8/1/17

 

Another month gone since we last posted to our blog. Two of our co-workers left today. They have both been working at Disney World the last 9 years and one of them got a job offer from Disney, they couldn't refuse. That will increase the work load on the rest of us unless/until the powers that be can get some replacements for us. The hotels are now in even worse shape since they fired a couple dozen housekeeping staff members for organizing a fight club.

We continue to use our days off to drive around the park seeing what we can see and taking short hikes. Our bear sightings have started to taper off with the high temperatures we've been having the last couple of weeks.

We were lucky enough to see a black bear near Tower Junction on July 2nd.

 

Hayden Valley continues to be unusually bereft of wildlife. Each time we go there we see no more than a dozen bison, whereas in years past we would see hundreds, if not more than a thousand.

On July 9th we saw another young black bear between Mammoth and Tower Junction.

On our way over Dunraven Pass we saw this sitting in a tree looking for a tasty  morsel.

 

July 15th we again visited the Lamar Valley and saw yet another black bear in the Phantom Lake area. This one was enjoying the berries that were ripening on the bushes.

July 16 we decided to drive around the lower loop. We had not been seeing many elk in Mammoth but did see this big guy near the Lake Hotel.

 

On July 22nd we drove out the east entrance of the park to Cody and returned via the Chief Joseph highway through the northeast entrance with a stop at Cooke City for lunch. Just north of Cody is the remains of the Heart Mountain Internment camp used to house nearly 14,000 Japanese-Americans during world war 2. There isn't much left except a couple of buildings, a memorial, one watch tower and a visitor's center.

 

Even though we didn't tour the visitor's center, the memorial was an interesting feature along with a short walk with story boards describing the various parts of the camp and how life went on in the camp.

July 29 and 30 we drove around the Lamar valley a couple more times. The rut is about to begin for the bison and we sat amongst them for a while listening to them bellow and practice fighting with each other. As we were leaving we saw a golden eagle sitting atop a tree over the Lamar River looking for a meal.