6/15/2020
We sat out the COVID-19 closure at the mill, through May. On
Sunday the 31st of May we got a call from Yellowstone Foundation, asking
when we could get there. Both Wyoming and Montana had insisted that the park
open its gates so the states could start getting the income from the tourist
industry that the park generates. Wyoming had the least amount of COVID deaths
of any state and Montana’s cases were dropping, though they had been low to
begin with. I told them “Four days from the day we're asked to come”. They were a
bit disappointed and said they had hoped we could get there Tuesday. We don’t
drive a thousand miles in one day but did drive longer than usual each day and
we arrived Thursday June 4th, after spending Monday packing up and
doing all the necessary checks on our truck and trailer. We stopped in
Pendelton, Oregon the first night and Declo, Idaho the second night, arriving
at the park the afternoon of the third day.
Because of our delay and the short notice the company had to
get stores open, we didn’t start work until Tuesday the 9th , so we had
a few days to drive around the park checking things out. The road between
Canyon Village and Tower Falls will be closed all summer while they replace the
roadway, which was getting torn up by traffic and is too narrow to have one way
traffic during construction. That makes for a longer drive to get to the
northeast corner of the park, but that’s ok with us. That’s the first place we
went on Friday the 5th.
We got caught in a bison jam up in the Tower area. They were
crossing the bridge over the Yellowstone river and had traffic pretty well
stopped.
They got off the road the other side of the bridge and
headed east toward the Lamar Valley. We stopped to watch them for a while near
a small lake less than a mile after the bridge.
From there we continued on towards the Lamar Valley. We saw
a couple of sandhill cranes and some other birds near the bison. We noticed
that there’s gong to be another batch of Osprey in the nest in the Lamar River
Canyon
On the east side of the Lamar Valley, where Soda Butte Creek
falls into the Lamar River, we saw a sow grizzly nursing her two cubs.
There was nowhere to park off the road so we had to get some
quick shots of her as we rolled by the area between cars that were parked half-on,
half-off, or right in the middle of the road. We drove up to Pebble Creek to
turn around and on the way back through the bear zone, mom had finished feeding
her cubs and was taking them up the side of the hill on the other side of the
road.
Saturday the 6th, we drove to Canyon Village and
up to Mammoth. Most of the elk we’ve seen have been in the Mammoth area. We haven't seen a single buck elk yet though.
The pronghorn are looking a little like it has quarantine
hair.
We can’t be sure but it looks like the lone swan on the
Firehole river has found a mate.
The next day we drove around the lower loop from Old
Faithful to West Thumb to Canyon and around to Madison before getting back to
Old Faithful. It snowed that day.
On Monday the 8th we drove back up to the Lamar
Valley. This time we saw a cinnamon black bear with two well fed, 2nd
year cubs, near Elk Creek.
Out by Pebble Creek campground we saw a moose foraging for
food.
Our first day of work the 9th, we had a couple
hours of training, then a full day of training on the 10th. Thursday
we shadowed an experienced worker in the only store that’s currently open in
the Old Faithful area. We made all the sales while she was available to answer
any questions or dig us out of problems we got into due to our unfamiliarity
with the system. Friday we worked alone in that store while she and her husband
went to another store to run it and the other workers went to various places to
prepare to open additional stores around the park. NPS has to decide when they
want the visitor’s center to open before we can open the store inside. They are
supposed to have a meeting about it the 16th.
We had the 13th and 14th off. We went
to Bozeman Saturday, to restock our supplies. Sunday we drove to the Lamar
Valley again. This time we saw another black bear.
We haven’t done any actual hiking yet. We’re trying to get
our lungs acclimated to the 7000’ plus elevation. Soon we hope. Once things settle out, we think our schedule will be on 4 days, off 4 days, on 3 days, off 3 days. That will be alright with us.
