Yellowstone Safari

After work on Friday, I jetted up to Idaho Falls and quickly went to sleep at the parentals' IF house, then we woke up way early and headed out for our first Yellowstone safari of the year. We had heard of a very large grizzly bear being spotted around Old Faithful, so that was our prime target for the day. But being the first trip of the year, we'd take what we could get. So Mom, Ann (my parents' IF neighbor and friend), and I packed up our cameras and food and "the boys" (Zack and Oskar), and we were off. About 2 1/2 hours later, we were passing through the beautiful terrain on the way to the park. I sat in the back seat with the boys. After a bit of blowing on his ear, Oskar had had enough of my odd human behavior and moved over to switch places with Zack, who is much more tolerant of such peskiness. Then he looked back over at me with his little neurotic out-of-the-corner-of-his-eye look, as he does.


Maw was letting me borrow her Nikon D50 digital SLR for the day, so as we approached the park, I pulled it out and experimented with it for the first time. As I discovered that the sport setting captures fast motion, such as a fence whizzing by the car, I began to get giddy. She was going to have to pry this camera out of my cold, dead hands to get it back.


After stopping at Ernie's for some take-out lunch (I got the "Firehole" sandwich, salsa-marinated turkey...it had to be tried, and it was good), we entered the park and saw, shortly after Madison junction, that the roads were being claimed by the residents.



There were even calves wobbling down the road, carefully kept on the far side of their mothers from the large metal creatures passing through. We figure the bison are not yet accustomed to sharing their space with people, it being so early in the season, so they were...crabby. As I tried to get video footage of the bison walking by with babies, one of them stopped and turned its head towards my window. I made a sort of snickering sound, and the bison replied with its own "snicker".


I started taking video again, just as the bison who stopped decided to show us who's boss.


We were bisoned in the rear. Fortunately, it just bumped us with its shoulder or rump, and there was no damage to the car. We were very considerate and cautious of the bison the rest of the day, though this would not be our last uncomfortable encounter.

We stopped a few places along the way to capture more bison scenes. Normally, I'm not a big bison fan. They don't do much for me. But with a new toy to play with (the Nikon) and so many photo ops, I had to go a little crazy with the picture-taking.




One of the bison provided a great photo op by walking right towards me. He started walking faster, and I looked at the little 1-foot pile of snow between us, decided that wasn't a comfortable barrier, and politely declined to smell each other's breath by walking back to the car.






We drove down the street a little further, and there were some people stopped at the side of the road. What do you do in Yellowstone when somebody's stopped at the side of the road? You stop too. Doesn't matter if you see anything. They must be stopped for a reason, right? There are all kinds of fun social experiments I want to do with that one of these times. I want to point at a random, faraway tree stump and insist it's a "stump bear", as Ann calls them, and see how many people I can get to take a picture. Or pull over and start gawking at the humans like they gawk at the critters, and take 50 pictures of the same human in their various whimsical behaviors. But I'm getting sidetracked...

There was a reason for these stoppers. It was a bear. In fact, it was probably THE grizzly we had wanted to find! One problem: it was about the size of a peppercorn. Or so it appeared to the naked eye. Fortunately, one man there had a telescope he allowed others to look through, so we got to see the bear ripping into a carcass. It was a grizzly scene. *pausing for laughter to subside* I took a picture. I illuminated the part of the image the bear is in. See it? Well, just take my word for it.


When our various bear calls and "play bloody, smelly carcass" attempts failed to bring the bear closer, we moved on.

There were several pairs of sandhill cranes throughout the day, but they were rarely in good places to stop. This is one of the few pics I snapped. Now, they were actually absolutely surrounded by bison poo, which really bothered me in an otherwise fairly aesthetically pleasing scene, so I've removed most of the poo piles. Seriously, I saw more poo yesterday than I've probably ever seen in one day ever. Bison are flippin' poo machines.


OK fine, here's the "before" pic:


The next oddity we saw was a random goose perched atop a large log. Sitting. With its neck stretched out and slightly downwards, almost like it was just waiting for the water to rise 8 feet to get a sip. That would be so much easier than walking back down the log.


I had to get a close-up of the frozen waterfall. Meh.



Whenever we'd get out of the Jeep and walk around to the back and open it to get something out, Zack would poke his head up over the back seat to say "hello" and look around.


We saw bison sparring.



And pronghorns grazing.


A coyote hunting ground squirrels.



And a wolf. There's something a little eerie about this yellow-eyed creature walking towards you without any sign of hesitation


But it's a bit less threatening when it stops to sniff.


And it just looks like a dog when it decides to roll in something smelly.



Before going on its way. It stopped to check out a bison. Wishing it could make a meal of it? Maybe, but it decided not to try. Smart wolf.




Apparently, this whole rolling thing is catching on. This bison appeared to be moulting big-time. That's gotta be itchy. Watching a 1500-pound mangey beast roll in the grass is more entertaining than you might think.


Somewhere along the way, we passed a little marmot along the side of the street. We stopped so Ann could get a picture, and four or five other cars pulled off excitedly trying to see what we were looking at. The anticipation in the air was palpable. One girl called out to me from a car full of college- or high-school-aged kids, "What is it? What do you see?" I called back with all the enthusiasm I could muster, "a marmot." They looked at each other and drove off. Apparently, not everyone appreciates a good marmot siting.

We also passed some bighorn sheep right along the road. One thing I love about Yellowstone is that you can take these close-up wildlife shots from your car window but claim it was in the back country, at least 300 miles from civilization. I did not, however, take these pictures from the car. I walked at least...50 feet away from it.



This ram stood perfectly still in a solid pose for quite some time. I'm pretty sure he'd been taking modeling lessons. I could hear him thinking, "Yes, all of these people are looking at me. They know a good thing when they see it. Yes, take pictures. It's OK. I'm beautiful."



Crossing a long, narrow bridge is normally a mundane part of navigating the mountainous terrain of the Rockies. But to spice things up a bit, Yellowstone provides bison obstacle courses. Traffic was stopped as a bison ambled up the center of the bridge. Tip: don't agitate a bison on a narrow bridge. Your car is a toy to them. Apparently, one driver didn't realize that bison aren't cute and cuddly and was fed up with waiting, so they decided to pass everyone and go around the bison. The problem with this clever strategy is that it sandwiched the bison between two cars. Said bison was displeased with this arrangement and quickly showed signs of irritation in the form of threatening stances and more rapid movements. It turned and trotted back off the bridge. Most cars passed carefully and respectfully by, but as we approached the end of the bridge, the bison decided to try again. It walked straight at us. We stopped and sat very, very still. Except for an initial shot or two.


As the bison came very close, it broke into a trot. Now, this was no small bridge. What's pictured is a very small portion of it. It's a solid bridge. But as this beast trotted by, we experienced the effects of its mass. There's a new experience to add to my list: bouncing up and down on a large bridge, in a none-too-subtle way, as a huge furry beast trots past the car.

After a couple of failed attempts to take pictures of the elusive blue heron, we decided to scrap getting out of the car and spooking them, and I took this shot through the driver's window from the passenger seat. It flew away just after this shot. I was lucky.


Oh yeah, and we saw elk, too.



Getting out of the park was a chore. There was a "bison jam", as Maw put it. Ann drove skillfully, though, and Mom helped keep "the boys" quiet in the back seat so as to not pick a fight, so we had no more bison bumping. I had to get some video of a couple of bison calves wobbling down the road.


The end.