Catching up again.... Yellowstone

This is David with a rundown of our runaround in Yellowstone National Park.

DAY 4
DATE: Friday, August 13
LOCATION: Flagg Ranch to Livingstone, MT by way of Yellowstone National Park
Distance: 189 miles? (There was a considerable amount of looping around the park. It's probably closer to 300)

We woke up bright and early at 4:30 AM to strike camp and get an early start in Yellowstone. This first attempt failed, since there was absolutely no light to strike said camp, so we went back to sleep until 5, at which point there was barely enough light to get things moving. Wyoming, I thought you people got up early when you went camping? We were showered, packed, and ready to go by the time I saw any of you meandering out of your enormous campers. By that point we were on the road and in the park by 6:44 AM in order to make the most of the day and catch some prime animals-at-dawn sightings.

Kate's idea was to check out the Yellowstone River Valley in the southeast corner of the park near Hayden Valley first thing- since we had read that animals head there first thing to drink and mill about. Sure enough, right before we got the valley we had our first couple of animal sightings. After two brief elk encounters (good stuff, but nothing too exotic) we had Kate's first bison encounter... and we were still in the woods. These guys tend to be, ya know, plains dwellers, but for some reason this one guy, totally alone, seemingly separated from his herd, was plodding along next to the road, heading in the opposite direction from us. With hardly anyone in the park, we could pull a U-Turn drive alongside him, get some pictures, feel extra cool, and then U-Turn again right smack dab into what appeared to be THE REST OF HIS HERD! At least fifty bison were being corralled by a ranger's jeep along this two lane road through the woods. Some of them were running in and out of the other cars that had pulled up and were stopped by the herd's movement. We see a calf. Kate yells, "IT'S A BABY!" as she is wont to do. Mr. Bison RUNS over to investigate this loud noise, and poor Carla is soon three feet away from a curious, agitated, possibly threatened cow-beast protecting it's baby. I'm not saying it was about to be a cage match between a Kia Rio and an alpha bison (guess who has the odds in that one...) but I've never seen these guys so agitated before. Once we rolled the windows up, Big Papa backed off and we continued to enjoy one of the most amazing things I've ever seen- a herd of bison swarming around our car IN A FOREST! This was our first major animal encounter of the day, setting the bar pretty darn high and our adrenaline for the rest of the day even higher.

Jacked up on bison fear, we stopped for Kate's first geothermal feature at Yellowstone, The Mud Volcano. For those not in the know, Yellowstone is situated over an enormous area of extreme geothermal instability, resulting in many geysers, mudpots, fumaroles, and hot springs- not the kind that you can take a dip in, the kind that will melt you alive, like the old lady in Dante's Peak. So, while beautiful in a primal sort of way, many sections of the park are ready to collapse completely or maybe explode if they feel like it. That doesn't stop any of us from walking out onto boardwalks that have been built right on that ground so we can walk up to pits of bellowing death steam with names like "The Dragon's Mouth" and catch a bracing whiff of sulfites, fresh from the earth's crust. Needless to say, it takes a little getting used to, and since only I had done it before, Kate was concerned. We soldiered across the boardwalk, however, only to have bison encounter number two go down. These large fellows love the geothermal stuff, since they provide warmth. One bison was particularly bold and was suddenly crossing the boardwalk behind us. He continued to lope along, grazing as he went, and it became clear that we would have to hustle to make it through the boardwalk without getting in his way. So we hustled. We then got back in the car and continued to drive into Hayden Valley, where we saw scores of bison all over the hills and fields doing what they normally do when visitors see them: sitting. We saw many more bison just sitting that day, but our first two encounters with them always reminded us that at any moment these seemingly docile animals could murder the bejesus out of us if they really wanted to.

Time to sleep. I'll keep Yellowstoning tomorrow after our Glacier day: Going to the Sun road, Many Glacier, Avalanche Creek trail, hopefully some bear sightings if the stories we've heard are any indication.