Autumnal Snow

Originally uploaded by techmuse

Oh it snowed last night, snowed last night
The skybears had a pillow fight
They tore up every cloud in sight
and tossed down all the feathers white.
Oh it snowed last night, snowed last night

At least up another 500 feet, but fall is all around us. This bull elk with antlers that are no longer covered in velvet means that the wonderful sounds of elk bugling are not too far off…..and with a little luck we’ll get to see a couple of bulls challenge each other for dominance in the herd.
Fall is definitely hear.

The temp was 45 as we took off on a late evening stroll (10pm) and it was an amazing walk.  To the south, the sky was clear and dark; the milky way was visible all the way to the horizon and there was an occasional shooting star.

To the north, through a thin layer of clouds, we got the impact of lighting from the storm that’s heading our way.

As the walk ended we watched a spectacular moonrise  through the thin clouds.  The northeast sky glowed just before the moon began to peak over the treetops.   All of it to the sound track of the geysers gurgling and churning.

What an evening (and they are calling for a little bit of snow on Tuesday morning)

(disclaimer:  the photo is from a few nights ago….I didn’t have a camera of any type with me tonight)

August 25th was a beautiful day in the park and an exciting day as well–for two reasons.

New Visitor Center

The new Visitor Education Center at Old Faithful opened.  2.5 years in the making, with a cost of $27 million (more than half raised by private funding).   Some call it the “Taj Mah Old Faithful” but it’s a pretty interesting structure–and the glass front is going to provide some interesting reflection pictures, especially when the geyser blows.

It was, of course a day for bands, speeches, a color guard (I love the ranger with the really long hair–he looks awesome up on his horse–almost like a hero from a really bad romance novel).

They are calling them education centers nowadays–as the park service moves more and more towards an education focus and helping visitors understand why we need national parks.  As I sat there and listened to Paul Schullery, I began to think that I may not be moving out of education, but merely changing my focus.  I’ve planted a few seeds that may come to

fruition next summer–only time will tell.

The presentation ended as only it  could, with

Old Faithful going off just as the final words were spoken…Perfect timing.

Christmas in August

is a long-standing tradition in Yellowstone.  The “fable” says that around 1900 there was a major snowstorm on August 25th….other stories say that the celebration came about to hide the raucous parties the employees were having on that day (sometimes known as “savages” day).  Whatever the origin, we had great fun.  It started on Tuesday evening with a Christmas Cookie decorating party.  A lot of the foreign housekeeping staff showed up–and there was as much Chinese as English being spoken that night.

The next night we had a tree, Santa showed up, the front desk dressed as elves (it a great front desk crew) the kids decorated light bulbs (a “recycling” message) and Christmas carols were sung by employees.  I was surprised at how well the foreign kids knew English Christmas Carols….for they were the bulk of our singers…We all had a great time and I was in my element–getting the caroling starting and then organizing the ornament decorating.  Once a school teacher, always a school teacher……

(and this last picture is from the front desk gift exchange–the rooms at the inn all have Bear Soap–so, what else would one make, but a Santa & Sleigh) –I work with some amazingly talented people.  (as always, additional pix are on my flickr site.)

Since returning from Glacier, several folks have asked “so which park do you like better?”.  There’s no comparison.  Yellowstone and Glacier are two different views into the wilderness, each with their own unique qualities….so I’ll just talk about Glacier.

Since Glacier is almost 475 miles north of Yellowstone, it’s almost a month behind in season.  They’ve had a very wet season and the flowers are still in full bloom.  I felt like Maria Von Trapp on the hillside in the sound of music—or like Heidi (especially when we saw the mountain goats).

We spent the first day in the Canadian side of the park  (officially known as Waterton).  Took the boat to a terribly remote spot called “goat haunt” and got our passports stamped at the tiny little US customs office that takes care of hikers coming from the US side into Canada.    We also made our first new friend of the trip.  Three adorable bears cubs crossed right in front of us.  Tim made me stay in the car  (probably a good thing) as we both knew that mom was around even though we couldn’t see her.  When I closed the car door, the bear suddenly stood up to check out the sound.  At that point I got my one decent shot.

Glacier’s premier feature is the “Going to the Sun Road”   50 miles of narrow road; in some sections you feel like you have 3 choices 1) drive off the road, 2) crash into the rock wall on the other side or 3) crash into the car coming towards you.  It’s stunningly beautiful and I counted at least 24 waterfalls that came down to the road; some small, some 100s of feet high.  I’ve driven many different park roads and the only one that was more pulse-pounding to drive was one in Nova Scotia.

We made our 2^nd friend right on the road—I could have reached out and petted this little guy from the car.  Again, mom was nowhere in sight—but we know she couldn’t have been far away.

The other thing that surprised me is that the elevation at Logan Pass, at the top of the road, is almost 1,000 feet lower than the elevation here at Old Faithful.  In Yellowstone you typically hike up or down; in Glacier you stay in campsites or hotels at the bottom of the mountains and almost always hike up.  A very different feel. Even though the elevation is lower, the terrain borders on sub-alpine and the mountain goats and big horn sheep love it.  We saw lots of goats and sheep, and even listened to this little one search for his mother  (a very quiet, but increasingly panicky “maaa—maaa” until mom came back.)

A big  difference between Yellowstone and Glacier is the Glacier is much more of a “hiker’s park”.  If you don’t hike, Yellowstone has lots for you to do.  To really appreciate Glacier you have to get off the road.   We hiked every day; not super long hike, and almost always to waterfalls (those pix will come in the days ahead).  It felt so good to finally be pain-free and walking normally.  I no longer need to use my walking sticks for everyday walking but there’s going to be a long period of regaining strength in my left leg….since for two months I needed my walking sticks to go anywhere.

We’re back at work after a magnificent break…and it’s hard to believe it’s almost the first of September.  On Thursday we will have only 1 month left here—time is really beginning to fly.  If you want anything special from the park, please let me know.  The rest of our Glacier photos are  here with many more coming  as we try to figure out how to fit in image processing with work and the little time we have left to explore the park.

…I guess we’re taking a “vacation from our vacation” (not that this hasn’t been a working vacation).   We were delighted to discover that it’s possible to take more than 2 days off in a row, so tomorrow we are heading up to Glacier National Park–to travel the “Going to the Sun Road” and see how many bears and goats we can find (not to mention glaciers, flowers, mountains and other assorted evidence of how magnificent mother nature is).  Don’t know whether I’ll have net access up there…so expect something next weekend.

The photo is of a Yellowstone “HYB”  (historic yellow bus).  They use the same buses at Glacier–but they are painted red and have 1 more row of seats.  The buses  were used at the park early in the century and were revived within the past 5 years.  They have all new engines (no clutch!) but still retain the old wooden frame doors and the canvas roofs that can be rolled back when the weather is beautiful.

As the season begins to wind down (high of 65 here today) you see it first in the evening crowds.  When things are crazy, people just walk by you.  When there are only a few people, social skills begin to appear; folks who pass you on the trail say “hi” or make a comment.  You join conversations.  I love helping people understand what they are looking at…and they are always appreciative.  My very favorite comment recently was a rather elderly gentleman, as I passed him he just asked a very polite” How are you?” to which I responded “Fine, and you?”   His response surprised me…he was slighty hunched over as he walked, and dressed rather shabbily; his shoes were quite worn and he had a rather unkempt air about him….still, he said “Not half bad, how could it be….look where I am!”   I think of all the folks who walk around with frowns on their faces, ipods in their ears and yelling at their kids….and think that they need to remember what a place this is…they used to call it “Wonderland”….

It was great when it took a 13 year old to point out to us the 13 mountain sheep (ewes and lambs and a few adolescent males) who were clambering on the roadside on the way to Gardiner….we didn’t even have a “sheep jam”…everyone parked on the side of the road out of the traffice and the smiles flew around the faces as we all watched the kids scamper.

We even got to experience a “no-bear jam” as we watched this sub-adult black bear feast on berries.  Hyperphagia is coming soon; that’s the time when the bears stuff their faces in preparation for hibernation…with some bears beginning to hibernate as early as late October.  The big male grizzlies seem to be hibernating later and later, however.  Bears only hibernate when they don’t have enough food and the grizzlies are becoming experts at taking over wolf kills.  In some cold climates where the wolfs have returned, the grizzlies don’t hibernate at all.

One of the great things about working at the front desk is that you hear where the animals are  hanging out.  I have a new job (tour clerk) which lets me sit down most of the day–and gives me time to go carousing whenever Tim works an evening shift.  Last night guests said that there were elk at West Thumb, so I look off….and the guests were right!  One smallish buck with antlers still in velvet; 4 does and 4 fawns–quite a catch for an evening.  I hope the elk rut starts before we leave the end of September.  It’s such an awesome sound, and I’d love to see two bucks try and figure out who will be the dominant player…wish me luck.

As always, the latest pix are at my flickr site.  I particularly like the drooling moose(s).

..bet you never thought you’d hear that from me…..but last week the only disadvantage of a convertible became absolutely clear.  We went up to the Lamar Valley to see how it was going with the bison.  The males are beginning to integrate into the female herds–because it’s getting very close to breeding time (Gestation in bison is ~280 days—so the babes were born in April; mom gets pregnant again in August–and the circle of life continues).

We got stuck in a bison jam and were surrounded front, back & sides by almost 400 bison.  It was clear that rut was imminent–based on the sounds.  I was never more glad that the top on the car was up, as the bison passed within a few feet of the car, crossing the road in front of us and behind us and on both sides.   At one point, a male and female were inches from the drivers side (where the last bison bump occurred). You know that notice on your rear view mirror that says “Warning: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”…I kept thinking back to the TRex attack in Jurassic Park…they were way too close! The idiot in the jeep behind us didn’t seem to understand that he needed to leave space for the bison to get between the cars so they were getting really close, and there was one female who stood in the middle of the road blocking both lanes for 15 minutes!  Good times were had by all (except for the people in the cars).  At one point I had a mental  image of a bison deciding to walk right over us and sinking through the top, with his legs just dangling there in the middle of the car.  It made me giggle.  (Apparently that happened to a visitor last summer; the bison walked over the hood, the top of the car, and then down the trunk…there wasn’t much left of the car.

The weirdest (and scariest) part was the sound…turn your speakers up really loud before listening to the video…..and imagine that in your ears as you sit stuck among the horny males (if the embedded youtube video doesn’t work–here’s the direct link…bison )

After we cleared the herd, Tim & I both breathed an audible sigh of relief…and our blood pressure slowly dropped…..but it was awesome!   I LOVE this park.

This is typical as you look at Old Faithful in July.  People 5 or 6 deep waiting for her to blow.  (Please note, I always refer to this geyser as “she”–but many folks think of it as a “he”–I’ll leave it to you to decide).  I try to get out to watch an eruption every other day or so.  Each eruption is different and unique.

I enjoy watching the crowd reactions as eruption time approaches.  Old Faithful is really almost like a strip-tease artist.  There are these little hints of whats to come; that the crowd reacts and then says “that was it?” not knowing that the real show is yet to come.  For about 10 minutes before an eruption, OF giggles and burbles. The rangers call it “pre-play” but I frequently forget their term and call it fore-play instead.

During this time I love talking to folks in the crowd helping them understand what they are about to see.  22 feet down from the opening that they can see there’s a constriction in the “pipe” that’s only 4″ wide.  It’s that constriction that causes the pressure to build and eventually burst.

When it finally goes, for a lot of the crowd there’s an almost roller coaster like squeal; at the end most of the crowd usually bursts into applause.   One  little girl even called it “fireworks” and another young gentleman speculated what would happen if you put a hollow rocket on top of the water stream.  Even the bored and tired never fail to be amazed…my one recommendation is that you put down your cameras and just watch.  The water and steam interact as if dancing and the sound is dynamic.  The camera reduces that experience to just a picture.  If you want pictures, it will go off again in about 90 minutes.  Take your photos then.

I am surprised at how few people bother to pick up the 50 cent brochure that explains all about the entire geyser field and individual geysers.  They just walk and look without understanding.  Once you know the “how” the entire thing is even more fascinating.  I really think all parents should be required to take a course in “how to engage your children and activate their thinking”.  Some parents do it naturally; most that I see here don’t seem to know how to begin to encourage their children to think about what they are seeing.

So, a little bit of a rant, and a wish for a great week for each of you.

It’s definitely July–the temperature is getting up to the mid-70s each day, sometimes thinking about 80, and the afternoon thunderstorms proliferate.  The flowers are the focus for the moment, as the park is bursting with spring-like colors. As  you look at the colors, however, sometimes other things catch your eye.  I couldn’t resist the grizz and her two cubs on the hillside (even though the light was fading)  ( Please note that this image is as close as you are legally allowed to get to a bear–with a 400mm lens and a small camera sensor.)

The ranger informed me that I was 112 yards away when I took these.  The maximum fine for getting to close to an animal is $5,000 and 6 months in jail–plus a federal felony on your record. The typical fine is $100 for a first offense.

I’ve seen more complete rainbows in the past three weeks than I have in my entire life and hope to get another one tonight as the clouds are rolling in.  Right now they are fluffy white, but I can’t imagine that we won’t get a little rain.

We have a 3-day weekend on T/W/Th are are trying to figure out if we can make it up to Glacier and back–but it doesn’t look like it.  I do know that one of my goals this week will be to take that perfect “field of flowers shot.  This one doesn’t cut it–but I think I know what I have to do now.  It will give you an idea of what the hillsides look like.

Please know that I think of all my friends and family on a daily basis and wish you could be here to share this addictive place with me.

As always, full size images are at my flickr site.

Wednesday and Thursday is our “weekend” and we usually spend at least 1 day driving around the park.   The park is huge (2.2 million acres) and only 1% of it is developed in any way, so there are long stretches of round to cover.  This map shows you where we went on Wednesday (click on the map to see a larger version).  (and I apologize for the formatting of this post–it’s driving me crazy)

The very first “jam” we ran in to involved a bear less than 2 miles south of Old Faithful.  Tim and I have gotten very good at what I call “stop, drop, and roll”  (SDR) where we stop in the jam for 30 seconds or so, I roll out of the car with a camera and he rolls on to find a legal parking place”.  We got to watch this lovely griz play in the water for about 10 minutes before he disappeared over the hill.

The next stop was at a unique place on the continental divide.  The pond there, when it’s at its fullest, actually allows a raindrop to choose whether to go to the Atlantic or the Pacific.  The water lillies were beautiful, and then one of them flew off–and we realized it was a Western Tanager.

As we approached the lake region, there was another group of stopped folks who cried “wolf!”  A quick glance out of the car proved that they should have been crying “coyote!”  The coyotes here are so large that visitors frequently mistake them for wolves, until they’ve seen a real Yellowstone wolf.

We stopped at LeHardy Rapids to watch the cutthroat trout jump (that red streak in the horrible middle photo is a cutthroat (they are being pushed out of Lake Yellowstone by an invasive species, the lake trout).  We also spent time watching the pelicans fish and, as is inevitable this time of year, admiring the wildflowers.  (The bluebells were blooming in Virginia when we left home in April.)

We ended up in several bison jams along the way–at one point the bison was directly in front of our car and moving towards us.  I’m definitely not comfortable around bison anymore-I really have no desire to send the car back to the repair shop again.  Traffic stopped in both directions for more than a mile.  On our side because of the bison, on the opposite side because each car stopped for 15 seconds to take a picture of the bison (sigh).

We then ran in to an “otter jam”  (yes, an otter jam).  After another  SDR we got our first chance to see an otter in the wild at Alum Creek and admired yet more flowers.

A quick stop at the Lake Hotel EDR (employee dining room) for dinner was followed by  a free scenic cruise around the lake (employees go free on a space-available basis).  The air is so clear here that you can see the Teton mountain range more than 50 miles to the south.   One more bison jam on the way home, a quick stop to look at specs in the distance that folks said were 2 wolves and a bear and then back at Old Faithful just after the sun set (right around 10 pm).

Here’s a link to all of the photos in this posting.