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.

 

May 10th we received almost a half an inch of snow in the campground.

 

We went out to West Yellowstone May 11th. On the way back to camp we saw a small herd of bison crossing the Madison River.

 

 

May 17th we took a drive down to the Tetons. I took a panorama picture of the peaks from Mormon Row, an historic town, east of the park but the image is too large to upload. 

On the 18th we drove out to Quake Lake. On the way back in, we came across another herd of bison, this one had a number of baby bison with them.

 

On May 22 we had another dusting of snow in the campground.

Driving along the Firehole River on the 23rd, we came across a lone trumpeter swan near Fountain Flats Drive.

 

May 23rd we drove around the upper loop in Yellowstone. We stopped at Floating Island Lake between Tower Junction and Mammoth. There were quite a few bird species in and around the Lake.

One I haven't  been able to classify yet.

 One that I think is a Lesser Scaup

 

An American Coot 

 

And an American Avocet

 

On the way south towards the campground, we found a bald eagle in a tree along the Gibbon River, just north of the Gibbon Falls.

 

On May 31st, on our way to Stagecoach Road, for a hike with our hiking buddies, we stopped at Apollonaris Spring. Penny and I had seen it when we were heading towards Bozeman once, but none of us had ever stopped there and our hiking buddies were totally unaware of it, even though they have been working in Yellowstone for five years. It turns out that it is a fresh water spring that visitors early in the 20th century used as drinking water, since there were no other facilities that supplied fresh water at the time. The water is not particularly healthy to drink due to pollution from wildlife. It is a very small feature in the park and probably doesn't get many visitors, since there is only room for a couple of cars to park near it.

 

 While on the hike over Stagecoach Road, we saw a herd of Elk and Pronghorn plus a few flowers were starting to bloom.

 

The morning of June 7th we went to Old Faithful with our hiking buddies, to watch an eruption of the geyser from above, with the Old Faithful Inn as a backdrop. We were a little slow getting up the hill, so we watched it from about three-quarters the way up the hill. On the way down, we came across a rock mound with a family of Yellow Belly Marmots in it and were able to get a few pictures of them.

 We also saw a Redtail Hawk on the top of a dead tree across from the entrance to Firehole Lake Drive.

 Penny and I took another ride around the north loop that afternoon and went out to the Lamar Valley. We saw the cutest baby pronghorn near Slough Creek.

 

The pine trees are full of pollen this time of year. It was windy enough in the Lamar Valley that the pollen looked very much like a dust storm.

 

June 8th we took another trip out towards West Yellowstone. While parked in a turnout seven miles from the campground, on the Madison River, we saw a family of Northern Pintail ducks in the river.

 

Back out at the same turnout on June 13th we saw another Bald Eagle watching the river for fish and a River Otter collecting grass for its home in the river bank.

 

On the 14th of June we hiked the Point Sublime Trail along the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where we got some spectacular views of the canyon and river downstream from the lower falls.

 

After the hike we drove out to the Lamar Valley for a picnic lunch and a chance to sit and watch the wildlife. Bison were everywhere - hundreds of bison in each group.

We also saw a weasel on two if our recent trips but nobody in the truck was fast enough with their camera to get a picture of either one.