Today's Yellowstone adventure displayed the vast different environments of the park. We kicked off the morning by viewing some female elks grazing and laying down in the meadows by the West Entrance. We then headed north to cross over to the other side of the park, with a goal of seeing wildlife in the Hayden Valley.
The Steamboat Geyser woke up from an eight year nap and erupted yesterday, but we weren't nearby to watch it. It's a powerful geyser and it must have put on quite a show to the people who happened to be there when it went off. We drove by to see if there was any residual effects, but didn't see anything.
Our drive took us along the Gibbon River and Gibbon Falls. We pulled over into a parking lot to get a better view of the falls, and as luck would have it, Jeff spotted an eagle flying above the river. It was an amazing spot, because I couldn't see it until he pointed it out. The eagle made its way to the top of a lodgepole pine tree, and after he sat there for awhile, the eagle swooped down to the river and plucked out a fish. Jeff was thrilled to have seen it. Henry and I tried to take pictures, and I'm not yet sure we captured any of it yet. It was pretty far away, but hopefully we'll be able to look at the pictures and crop them to get something good.
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| Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone |
After our exciting eagle viewing, we stopped to look at the Artist Paintpots. It involved a hike up and around a small geyser basin with various geothermal features. Jeff hung back while Henry, Ruth and I made our way up the hill to get a good look at the entire area and the Gallatin Mountains in the distance.
Our next stop was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon is known for the yellow canyon walks (some say the area was named for the river of the yellow stone) and the Upper and Lower Falls. We looked out from the North and South Rims and got great views of both falls. The lower falls are one of the most famous images of the park.
The Hayden Valley was a bit of a disappointment after our experience there in 2009. Four years ago, we saw hundreds of bison; this year, we saw about 15 of them. They must have been grazing somewhere else in the park. By the time we got to the valley, it was about 11:30, so they might have sought relief from the hot sun in a shady area of the valley not viewable from the road. There were two pretty close to the road that we were able to see.
We then moved on to the Lake Area of the park. We stopped at Fishing Bridge for a snack stop. They have a great store there with a cute old fashioned lunch counter. The kids picked out some candy to tide us over until lunch. We drove over to Bridge Bay to check out the boat tour schedule, but it was another hour until the next boat left, and there wasn't much there for us to do to kill time. The water looked pretty choppy so we didn't think we were missing much by moving on.
Since we didn't see much wildlife on our first pass through Hayden Valley, we decided to drive back through there on the way back to the campground instead of continuing on the southern end of the lower loop. We saw about eight or nine bison on the way back - still not nearly as many as we had seen years ago. I could tell that Henry was disappointed, but this is a national park, not a zoo, and wildlife sightings are never guaranteed.
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| Lone bison on the side of the road |
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