Bison causing traffic jam in Yellowstone Park
Today we travelled to the far northwest corner of the park, to Mammoth Hot Springs, to see the beautiful travertine deposits there. However, we got there by going around the east side of the grand circle route which took us along the Yellowstone River and the Hayden Valley, before crossing over to the Norris region.
Along the river we saw many animals, large herds of bison, trumpeter swans, and a wolf pack (admittedly far away, almost a mile but visible through binoculars).
Bears at Canary Spring
But the best bear sighting by far was at Mammoth Hot Springs. As we came to the end of the Canary Spring boardwalk a small very black bear cub was walking quickly through the bush. It followed up along the boardwalk for a way, then disappeared into the bush. Shortly after a brown mother bear with a brown cub showed up and sat on the edge of the travertine. The cub was making a loud grunting sound, and later its mother grunted as well. I filmed them there, though it wasn’t the greatest location as there were many trees in the way. We started walking back, though there were many, many people crowded into the end of the boardwalk trail watching the bears. About 25 yards back on the boardwalk, I stopped, and set up the camera and tripod, and the pair of bears walked directly towards us. They circled around a bit, looking like bears in snow on the white travertine, and since all the other people were still down at the end of the boardwalk, got some very nice pictures.
We left, drove the circle loop around the rest of upper terrace, and as we came down on the highway saw that the bears, now joined by the black cub, were walking directly down the hill towards the lower boardwalk trail. A huge crowd of people were taking pictures of the bears along the trail. We saw one man who was talking on his cellphone, without looking up, and walking directly towards the bears. We guessed that he was going to get a good surprise!
Artists Palette terraces
We parked at the bottom of the hill, and then started walking up the trail. We first went to the Artist’s Palette terrace, which is one of the most spectacular there. Then we walked up towards the higher boardwalk, and saw a ranger with a radio. There was a large crowd of people following the bear along the top boardwalk of the terraces, and another ranger up there doing crowd control. The bears disappeared over the top of the hill, and the crowd dispersed. Not long after that we heard shots and saw gunsmoke at the edge of the trees, so we assume that the rangers were trying to frighten the bears from the area. It wasn’t the best place with several hundred tourists trying to take pictures of them up close!
Swan Lake in Gardner’s Hole
On the way back tonight we saw a grizzly bear on the shores of Swan Lake. Had there not been a man there with a spotting scope trained on the grizzly, we’d never have located it, even with binoculars, as it was low down and lying in the grass right at the water’s edge. Since I showed the man with the scope where a bald eagle was perched in a tree above the bear, he was happy.