9/4/17

August 1st, while out at 7 mile bridge (the closest place to the campground where we get cell service) doing some computer stuff, I noticed a Blue Heron resting in the Madison River, preening itself. It stayed there longer than I did and I was able to get a couple good pictures.

 

There was also a family of ducks swimming in the river.

 

On the 5th we drove out to the Lamar Valley again to watch the bison in rut.

 

There were a couple of young bison playing like they were in rut also.

 

After they played a while they decided to take a nap together.

 

On the way home we stopped at Midway Geyser Basin and hiked the newly opened trail to the Grand Prismatic overlook.

 As we were leaving the sun was shining through the clouds, making a beautiful sun burst.

 

We took another drive out to Lamar on the 6th, for more bison watching. One of the bison apparently had the job of bus driver that day, with seven birds hitching a ride on its back.

 On the way home we saw members of the newest wolf pack in the park. The pack lives very close to the campground we work in and we sometimes hear them howling in the evening. They were quite a ways off the road when we saw them, so we weren't able to get a very good photo of them.

 

We repeated our visit to Lamar the next weekend to watch the bison again.

On the 17th two adult and one baby elk came by our trailer eating the grass. We were able to sit in the door of our trailer and watch them from about 20 feet away.

 

On the 18th we saw an bald eagle on our way out to West Yellowstone. It was sitting in a tree looking for fish in the Madison River.

 

On the 19th we hiked around Trout Lake in the northeast corner of the park. We've done this hike before but this time we took a side trail that follows the creek that runs into the lake. It is a spawning ground for the cutthroat in the lake.

 

The wind was fairly calm during our hike and we got a good photo of the lake with the reflection of the background mountains in it.

 

On our way to the lake we saw a Redtail Hawk along the road.

 

August 20th we hiked Monument Geyser Basin. Looking down the Gibbon River canyon, you can see how much smoke is getting into the park from fires in Canada and Montana.

 

We were in the 98% totality area during the Aug 21st solar eclipse. You're nowhere unless you're in 100% totality but we did get some photos of the sun at our location.

 

On August 26th we hiked the Elephant Back trail. When you get to the top of the hill, you have a pretty good view of the north end of Lake Yellowstone. It would have been better with less smoke though.

 

August 27th the mother and baby elk returned to our trailer.

 

We are now less than 8 weeks from the end of the season in Yellowstone. We haven't decided whether we will be coming back again next year or not but it is probably more likely than not.

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.