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.

 

6/19/17

Wow, it's been over a month since we last posted to our blog. We continue to work five days a week and more hours than we would like, due to our being a couple of people short on the crew. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case everywhere. The hotels in the park are running with staffs 30% smaller than really needed, as are many of the hotels outside the park.

On May 13th we took a drive to the Tetons hoping to see some animals but only saw a herd of bison walking down the road as we left the campground and an Osprey looking for fish in the Firehole river.

There was still quite a bit of snow in the south end of Yellowstone National Park.

The day was overcast but the mountains were still beautiful.

 

We had lunch in Moose, Wyoming then headed back to the campground. We decided to drive up the east side of Yellowstone and around the lower loop on our way home. Yellowstone Lake was starting to thaw but still had plenty of ice on it.

 

In the Gibbon River Canyon we got to see a couple of grizzly bears.

The next day we took a drive to the Lamar Valley where we saw oceans of bison with many baby bison.

On the way home we came across a moose near Elk Creek.

 

May 17th we brought a nice snowstorm that left a couple inches of snow in the campground.

On May 26th we took a quick drive towards West Yellowstone and found that the geese along the Madison river were hatching out.

 

May 27th found us taking a trip to Bozeman to do some shopping. On the way we ran across some more grizzly bears.

On the 28th we saw a black bear near the Tower Falls area.

 

June 3rd we took another drive around the lower loop.  Along the way we saw a grizzly sow and her two cubs.

By Yellowstone Lake we saw an interesting cloud formation which was in just the right location to refract the sun light and make a huge rainbow.

 

On the 18th we ran up to the Lamar Valley again. Along the way we saw seven bear - 2 grizzly and five black bear. One of the black bears was a sow with one black and one cinnamon cub.

 

This is still the year of the bear for us and we are really enjoying all the wildlife. More next time.

5/7/17

We have been at the campground since the 21st of April. Until this week we've had quite a bit of snow, up to 4 inches one night. It has all melted off at the elevation we are at 6800 ft, but there's still significant snow above 7500 ft.

Just to give you an idea of how much snow we had here is a picture looking back toward the campground, from Gibbon Falls.

 

 The last couple of days has gotten into the 60's and low 70's.

There has been a sow grizzly with her one plus year old cub feeding around the Norris area every day, since we got down to the campground. We were able to get a great shot of them on one of our days off.

 Then the cub sat down to check out one of its paws. It was so cute!

 

The bison have begun having their calves and we have seen Osprey nesting, bald eagles and this year we saw a Golden Eagle near the Gibbon River.

On our drives between Mammoth and the Lamar Valley we've seen a cinnamon black bear.

 

On one of our trips through the Lamar Valley, a bison gave birth to a calf that didn't survive. Two wolves that live in the area noticed it and tried to get the dead calf away from the mother. We watched for an hour or more while the wolves tried and the mother bison chased them off over and over, apparently not able to accept the death of her calf.

 

On the 30th, we were up in the Norris area and saw the sow and cub grizzlies again. Penny got a great shot of the cub standing up in the middle of the road looking at all the people taking photos of it.

 

We also went up to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Only one overlook was open, so we got a photo of ourselves with the lower falls in the background, while it was snowing.

 

This last weekend, we drove to Cooke City, outside the northeast entrance, with our hiking buddies. On the drive, we saw a black bear at Tower Junction and a bunch of Red Dogs (baby bison) in the Lamar Valley.

 

On our way back to the campground, we saw a red tail fox in the sage brush, trying to find a meal.

 

Swans, sandhill cranes, blue herons, osprey, eagles, bighorn sheep, pronghorn and marmots filled out the remainder of the day.

 

 

4/19/2017

We have been in Gardiner, Montana for almost two weeks, training for our jobs at Madison campground again. We will be moving to the campground on Friday. We spent a little more than a week traveling from Puyallup, Washington to Gardiner. We stopped at Memaloose State Park near The Dalles, Oregon the first night. Then we spent three nights at Farewell Bend State Park near Ontario, Oregon. We usually stop in Declo, Idaho for a night or two after driving the third segment of our trip, but friends that we will be working with in Yellowstone were staying at a casino RV park in Fort Hall Idaho, so we stayed there with them for a few nights. The weather was a little iffy between Ashton Idaho and West Yellowstone a couple of days, so we made a run for Yellowstone on Monday the 10th while there was a break in the snowy weather. We only hit light snow a couple of times going over Targhee Pass and the roads were clear and dry all the way to Yellowstone.

We got to Gardiner a couple days earlier than we needed to for the job, which gave us a chance to do some sightseeing in Yellowstone before all the paying visitors come. There is still quite a bit of snow around the higher (6500+ ft) elevations and the snow pack has been melting slowly so far, since the temperatures still dip below freezing most nights, but it is warming up during the daytime.

On the trip through the park, to get to Gardiner, this is what some of the areas looked like.

 

The only road in the park, open to all traffic before April 21st runs between Gardiner Montana and Cooke City Montana in the north end of the park. We drove that road each day before we had to start our training.

So far, this has been our best year for animal sightings per trip. In the four trips we've made we've seen...

Elk by the Gardiner River

  

Bison all over the place

 

 Pronghorn in Lamar Valley 

  

A Dusky Grouse that didn't want us to drive on his road.

A red fox

A Killdeer in one of the Mammoth hot springs

 

Sandhill cranes

 

Bighorn Sheep 

 

Moose

 

Along with some interesting ice falls in Ice Box Canyon

And deer behind our trailer

 

All in the first three days after we arrived.

Don had five and Penny had 2 days of training, then we got a day off today and took the same drive again. In just five hours we saw

More Bighorn Sheep 

Eagles 

 

A Grizzly bear having lunch 

 

Nesting Osprey

 

Wolves

 

And the newest arrivals to the park...

Two baby bison

 

 Hopefully, we'll have the same success the rest of the season.