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).
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