Ahhh, Yellowstone ... the mythical, magical, iconic National
Park and (most notably) the inspiration for Yogi Bear’s Jellystone. Who hasn’t spent many a Saturday morning in their
jammies on the fold-out couch eating Froot Loops and watching Yogi Bear antagonize
Mr. Park Ranger Smith?
Most importantly, we wanted to see some wildlife, dammit! Cute wildlife! Ferocious wildlife! Wild
wildlife! It didn’t matter what
kind. Roadside signs confirmed that
chances were good.
And, of course, we were not disappointed. Finding most wildlife in Yellowstone is
super-easy. All you do is drive down the
road and look for cars stopped all over the road. Swivel in the direction of the tourists’
3-foot long telephoto lenses and … Bam!! You’ve found your wildlife. I was wishing for a Bingo Card where I could slide the little window across each new animal we spotted!
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| Moose! |
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| Bald Eagle! |
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| Osprey nest high on a cliff! |
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| Mama Black Bear and her cub! |
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| Elk! BINGO! |
In any public place, the name of the game is “Yellowstone One-Upsmanship.” Person 1: We saw a bear this morning! Person 2: Well, we saw three bears! Person 3: Oh yah? Well, we followed five bears for over an hour! Person 4: That’s nothing. We played hopscotch with 10 bears and then scratched their bellies all afternoon! It honestly gets a little absurd.
The coolest, and eventually most irritating, were the huge bison, which number more than 4,600, amble VERY slowly, and think nothing of standing in the middle of the road in huge clusters, refusing to budge and let cars through.
Our most special animal encounter was with a grizzly bear at about 100 yards, which we
encountered while hiking through the woods.
There are only 462 numbered grizzly bears in Yellowstone, though for
some reason, the Forest Service does not count the black bear population, which
seems elitist and discriminatory. At
least one person per year gets killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone, which the
rangers euphemistically call a “negative encounter.”
Another close encounter was with a bison which startled us
by emerging up a wooded path right as we stepped from our Jeep. Of course,
Bella and Sprinkles in the car started barking like damn fools and the bison
was NOT amused. He started toward me at
the passenger side and I ran around the back to Philip’s side, so he changed
directions and started toward Philip’s side.
He directed his huge eyeball into the car window (only inches away) and the dogs went "Barkless" with terror. Philip and I ran around the
back of the Jeep again, clinging to each other and shrieking with laughter,
while he decided we were not worth the chase and took off down the road. Bison males can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, can
jump six feet straight up in the air, and can run 35 miles an hour from a
standstill. (You can see how close he was by the Jeep mirror/hood and bikes on the back in these photos!)
The best/worst thing about Yellowstone is the size … 2.2
million acres, of which only 1% is “developed.”
Anything you want to see is always a long way away. “We better pack a lunch” became the rallying
cry! But once we arrived, it was always
so cool. It was creepy to know that
Yellowstone National Park is basically the top of one super-gynormous volcano!
But, it has been 640,000 years since the last one, and 1.3 million years before
that, so our four-day stay was probably worth the risk. There are lots of
steaming, gurgling, hissing features all around!
Of course, you are virtually required to visit Old Faithful,
even though by all accounts it is not the most awe-inspiring feature in the
park, but because its eruption is truly the most faithful and regular, at least
you can plan an itinerary around it. We
raced to see its beauty and were shocked to see this:
Wait! Is this Old
Faithful? We must be in the wrong place,
because it looks like the crowd for an outdoor concert! Or maybe a religious revival! But no! All these people show up every 90 minutes to
watch O.F.’s 4-minute show.
Yellowstone’s beauty inspired the nation's leaders to christen it as American's first and largest national park way back in 1872. Because of the size, the diversity of scenery in this place is
amazing. Can you believe all these
photos were taken in the same park?
The worst forest fire in history ravaged Yellowstone in
1988, burning over 39% of the park (that’s 858,000 acres – yikes!). Even now,
parts of the forest are just started to reseed themselves – see the shorty
green trees below the burned tall trees.
Friends Ryan and Erin Weed met us in Yellowstone and it was a blast hiking and exploring all week long with their family.
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| See the staircase perched on the edge of the cliff? We hiked down to that! |
Ryan and Philip got up-close-and-personal with Yellowstone
via amazing bike rides. It is full of audacious
uphill climbs of 1000+ feet in one steady climb, but that made the downhills even more exhilarating
at 42 miles an hour or more – dodging bison and tourist all the way! High altitudes and cold weather at 8500 feet
were challenging!
When Yellowstone became a vacation destination for the very
wealthy in the early part of 1900’s, well-dressed ladies and gentlemen endured
brutal, multi-day transportation to their tent hotels via the “Tallyho
Stagecoach.” One of our favorite
activities in Yellowstone was a re-creation stagecoach. We had an awesome steak dinner cooked out in
the middle of nowhere, while being entertained with cowboy entertainment and
stories of Yellowstone’s history.
This will have been our busiest week of the trip (due to the large scope of the park and also having friends with us), but Philip and Ryan have still managed to work from their "branch offices."
And, when we are out on adventures, Sprinkles is
minding the computer and phones of Philip Miller Consultants.
Yellowstone is a wild and wonderful place, and as we head to
the town of West Yellowstone, Montana for some 4th of July
festivities, we leave you with a photo of the biggest, most rugged vending
machine on Earth! Tally Ho and
onward in the Lucky Charm!
