Yellowstone Day 3 (Continued)…

I had never seen a sky like that before. It was as close to black as blue can possibly get, and a wall of hail was rolling up the flank of Mount Washburn towards us like a giant white breaker. Lighting railed from one horizon to the other, and a nearly continuous clap of thunder resounded across the landscape like a cannonade.

I scarcely had time to pull off the road and negotiate a spot under a generously endowed Douglas Fir before quarter sized balls of ice started falling like mortar shells on our position. Fortunately the hail was short lived, but the rain and the lightning kept us pinned down for nearly a half hour.

Finally, and with the deluge nearly over, we broke cover for the Antelope Creek drainage in hopes of spotting a wolf or two. The storm was pulling out in earnest as we arrived, and a scene of singular beauty was revealed in its wake.

Suddenly the world was unnaturally green, alive, and an incredibly bright double rainbow appeared as the sun grudgingly started to do its thing again.


A double Rainbow

The storm had an effect on the animals as well. They seemed to emerge from the very cracks of the earth to celebrate the end of the onslaught. Through the binoculars we watched deer, elk and bison pour out of the trees and into the meadows below. The place was literally crawling with large animals.

Then, something I had never seen before…three furry gray balls rolling through the grass at the very edge of my binoculars effective range. I didn’t dare to believe it at first, but, over the course of several minutes it became clear that I was indeed watching three wolf pups playing in front of their den. It was a very, very cool moment. Sadly, they were so well camouflaged, and so far out of the range of our 300 millimeter telephoto lens we didn’t get anything even resembling a wolf pup on film.

We watched the little guys beat the hell out of each other for about an hour, when our luck got even better. From our hilltop vantage we watched a gigantic black adult wolf emerge from the timber and jog down the bottom of the valley towards the pups. There was much wagging of tails, and high pitched howls of greeting followed by better than an hour of relentless pestering of the adult by the pups.

Though it was still out of range for a real picture, the adult wolf’s dark coloring allowed us to at least see it though the camera.


The Black wolf

Then, as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone. The adult wolf stood up and made his way back into the timber and the pups scurried into the den.

Content in the knowledge that we had finally seen wolves in their natural setting, we said goodbye to the Antelope Creek Drainage, and the Agate Creek pups. It was early evening and the sky was already showing signs of sunset. The colors slowly changed from florescent reds and oranges to pastel blues and purples as we made our across the park.


A bison at sunset


Geyser Basin

A picturesque end to the best day of our little vacation.

Yellowstone Day 3…

Day three started a little later than days 1 and 2. We rolled out of bed around nine, grabbed some breakfast in West Yellowstone, and found our way past the west entrance by about ten. We didn’t have much of an itinerary; just a vague mental list of things we hadn’t seen yet.

We pointed the car in the general direction of Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon and began making our way lazily across the park once again. Somewhere along the Grand Loop Road past Madison, something caught my eye. It was slinking through the tall grass about 50 feet off the road, and I brought the car to a quick stop. It wasn’t bulky enough to be a bear, and the coloring was all wrong for either a bobcat or a mountain lion. All I could see clearly was two triangular ears floating above the tall grass, and for just a moment I thought I was going to get my first glimpse of a wild wolf.



Instead, this coyote emerged from the brush. It saw us, paused momentarily, and began a bee-line straight for us. We’ll never know how close it would have gotten, since a Ford Excursion packed with a small tribe chose this precise moment to round the bend behind us. Within seconds the scene exploded with kids and excited shouting, and our canine friend disappeared back into the grass faster than you can say “Mormon Fundamentalists”!

A little bugged, we jumped back in the truck and moved on. We hadn’t gone more than a couple miles, though, when Shauna thought she had seen something in the trees. We turned around and spotted a truly massive bull elk lying in the grass scarcely thirty feet off the road.



We had just enough time to snap a couple photos before the hordes descended. A car pulled up behind us, followed soon thereafter by another, and another. Within minutes the place was a circus complete with clowns and fools. People were getting way, way too close and the elk finally decided that it had had enough. It stood up, threw its head back, and crashed through the deadwood at a run. More people are hurt in Yellowstone each year by elk than by bears and mountain lions combined.

Finally we pulled into The Grand Canyon, at inspiration point. We hiked around a little bit, snapped obligatory photos at the overlook, and made for Yellowstone Falls where we did pretty much the same thing.


Inspiration Point...notice the storm clouds gathering.




Yellowstone Falls

It was all completely stunning, but, the mob seemed to diminish it somehow. It was hard to feel inspired when someone's sticky, Ice Cream plastered 6 year old was stumbling over me to get a closer look.

As we left the madness of Canyon behind for Mt. Washburn and Antelope Creek, the sky was beginning to grow dark. By the time we hit Dunraven pass it felt like dusk, and the temperature began to drop like George Bush's approval ratings. As we reached the summit, and as views of the horizon unfolded, I tuned to Shauna and said something like "This is gonna' get ugly"...

More to come.