10th we drove up to Hayden Valley to watch the bison in their rut. We got a few pictures of the boys chasing the girls but there weren't any fights between the boys. There was a major traffic jam though, because the bison were continually crossing and re-crossing the road...very slowly.

August 8th, a fire was started by a lightning strike about 10 miles west of the campground. We didn't notice it for a few days, since it was well out in the uninhabited Gneiss Creek area between Norris Geyser Basin and West Yellowstone. We started seeing smoke from the fire about a week later. It made for some interesting sunsets.

Another fire started near the northern boarder of Yellowstone, in the Lamar Valley. We took a drive up to that area on August 16th. By that time, the fire had moved east toward the Slough Creek Campground. We drove about half way down the dirt road that leads to the campground and stopped to watch a herd of bison. There was a little bit of scuffling between a couple of the male bison.

 

The place we stopped at happened to be a good place to view the fire as it came up to the crest of the hill, west of Slough Creek campground.

 

 

From Tower Junction the smoke plume was pretty impressive.

 

The evening of August 22 we drove out towards West Yellowstone, just to see what the fire nearest our campground looked like. Just before sunset we parked southwest of the fire and saw the smoke and some flames.

 

Just after sunset the fire really became visible.

 

Coming back from West Yellowstone the next evening there was a flare up much nearer the road we were on.

 

August 24th, there was another beautiful sunsets due to the smoke.

 

Going out to West Yellowstone again the next day we stopped at a turnout to take a picture of a boulder in the river. With the water level much lower now, in late summer, the erosion of the bottom of the boulder is plainly visible. I'm wondering how many more years it will take for the river to erode the bottom of it to the point that it tips over.

 

August 30th we went back out to the Hayden Valley to see if we could find a herd of bison. We didn't find a single bison. We did find a bunch of cars parked just north of the Mud Volcano area. We stopped and asked a ranger at one of the turnouts what everyone was watching, since we couldn't see much of interest. He told us about a bison calf that was taken down by a pack of wolves earlier that morning and that there was a grizzly bear feeding on the carcass at the moment, but it was all taking place below the near side bank of the river, so we couldn't see it. We did find a bunch of ravens and two bald eagles waiting their turn to eat. About a half hour after we got there, the bear drug the kill up on the far bank of the river and we were able to get pictures of him still feeding on it.

 

Wednesday, August 31st, we went to Costco and Walmart, in Bozeman. Smoke from the various fires was very thick in West Yellowstone. The fire nearest the campground is the largest of the six burning inside the park at the moment. It has been named the Maple fire and is currently over 37,000 acres. There have been over a dozen lightning caused fires in the park this year.  The National Park Service has been holding meetings once or twice a week to keep the park employees informed about the fires. They have also put an evacuation plan in place, but don't expect to have to use it for at least the next few days, based on their weather and fire activity predictions. They run a modeling program every day, that predicts what they think the fire will do over the next four days, using the data they've collected about the fire, weather, fuels on the ground, etc. So far, so good. They say they are getting about an 80% correlation between the model and the fire. I'm not sure that's terribly meaningful since they program the model to show +/-200% variation from the mean.

No one seems too concerned at the moment, but they are watching the fire closely and have begun set backfires to try to stop the spread in a direction where there are structures or people they want to protect. They have also made water drops on the west side of the fire perimeter to slow its advance towards West Yellowstone. We have a high ridge between us and the fire and the fire would have to reach that ridge before they would evacuate us. Last week, they had a crew in clearing brush away from the structures around the campground and the ranger housing across the street. They also installed sprinkler systems around the ranger housing to increase the moisture content near the structures. They are implementing a complete burn ban in the park tomorrow. Up to today, they allowed fires in the campground fire rings, but that will stop as of September 1st.

Tuesday, June 21st we and our hiking buddies hiked to Lost Lake, a 6-1/2 acre lake above Roosevelt Lodge in the north-central section of the park. It was only a 3-1/2 mile hike but there is a steep section between the lodge and the plateau that the lake sits on.

 

On our way from the campground to the lodge we got to sit in a one hour bison jam between Norris geyser basin and the canyon area. The road is the preferred trail for bison migration between the east and west side of the park.

Just above Tower Falls, we were lucky enough to find a sow black bear with two cubs looking for food in the tall grass.

Wednesday we made a Wally world/Costco run, so didn't have much time for fun.

June 29th we took a drive to Hayden Valley to check out a bison carcus that had been attracting bears and wolves. There was one grizzly bear just walking away from the carcus as we got there but the carcus was nearly fully consumed, so that was about the last day it would attract any more animals. We did see a red fox as we were driving back to the campground though.

 

Penny's back and legs started giving her trouble around the end of June, so we haven't been able to do much camping until the end of July, but we did do a few drives around the park. We found a very good chiropractor in the town of West Yellowstone who has been able to help get Penny's back adjusted to where she can now do some hiking.

In mid July we went into West Yellowstone to see the chiropractor. We saw a couple of Sandhill Cranes and a few families of ducks in the Madison River.

 

The next time we went out, we saw one of the eagles along the river.

 

July 20th we took another trip out to the Hayden Valley. It was the beginning of the bison rut and the male bison were very vocal, trying to impress the female bison. They were all around our truck as we sat at a turnout watching them.

The next couple of trips were geyser gazing trips and a short hike around Storm Point. We did see some deer in velvet near the canyon village.

 

August 2nd we took a company provided tour, with a hike around Junction Butte. It's a fairly difficult hike with the closest thing to a trail being the paths that bison and elk take up and down the steep slopes. The butte gets its name from the Junction of the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers that come in on two sides of the hill. The best part of the hike was on the drive back to the Mammoth area. In a small lake called Floating Island Lake, we saw a mother moose and her baby eating grass in and around the edge of the lake.

 

August 3rd we went to Bozeman. We left early so I could get the oil changed in the truck before we went to Wally world and Costco. On the way, not far out of West Yellowstone, we saw a beautiful sunrise, made orange from the smoke coming from forest fires in western Idaho.

 

Yesterday, August 9th, we hiked to Lone Star Geyser with our hiking buddies. This geyser has a particularly long eruption - a ten minute minor eruption followed by a 20 minute major eruption. The photo below is during the major eruption.