Mid June through Mid August 2021

8/24/2021

Time flies when we’re having fun. I thought I had made another blog post in July, but when I went to write this post, I found I hadn’t done one since the middle of June. So…

June 28^th we went back to Yellowstone and stopped in a few locations we hadn’t been to lately. The Mud Volcano area was relatively empty of tourists, so we stopped there since we always like to take a look at Dragon’s Mouth. To our surprise, it appears that the side of the opening had partially collapsed, preventing the normal surge of water from rushing out the opening in waves.

A little further up the Hayden Valley we saw a beautiful field of blue wild flowers with a few geese and ducks hanging around.

Just over the next rise was a herd of bison.

Near there we saw a number of moms with young red dogs napping.

Just east of Mammoth Hot Springs we saw a group of elk with their young.

July 12^th we made a run to Idaho Falls. We just after sunrise and had a delightful view of the sun coming up behind the clouds, shining through the smoke from the fires in the western states.

Back in Yellowstone the 20^th of July we saw a number of mule deer near the road between West Thumb and Canyon.

On our way home we noticed a traffic jam on the Jackson Lake Dam. As we got to the jam a grizzly bear cub crossed the road in front of the car ahead of us.

Then we noticed, in the field across the road, three more bear cubs, though we couldn’t get very good pictures of them.

It turns out, these are the cubs that belong to a very famous sow – Number 399! She is probably the oldest grizzly bear in the area at 25 years old. She’s had litters of four cubs many times and these are her cubs from last year. She was out in the field somewhere, but we couldn’t see her.

July 26^th, Penny’s sister, brother-in-law and niece came up from Pocatello and we all took a hike to Taggart Lake. It is a beautiful alpine lake with creeks to cross as you hike out to it.

August 17^th it was back to Yellowstone for us. Left the campground at sunrise, but it took a little extra time because there was a mother elk and her calf in the campground. We couldn’t leave without taking a picture of them.

Then as we were driving out toward the highway from the campground, we came across two bull moose near the Gros Ventre River.

Up along Yellowstone Lake the smoke made for an interesting sight.

In the Hayden Valley were a couple of Trumpeter Swans in the Yellowstone River.

There were lots of bison in the Lamar Valley doing their rut thing. We parked and watched them for a while. Two of the bulls decided to get into a little tussle with each other.

On the way home we were able to get a photo of Lewis Falls. Still quite a bit of water flowing, even in the middle of summer.

I’ll try to post one more blog near the end of our season. We will leave here the end of the last week of September and plan on arriving in Oregon sometime the first week of October.