the north: animals

On Tuesday afternoon I took the luggage coach up to Mammoth Hot Springs to meet Steve, who'd left on Monday to spend the day fishing. It was a bumpy ride, made all the bumpier by the lack of snow there was in Mammoth. It was a bit jarring to get "out" and see so many people, pavement, and drive around in our car. Old Faithful has become a nice little protective bubble...

We drove out to the Lamar Valley and spent the night at the Buffalo Ranch. There's no better place to wake up and fall asleep than the YA Institute cabins at the Buffalo Ranch (and that's not just because we work for YA). The view from the front door of our cabin was of Ranger Hill, complete with a herd of grazing bison.


We woke up early on Wednesday morning and headed to the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek. There had been a lot of wolf activity there the day before--both the Druids and Miller boys had been spotted. Twenty minutes after we arrived, the Druids began howling. About an hour later we spotted a lone gray wolf way up on the ridge. He's apparently been hanging around the Druids with the hope of courting one of their females.

We had a great afternoon on the northern range:











We drove through the northeast entrance


and into Silver Gate with the hope of spotting a moose for my Uncle Donn. I caught a glimpse of one through the trees for literally one second--by the time I was able to say "moose!" he was gone.

It was snowing Thursday morning as we boarded the luggage coach at Mammoth and headed back down here to Old Faithful. We passed a herd of elk on the Mammoth Terraces, and then we were on our way. We followed wolf tracks all the way from Norris to Madison, and as we pulled into the warming hut at Madison we found out that the Canyons had been spotted on a fresh elk kill at Seven Mile Bridge that morning. Someone at the hut also had a photo of a wolf they spotted on Tuesday between Biscuit Basin and Morning Glory--a lot of wolf activity here in the park right now.