Bison, Bison and More Bison (But No Bears)

Last night was our coldest night on the trip so far.  I turned off the fan before I went to bed and left a few windows cracked open for air circulation.  Around midnight when I went to bed, it was already pretty cold, and when I woke up, it was freezing.  It must have gone down into the 30's overnight.  Getting out of a warm bed in cold weather is not fun, so our plan of getting an early start fell apart.

Jeff motivated the kids by suggesting we pick up breakfast at McDonald's on the way into the park.  Usually on road trips I try to avoid fast food restaurants, but in this case, the motivation was working and I was not going to mess with it.  

In order to get to the Lamar Valley as quickly as possible, we decided that unless we saw a bear or a moose, we were not going to stop until we got to Lamar Valley.  We had seen enough female elk at this point, so there was no reason to stop on the road into the park if we saw them again.  Once we got to Lamar Valley, Henry and Jeff wanted to look for wolves and any other animals they could find.  After we spent some time in the Lamar Valley, we would make our way back to the campground taking the same route, and stop for anything that interested us.

The plan worked.  As soon as we got to the intersection of the upper loop of the park and the road to the Lamar Valley and the Northeast Entrance of the park, we saw a herd of bison grazing.  This was a good sign - there must be animals in this part of the park.  We continued down the road, and came across more herds of bison.  It's almost time for "the rut," aka mating season.   We're no animal husbandry experts, but we did notice that the herds in Grand Teton were all hanging out together nicely, but in Yellowstone, it appeared that some males and females were courting.  We stayed and watched one herd for awhile, and saw some of the males rolling around in the dirt, hanging out with a lady they were interested in, and shooing away other males trying to check out their lady friend.  A few bison farther out were pushing each other around, and Jeff saw two butt heads and one get knocked to the ground.  

We saw bison all along the drive through the Lamar Valley.  We saw a few pronghorn there too, but no wolves.  There are a couple hundred of them in the park, but they're pretty reclusive.  Henry was disappointed, but I reminded him that he did get to see some at the Grizzly and Wolf Center up close.  In the wild, he'd only be able to see them with binoculars.

We had lunch at one of the pullouts in Lamar Valley while Jeff and Henry looked for wolves, elk or bears along the treeline in the valley.  It was sunny and in the 70's - near perfect weather.

We drove by some spots throughout the day that we thought would be excellent hangouts for bears, but we didn't see any.  We also didn't see any bull (male) elk in Yellowstone either.  They, too, are getting ready for mating season, so they must be deep in the woods fighting each other to see who gets the prettiest ladies.