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.