Date: 26 May 2001 (Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend)
Start:
End: Fishing Bridge RV Park, Yellowstone National Park, WY (0 miles)
We got up to a beautiful morning, but cool – 40f, no wind.
Breakfast in the little house in the big park, then off to see more.
We started in the clouds, just like really thick fog, along this segment, which parallels the Yellowstone River. Couldn’t see much more than the road along here.
It cleared up away from the river. We found a short one-way road back in to "Virginia Cascade", where a small stream cascades 60 feet downward. The road was not as wide as Dolores would have liked, but it was no problem. At Norris, we went through the geothermal area of geysers and hot springs there.
This road is somewhat rough but it parallels a nice river through meadows and it supposed to be one of "the" places to see a moose. Dolores thought she saw something so we stopped next to a car with its occupants all out looking around. The boy was saying something like "we’ll never see a moose", when Dolores said, "there’s a moose", and we all got busy trying to get pictures of it. The moose had its head down, eating, most of the time, then it would walk off several feet, sometimes behind clumps of marsh grass, and bend over again. You had to be quick. But anyway, we saw a moose.
Mammoth Hot Springs is another big geothermal area. I’ve looked at about enough of these things for one trip. They’re everywhere.
The "town" of Mammoth Hot Springs is the only part of the park that’s open year-round (plus the needed roads out the northeast entry). The former army post here contributed most of the buildings that house the help in the summer to operate the hotel and stores. We had lunch in the fast-food part of the hotel. We continued east across the top of the upper loop to Tower-Roosevelt.
Beautiful scenery on this segment, very up-and-down. Go up a wide valley as it narrows into a narrow canyon, then up and over into a canyon flowing the other way and follow it down as it widens into a valley.
This is another beautiful, wide, valley with marsh along the stream (good for moose) and slopes upward from the other side of the stream (good for spotting grazing animals). But all we saw were several more herds of bison. I suppose we shouldn’t complain – soon the bison will all move into the "high country" and you won’t be able to see any from the road.
We’d noticed an increase in traffic, which we finally attributed to weekender traffic – lots of license plates from surrounding states. Along this part, we came to two traffic jams (bear-jams) where someone had seen a bear and everyone else stopped to see if they could see it, too. We navigated our way through and continued over the highest pass in the park (Dunraven Pass) at just under 9,000 feet. It’s easily seen why this road is the last to open – it’s high, in poor condition, narrow (with switchbacks) and generally not nice. The scenery is beautiful, though. It’s amazing how often the scenery changes from one theme to another here.
We snaked our way through another "bear-jam". By this time the traffic was getting somewhat un"bear"able, so we came back to the campground and sat, read, walked, and rested.
Then, after dinner, we took a short hike up a trail that overlooks a part of the Yellowstone River, sort of looking for moose. As we came around a bend, a coyote came into view loping our way. He stopped in his tracks. We stopped. He turned left and exited. We went on with the hike.
After we returned to the campground, we were chatting with a lady from Monterey, California, when there came a wild howl from not too far away. I suppose it could have been the coyote – it wasn’t any dog I’d ever heard.
