Location: Yellowstone National Park
Attractions: Hayden & Lamar Valleys, Mammoth Hot Springs, Boiling River
Date: August 6th, 2018
There is just something about waking up in Yellowstone. I mean, we camp a lot, and I’ve woke up in that camper dozens of times, but knowing you are stepping out to the first national park ever created and the chance that you’ll see some pretty awesome wildlife is pretty darn good… it’s just intoxicating.
I knew we had a big day ahead of us so I went up to the bathroom to wash-up and take care of some paperwork, if you know what I mean. Jill was awake too and decided to walk around the campground while we waited for the rest of our group to wake up. As I was walking back to the camper, Jill was running up from the opposite direction yelling in a whisper voice to come follow her, just giddy with excitement. My first thought was she must have seen a bear. But once I was close enough to have a conversation with her, she revealed that there were 3 bull moose hanging out in the timber just below us. You’ll see just how tame these beast are in the video. Some bystanders got entirely to close, in my opinion, but the elk paid them no attention at all.
We sat and watched these massive deer for about 15 minutes before heading back to grab some breakfast and jumping into Jean and Mo’s truck to check out Hayden Valley again. My sister’s families and my parents like to sleep a bit more than we do, so they got a bit of a later start.
As we approached Hayden Valley, traffic was at a crawl. That usually means there are animals close to the road. Sure enough, as we got closer, we started to see buffalo moving through the thick fog. Once the fog burned off a bit, we could see there were more buffalo out there then we could even count. As we waited in the traffic, a young coyote crossed in front of us and we watched him hunt for breakfast in the tall grass.
Once we got moving again, we headed to Lamar Valley. We, again, were delighted to see a bunch of buffalo. We were able to meet up with the rest of my family and swapped stories about all the cool things we saw on the drive as the buffalo grazed in the background. We shot a few photos and then kept on cruising. Next stop… Mammoth Hot Springs. On our way there we saw a large group of people watching a black bear climb around on some rocks. We couldn’t really stop because there was so much traffic, but we stopped long enough to get a quick photo.
The Mammoth Hot Springs were pretty cool. More than anything we were glad to get out of the truck and stretch our legs for a bit. It was a really hot day and we were walking on a boardwalk with nothing around for shade, so it didn’t take long for us to want to head back to the truck. Not too far from the Mammoth Hot Springs is the Gardiner River and if you take a mile hike, you can get in the water at a point where hot springs mix with the super cold water coming from the mountains and you’re able to pick the temperature of water that suits you best. It was really quite heavenly.
After we cooled off, then soaked in some warm water, and then cooled off again, we hiked back to the truck and started our trek back to the campsite. We, of course, had to stop back at the Mammoth Springs village for some ice cream first.
As we drove back, we hit some road construction that slowed us down but it was only because we slowed down did we get to see a second black bear about 50 feet from the road.
As we approached our campground, we saw a bunch of commotion near the entrance. When we got closer we realized that at least one of the three elk that we saw earlier that day was out and about near the road. Since we had already saw him and his buddies earlier, we didn’t spend much time there. Besides, we were starving.
We got back to camp, started a fire and the grills and sat down for some burgers. It wasn’t too much later that we all hit the sack. Tomorrow’s adventure would include The Grand Tetons.
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