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Elk Keeping Warm - Mammoth - Jun 1996 - by John W. Uhler
Elk Keeping Warm at Mammoth
June 1996 by John W. Uhler


August and September 1996 Yellowstone Trip Report



We were on the road to Yellowstone at 12:30 pm Friday, 30 Aug 96. We had a nice drive to the park, traffic at this time was still fairly light. There had been a lot of western fires as you may have seen on the news. The sky was hazy for the total 360 mile drive to West Yellowstone. There were a few fires in Utah and Idaho and some of the farmers in Idaho were burning their fields to get read for fall. These added to the smokey conditions, it was the first time I have ever seen these type conditions, it was a distraction on our drive. We kept thinking that just over the next hill or mountain we would see clear blue sky. We had to wait until Saturday for that.


We arrived in West Yellowstone and stayed with the good folks at Three Bear Lodge, our headquarters for this trip. We had supper and then drove into the park just a little ways along the Madison River, it was good to be back home. It seemed that all our other cares and problems just faded away and things came into perspective as we spent this weekend in the park. This trip was just for my wife Carlene and myself. We were celebrating our 25th anniversary. We spend a relaxing evening Friday in West Yellowstone.


Saturday morning we were up at 4:30 am and headed towards Lamar Valley. We had a nice ride into the park. We saw two monster buck mule deer on Mount Washburn and a few elk. We looked for Rosie and her cubs around Roosevelt Lodge up to the Yellowstone picnic grounds. No signs of them.


We drove into Lamar and headed for the Soda Butte area where the Druid Peak pack has be sighted during the week, with the latest sighting being Friday morning. They had been seen behind the Lamar Ranger Station to the Soda Butte area.


We met with other hopeful wolf and bear spotters, but with no avail. We met with a friend from Idaho who had been spending his weekends in the park keeping tabs on the bears and wolves. He gave us the report about the wolves and indicated that the bear sightings had stopped for the past couple weeks in Lamar Valley. He indicated as well as an E-mail we received that a pair of grizzlies had been regularly going to a buffalo kill in Hayden Valley. So we decided that is where we would try Saturday evening. We saw a coyote just off the road past the ranger station in Lamar.


We drove to Mammoth and met with the rangers there and gleaned as much info as possible about the wolves and bears and picked up some info for the home page and individuals who had asked for park information. We then took a nice easy drive down the east side of the park to the Old Faithful area. We saw two American Coots as well as ducks at Black Tail Lake. We saw three moose at Cascade Picnic area just before Canyon - one bull and two cows. Carlene and I hiked to Wraith Falls and saw various birds, including a dipper. We also walked the Children's Fire Trail and enjoyed the area and birds. We saw sandhill cranes and pelicans in Hayden Valley and Fishing Bridge. We did not have a lot of people in those areas on Saturday, we were surprised at being almost along in those areas of the park. It was nice!


I went to Rick MacIntire's Wolf program at Old Faithful. We watched Old Faithful go off but had missed Beehive, which had gone off at about 8:00 am. We drove to Lake Lodge and had supper and then had a beautiful drive along the Yellowstone River to Hayden Valley.


Just about a half mile north of the Mud Volcano area we stopped at a turnout with other wildlife watchers and setup the spotting scope. We talked with a couple from Colorado and Utah as we found the kill sight and got excited at the possibility of seeing the great bear again. We saw a bald eagle fly off with a fish and coyotes coming down to the river to get a drink and ravens chasing them off. We watched the pelicans fishing the Yellowstone. It was a beautiful evening.


There were cars, trucks and RVs at every pullout as the word was out of the feeding habits of these two bears. We were all about a mile from the buffalo kill which was on the east side of the Yellowstone River. At about 6:00 pm, two couples decided to get a closer look at the bears when they came to eat. They walked down to the river and laid out a blanket about 30/40 yards away from the kill. The several hundred people who were on the hillside turnouts couldn't believe our eyes. I guess these people though that grizzlies couldn't swim or were afraid of water or who knows what they were thinking. But we were fearful that the bears would not come out because of the location of these people or if the bears did come out these individuals would be in real danger. Luckily a ranger came by and had to make to long walk out and kindly explain the facts of life to these people and escort them back to the safety of the turnouts.


Shortly after they had made their way back to the road, the bears came out of the forest and slowly made their way down to the bank of the river to the kill. They dug and sat and scratched and played on their way to their supper. We were thrilled to see these bears. The one bear was larger and darker than the other which was lighter on its sides - silver. They chased the raven off the kill and ate and ran along the river and played. Giving a thrill of a life time to hundreds as we watched them with our naked eyes, binoculars or spotting scopes.


At our turnout, we had three couples who had never seen a grizzly. We let them use our camera and spotting scope to see the bears up close and personal - well as up close and personal as you would want to get with a grizzly. One couple was from Cologne, Germany, one couple was from Utah and we didn't get where the other couple was from - they all enjoyed the thrill of seeing the great bears in the wild for the first time in their lives and it was fun to share their excitement and experience. What a blast.


We shared experiences in Yellowstone and Glacier and Alaska as we sat and listened to each others stories and experiences and felt a common bond and friendship for the great outdoors and nature and wildlife, it was exciting and thrilling and fun. We have met some great friends in the park and on the Internet this past year or so that I wouldn't change for anything!


When the sun was setting low, Carlene and I took off for Lamar Valley to try to find some friends that we had met on the net this year. We missed them and hope we have a chance next year of meeting in the park and sharing some time together. We then headed back to West Yellowstone and the Three Bear Lodge.


Sunday. We had breakfast at the Three Bear restaurant and then took a nice easy drive to Midway Geyser Basin and walked around the area. Next we drove to the trail head of the Fairy Falls trail and walked back a ways and took some pictures of chipmunks and squirrels and the Grand Prismatic pool. We only met one other couple as we were almost back to the bridge over the Firehole River. The weather was beautiful. It was hard to believe that we had had two great Labor Day weekends in a row, last year and now this year as well. The weather was great - clear, warm and nice during the day and cooling down in the evening.


We drove down to Old Faithful, watched it go off twice as we gathered more Yellowstone info for the home page. Oh, I failed to mention that there were two fires in the park while we were there. On our way out of Lamar, a chopper landed across the road from the Roosevelt Ranger Station and a fire crew was assembled to fight a fire that was just east of there in a remote area. Another fire was down east of the Lake area and was really sending up billowing clouds of smoke. We don't know if they were fighting that fire. It has been an unusually hot dry summer in the west and Yellowstone has been no exception. I hope that they have both fires under control by now.


We left the Old Faithful area and drove along the Yellowstone River and into Hayden Valley on our way to Canyon. We saw buffalo galore and we had at least three buffalo jams on our way to Canyon. We stopped at the same pullout to talk to the couple from Colorado. They were there in the morning and the bears had come to the kill to eat. It was foggy from the moisture of the river, but they could see the bears. We headed to Canyon to view the Grand Canyon and the falls.


We saw a pair of osprey that were nesting on the canyon wall. The falls and canyon were great! It is so interesting to have such varied scenic areas in such a small geographic area. It was thrilling to see the sights and hopefully the pictures will turn out as great as the views. We returned to the second pullout from the Mud Volcano area and joined our friends from Colorado, Utah and Canada. Another couple from Colorado joined our group and had some great stories of their time in Glacier and their drive up the AlCan to Denali. It was a fun evening as we visited and watched wildlife together. One guy noticed what he though was a marsh hawk, so two couples went to their vehicles and brought out their bird books and we all identified the bird as an Northern Harrier and we looked up the coots and dipper we had seen the day before. It was fun to meet with people from all over the world who share the same interests.


Buffalo and elk had come out of the tree line and were grazing contently on the hillside, which is not a good sign for bear and wolf spotters. The bears did not show up Sunday evening and the valley turnouts was packed with hopeful bear spotters. But no one bats 100 % and it was fun to have some time together to forget about the cares of the world and share in our lives, to relax and enjoy time together.


We drove back to West Yellowstone and enjoyed our last day in the park. We were up early Monday morning and by 4:50 am on the road home to our family, leaving our friends in the park and hopefully we will join with them again to share the magic of Yellowstone.


We had a great drive home, very little traffic and a beautiful clear day. We watched a magnificent sunrise over the Grand Tetons - it was spectacular. It was so clear that we were able to see the Tetons until we were just north of Blackfoot, Idaho. That was a first, we normally see them if they are visible, just east of Rexburg, Idaho. So it was a thrill to see them so clearly and for so long - a fitting end to another memorable Yellowstone trip.





The Gray Ghost
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