Friday, May 5, 2017

Finals Week!

This week was finals week at USU.  However, thanks to Justin's choice in majors he had a bunch of papers to write, and only two actual finals.  One final was Monday afternoon, and the last one was Friday morning.  Justin repeatedly reassured me that the Friday final would be no big deal, and once he was done on Monday we could, and really should take the opportunity to go to Yellowstone and try and spot some baby animals.  Ordinarily I would never agree to go further north this time of year and vacation in a place that still hasn't completely emerged from winter, but I have a weakness for baby wildlife, and so does Justin.

We arrived late Monday night in Gardiner, Montana during a little snowstorm and were optimistically planning for better weather the next day.  We had already agreed that Tuesday morning there would be no alarm clocks, other than the two built in ones that we call "Vivian" and "Ivan."  Thankfully they tend to be late alarms.

After an uneventful morning we left the hotel around 9am Tuesday morning and headed out to Lamar Valley.  All of our research had directed us there for the best animal viewing.  We've been there before with no luck, but this time our reading told us the earlier the better and to look for the wolf watchers.  So we weren't especially early, and we really didn't know how to spot wolf watchers, but we were eager to learn.  Our first stop turned was to watch a couple of baby buffaloes.  We were thrilled to already be seeing baby animals.

We realized pretty quickly after this that you would almost have to try to NOT see baby buffalo in the park right now.
Our next stop was to check out a park ranger with a spotting scope.  It turned out that she was looking at some big horn sheep.  However, while Justin was out there trying to ascertain what there was to see some guy drove up and reported that a grizzly bear had killed an elk "just a little further up the road."  So we continued down the road to a spot that was crowded with people, unloaded the kids and found ourselves viewing a mother black bear with her two tiny cubs.



This clearly was not the grizzly bear feasting on a freshly killed elk, so we only watched for a few minutes, snapped a bunch of pictures and continued down the road.  That man who first told us about the grizzly bear was sort of prone to exaggeration.  It was miles further down the road before we saw the bloody elk remains laying by the river.  A few people were still there chatting about the thrill of the sighting that we had allegedly just missed.  We were quite disappointed.  We spent a little while waiting to see if the bear would return for the rest of the carcass, but we weren't particularly patient and after a while we continued down the road again.

After a short drive we came across a group of people with spotting scopes out staring at a hillside that appeared to be pretty empty, but for a few buffalo.  Justin got out of the car and inquired with the owners of the scopes.  We had stumbled on the wolf watchers, and we discovered immediately that these are generally an extremely nice group of people.  There's always at least one that will let you take a peak through their scope.  That's how we were able to see the wolf on the mountainside that was nothing more than a speck to the naked eye.  Here's the only photo we could manage:
That little black dot is a wolf stalking the baby buffalo on the left with it's mother
It was pretty exciting.  The wolf spotters are very devoted to their hobby.  There was a little flurry of excitement over this wolf because nobody there seemed to recognize him.  That's right, they know all of the wolves by name.  His markings were apparently unfamiliar to the group.  We chatted with them for a bit, but we really didn't have anything to add to the conversation.  So after thanking them for sharing their find we returned to the car.  We decided to drive back to the hotel for naps, and then we would comply with an earlier request from Vivian to visit Old Faithful.  She fell asleep a few minutes after we left the wolf watchers, so we decided to let her just nap in the car on the way to Old Faithful.

The drive to Old Faithful took a full two hours due to road construction.  There are major issues with that road following the winter storms.

I will probably never understand Justin's aversion to wearing a coat
Old Faithful was...well just as I remembered it from the last time we visited.  Vivian enjoyed it, and we stopped by Grand Prismatic Springs on the way back to the hotel for the evening.  We almost lost Vivian to an Asian couple at Grand Prismatic Springs.  They literally didn't speak a word of English, but motioned to us that they would like to take a picture of Vivian.  They were elderly, and seemed pretty harmless so we didn't stop them.  Then the woman picked up Vivian for the picture (amusing because Vivian was probably half her size), and we may have looked a little concerned, because when the wife then put Vivian down, but grabbed onto her arm speaking in a foreign language, like she was motioning her to come with her the husband stepped in and stopped her.  I think he realized that we weren't going to be okay with that.  Kind of funny though.

On the drive back to the hotel we got stopped by a buffalo in the road.  It happens all the time in Yellowstone.  It wasn't our first time encountering that, not even our first time that day.  This particular buffalo had apparently had it with tourists though.  As we went to creep by him, he sort of lunged at our car.  I hit the brakes just in time and he missed us, but we waited until he decided to leave the middle of the road before we made another attempt at passing him, and it was a good 5 minutes before Justin and I had normal heart rates again after that.

Once we got back to the hotel we fulfilled an earlier promise to Vivian to take her swimming at the hotel pool.  She had periodically inquired throughout the day as to when we would be returning to the hotel for a swim.  There was pretty much no chance of getting out of that one.  (We recently did a little stay-cation of sorts at a hotel in North Salt Lake and the zoo the next morning.  We promised swimming, and then it turned out to be the most disgusting pool I've ever entered.  However, Vivian loved it and now has learned that there are usually pools at hotels.)  After our evening swim and dinner we found ourselves climbing into bed at a much later hour than we had hoped.  We had discussed getting up at 4am the next morning, but by the end of the day I was exhausted, my children were exhausted and uncooperative, and it felt overly ambitious.  Justin agreed to let that go, and we decided that we would set a later alarm and just play it by ear. 

Ivan woke me up at 4:30, which he never really does and so at 4:45 I dragged myself out and Justin was eager to bounce out of bed with me and start rushing us out the door.  Vivian did anything but bounce out of bed.  At 5am she was laying on the hotel room floor ready to go, but crying that she was tired and wanted to lay back down in her bed.  We almost called it, but in a moment of desperation I promised her that if she would come sleep in the car that we would come back for a real nap and swim again too.  It worked.  Justin told me that I should have just promised ice cream.  Too late.

Our first stop that morning was a lookout where Justin snapped a few shots of the sunrise.
Definitely worth the stop
Then we continued on to Lamar Valley.  It took us a few miles before we found the wolf watchers.  We've discovered that they're always together because they carry radios.  As soon as one of them spots something interesting they radio the others so they can all rush over and take a look.  One of them was an older woman who offered us a peak into her scope at both a wolf they were watching (and knew by name), and a grizzly bear strolling about not doing anything particularly interesting.  She told us that there had been other bear sightings further down the road that morning, so we continued on our way.  We drove to the edge of the valley and saw nothing.  We turned back around and drove clear to the other side.  Still nothing.  Although I did notice the wolf watchers from earlier in the morning dispersing.  Justin was ready for breakfast, but on a whim I decided to take one more drive back through the valley.  We only drove a couple of miles before we found the wolf watchers, and at least a dozen or so other people there on the side of the road watching the grizzly bear from the day before.  He had returned to the elk carcass for another meal.  

It was really spectacular, and in my opinion a bit unnerving.  I'm terrified of bears, and I think if we had been the only ones there I would have been very wary of exiting the car for pictures.  Okay, I still kind of was a little bit.  The gathering crowd does offer a false sense of security to some degree.  The guy next to us perched on top of his car, which seemed smart.  The bear was about 30 yards away down a steep embankment, on the other side of the river, and completely engrossed in his meal, but that still felt very close to me.  I stayed by the car the entire time watching and mentally preparing myself to dart back in if he looked like he might head my way or really even look my way.  Justin on the other hand wandered off quite a ways for a better angle.  I figured someone there probably had bear spray, but either way I'm glad he did.  He managed video and literally over a hundred amazing photos.  I think they're amazing, anyway.



These are just a sampling.  We have a LOT of pictures of this bear.
We left while he was still eating.  Justin seemed kind of disappointed that we weren't there for when he started walking away, but I'm not sorry at all.  It was kind of surreal being there.  I mean there were people there who were clearly a bit more serious about their photography:
Notice the guys over on the far right too.  Venturing into the field.  I would have never done such a thing.  Ever. 
We left Lamar Valley feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, and grateful that we managed the early morning.  We took forever getting out of the valley because we're a little afraid of the buffalo now.  We found one frozen on the road while a pack of coyotes on the other side of the car were howling.  it was all very interesting.  Eventually we made it back and took our very tired daughter to breakfast, where she refused to eat anything, but did manage to drag Ivan's car seat off of the stand onto the floor, with Ivan in it...but hanging halfway out of it by the time he hit the ground.  He was very wide-eyed, but didn't make a peep, unlike the waitress who came darting across the room screaming the Lord's name in vain, which I did not particularly appreciate.  She was so embarrassed by the fact that she was the only one freaking out that she left for a minute.  When she came back she appeared to be a little more composed and issued an apology to us for the overreaction.  

After that we returned to our hotel room to look at our photos and congratulate ourselves on the morning's excitement.  We all took a nap, and then returned to the hotel swimming pool for the promised swim.
She loves her new inflatable giraffe.

This one loves the pool.
We're starting to realize that we're going to have to start planning more stuff like this into our vacations for the kids.  It seems like Vivian is getting big enough that we're going to have to really start making these "family vacations," rather than just the Mom and Dad vacations that we usually take.  

The rest of the day we returned to the park for a brief hike around Mammoth Springs, and another drive through Lamar Valley.  We saw the mother black bear with her two babies again (climbing a tree this time), and a few buffalo.  It all felt very uneventful compared to the morning's little photo shoot.  We returned to the hotel feeling that our trip was a success.  We saw a bald eagle, big horn sheep, black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, marmots, and sandhill cranes.  On the drive home the next day we spotted a moose.  A baby moose would have been even more exciting, but we still call this one a win.  According to all the wildlife photographers and wolf watchers this is the time of the year to visit Yellowstone, and we tend to believe them.

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