Yellowstone

Mid-June in Yellowstone - cold rain, wind, snow and beautiful warm sun all in four days.

Yellowstone for us is about the thermal water features and the wildlife. The scenery is not as dramatic as the Tetons, Rainier or Zion, but the geysers, mud pots, hot springs and fumaroles are amazing. The scenery is excellent too, especially up in the Lamar Valley and Dunraven Pass areas.

We found a short trail into some thermal features off the Firehole Lake road near the Great Fountain Geyser, and I managed to put my fingers in some hot springs without burning them off. Mary was not quite so brave (or stupid). Most of the features have a very high sulphur content and can be quite caustic as well as very hot (200+ degrees). Some are very cloudy and smelly while others are clear and pure with no odor. The bubbling mud pots and the clear pastel blue hot springs are my favorites. The Upper Geyser Basin, and the Norris Geyser Basin are great spots.

Bison are almost everywhere in the park, sometimes alone or just a few scattered across a meadow or hillside, or even along the road. In Lamar Valley we saw a large herd of nearly 100 gathered in a meadow. The females have their calves with them and they seem very used to close quarters with cars and humans. Elk are almost as prevalent as Bison, and they are also mostly scattered in small to medium sized groups of 3-15, yet we only noticed a very few elk calves - they are probably just now calving. In the Lamar Valley we saw several small groups of Pronghorn Antelope including a lone mom with two calves wandering along a hillside.

Our first day in Yellowstone we saw Grizzlies from a distance on three separate occasions as we drove around the park. Today we also saw bears three different times - a very large Grizzly mom and two cubs from a distance on a hillside, a Black bear mom (brown) with one cub right on the road and a large Black bear right next to the truck as we drove by. We never got to see any wolves this time around, but we did see a coyote, eagles, osprey, and some very large Sandhill Cranes that almost look like emus from a distance

Yellowstone is very high in altitude with the lowest elevations above 6,000 feet, most of the areas are above 7,000 feet and some road passes are as high as 8,850 feet. This helps explain why it can be so cold one day and warm the next during the summer months.

One day this week the temperatures never got out of the 30s and we had snow on and off all day. We were headed for the Lamar Valley to watch for wolves, but a major road was closed due to snow, so we missed our good window for sightings.

Tomorrow we head east across Wyoming toward Devils Tower. We hope to stop at the Bighorn Medicine Wheel on our way across the state and to be at Devils Tower for the Summer Solstice.