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As we had a day still left in Jasper, Rich and Karen decided to see if we could go rafting for a second time on this trip. Rich and Karen had taken a white water raft trip down the Athabasca River back in 1989 when they drove to Alaska with Rich’s Dad and Karen’s sister. Karen researched our options without letting on to the girls what we were planning. We ended up deciding to go with Jasper’s Whitewater Rafting and trying to book their 9:00 a.m. Athabasca Falls trip (which is what we had done in 1989). Unfortunately, we were not able to get anyone on the phone before 9:00 a.m. despite leaving voicemail. So we drove down the street and found their storefront. One of the owners, Eddie, informed us that since they were still training their guides for the season, that the Falls trip wasn’t being offered yet. When we mentioned that there were 5 of us (a raft holds 6), he made a phone call and got someone with experience to be our guide. It turned out that our guide, Ron, was another owner and co-founder of the company.

We had a little time before our raft trip was to depart, so we drove down Highway 16 towards Edmonton for about 15 minutes enjoying the scenery and looking for animals before turning around and heading back. On the way back towards Jasper, a coyote crossed the road in front us (the third canine to do so on the trip). We stopped right away, but he disappeared into the woods almost immediately.

We left Jasper at 10:30 a.m. and drove to Athabasca Falls. By talking with Eddie and Ron along the way, we confirmed that this was the same company that we had rafted with back in 1989. After gearing up in wetsuits, jackets, and booties, we carried the raft down to the edge of the river below the falls to an area we had pointed out to the girls from an overlook when we had visited the day before, and got ready to go. Eddie hustled down river a ways to take some photos. We started out paddling towards the falls, but the water volume was way too high to get anywhere near them (but apparently would have been possible just a week prior) and we were off.

Ron had been working the river for 38 years, and his experience was obvious. He didn’t use oars like the guides on our last two trips, but rather relied on us to provide momentum and used his paddle as a rudder. This meant that we paddled a whole lot more on this trip than our other two family rafting trips combined. Along the way he gave Karen lessons on how to “read the water”, i.e. which waves were ok to go over and which ones meant there was a rock just below the surface.

The scenery was spectacular. Mountain views were everywhere. We really wished we had a waterproof camera, especially when we briefly stopped in the eddy of a large boulder at the edge of the river and Ashley and Amber scrambled to the top while we floated about 10 feed downriver from them. They had a great view of the river and a mountain in the distance and we had a great view of them above us with the mountain in the background.

Nobody fell in this time, although Karen, Ashley, and Amber all braved the 38F water for a brief voluntary dip. Rich and Alyssa were smarter and only dipped their feet. All 3 “swimmers” claimed that it was much colder than the Yellowstone River had been.

Right before our trip was to end, we all spotted a fawn enter the river and start to swim across. It didn’t get very far before it decided to turn around and head back to shore. It scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the woods. We never did see its mother. Our first fawn sighting of the trip was a unique one.

When we landed and got back on the bus, Eddie had left a laptop with 17 pictures of us running in a slideshow. Rich was blocking the view of Amber in most of the shots (but that is only fair as he also blocked a fair amount of water from hitting Amber during the trip), but it was great to actually have photos of us actually rafting for a change. Check out the album by clicking on the picture to the left!

After taking the bus back to town, changing into warm dry clothes, grabbing a bite of lunch, we headed back out in the van. We drove a ways down Highway 16 the other way, but didn’t see much of interest, so turned back and drove up to Patricia Lake and Pyramid Lake. Both were very pretty. The girls were especially interested to find out that Patricia Lake had been the site of a ice boat experiment as part of Pproject Habbakuk back during WWII (they had learned about Project Habbakuk, ice boats, and Pykrete from a Mythbusters’ episode right before we left on our trip). We took a short walk over a footbridge to Pyramid Island. The wind kicked up quite a bit when we crossed the bridge, so we didn’t spend too long there (although the girls all took the opportunity to stick their fingers in the water when they were sheltered from the wind by the trees on the island).

We got back to our hotel around 6:15 p.m. and spent about 45 minutes in the indoor pool playing freeze tag. We finished off the day with dinner and cards in the room.

We got up in the morning and headed back south down the Icefields Parkway to Athabasca Glacier. We had planned on taking the Brewster Ice Coach tour onto Athabasca Glacier, but the girls didn’t know that. Fortunately, we had two little “detours” along the way. Both of them black and both of them bears.

The first was literally less than a mile outside of Jasper. A largish black bear was sleeping beside a stream near the road. We watched him for a while, but he was partially hidden by brush and not very active, so we were soon on our way again.

Karen and Rich spotted the second bear down below the side of the road as we passed it while we were driving along. We stopped as soon as we could on the shoulder just in time to see the smallish bear come up the hill onto the road. It looked at us for a few seconds and then continued on across the road and into the woods on the other side. We made a quick U-turn, but it had disappeared into the woods.

The Athabasca Glacier tour includes a “bus” ride up onto a flat spot of the glacier. You are allowed to get off the bus and walk around on the ice. Apparently they have been using the same section of the glacier for the tour since they started doing it (although the ice obviously moves over that spot) because the flatness of the bedrock beneath closes any of the crevasses that develop. It was pretty cold up there (at least Alyssa thought so) and you had to watch where you stepped. We saw one woman get her entire foot soaked when the ice she stepped on turned out to be slush. After the tour we spent some time looking over the exhibits in the visitors center there.

We had just left the icefields visitors center with the plan to visit Sunwapta and Athabasca Falls on our way back to the town of Jasper when we encountered a “bear jam”. This time it was a female black bear and one year old cub near the side of the road. We did as we were supposed to and stayed in the van while taking our pictures, occasionally leapfrogging ahead as the bears moved farther down the road. Of course, a few folks got out of their cars for better shots and we were a bit concerned when the bears decided to get a drink of water from the little stream flowing next to the shoulder (probably less than 25 feet away), but thankfully nothing happened. The bears continued down a ways and had just started to climb the fairly steep cliff away from the road when a park ranger arrived and used some firecrackers to scare the bears to climb faster.

Just a little ways farther down the road there was yet another “bear jam”. A grizzly was a few hundred feet from the road on the flat. Way too far for pictures, but Karen got some video. The highlight was the bear rolling in the dirt occasionally. Suddenly in the distance you could see legs sticking up in the air as it rolled over.

We made our planned stops at Sunwapta Falls and Athabasca Falls. At Sunwapta Falls, there was supposed to be a 15 minute hike down to the lower falls. Since we hadn’t hiked in a few days, we decided to give it a try. After about 15 minutes we came to a view that showed the river curving away around a bend in the distance, but with no sign of any falls. At that point we decided we had hiked enough and turned back.

There are lots of different viewpoints at Athabasca Falls, from both sides of the river. There is a also a little walk down an abandoned channel. From one of the viewpoints Karen and Rich pointed out where they had entered the river on their raft trip back in 1989.

We finished off the day with a dip in the hotel pool.

Day eleven was supposed to be an easy travel day from the town of Banff to the town of Jasper, a 3.5 – 4 hour drive. It took us 8.5 hours. Of course we did stop for the occasional picture of a pretty mountain or some video of a deer, but then we spent 2 hours doing something that in a month or so would have taken less than 5 minutes – visiting the Peyote Lake overlook at Bow Summit.

During the “summer”, visitors can park 150 feet or so from the overlook. Apparently the end of May doesn’t count as “summer”. The road up to the overlook was still snow covered and closed. But the lower parking lot was open. There were two choices for hiking up to the overlook, the trail through the snow covered woods (which had a sign on it recommending against it) or up along the closed road. We chose the road. You might think that hiking up the road would be easy. It wasn’t. The trail of footprints through the snow/ice was extremely slippery, the road was fairly steep, and where the trail had actually reached (or almost reached) the road surface, it was like walking in a stream. When we finally reached the overlook, we discovered that the lake was still covered with ice, only hinting at its unique glacier silt tinged turquoise color.

We stayed for quite a while, resting from the slog up the hill and video taping the numerous avalanches of snow on the mountain across the valley. When we finally decided to head back down to the car, we opted to go back through the woods, which even though we were going downhill still ended up being a rough trip as the entire way down was heavily snow covered.

The animal sighting highlight of the day came when we saw a tour bus, car, and bicycle all pulled over on the other side of the road. We made a u-turn at the next opportunity and drove back to see what was going on. It turned out to be a large male black bear loping along the river by the road. We paced it on the shoulder for a while until the river bent away from the road and the bear disappeared into the woods. We drove down a ways in hopes of spotting him coming back out of the trees, but we didn’t see him again.

We stopped at Athabasca Glacier (part of the Columbia Icefield) and hiked up to the toe of the glacier. On our hike, we passed markers for where the toe had been in 1982 (one year after Rich’s first visit to the glacier) and 1992 (three years after Rich and Karen’s visit) along the way, and we still had plenty of distance to go. They have ropes about 100 or so feet from the toe and lots of warning signs about the lake/river that had formed beneath the toe being deadly if you fell through, all to keep people off the ice. The ropes and signs are apparently pretty ineffective as there were plenty of footprints visible. After our hike, we stopped in the visitors center briefly, but with all of our hiking, it was already approaching 6:00 p.m. and they were closing. We decided we would need to drive back to visit their exhibits the next day.

As it was getting late and we knew we were going back to the glacier the next day, we skipped stopping at Sunwapta and Athabasca falls and just enjoyed the scenery.

While we were checking into the hotel in Jasper, the girls had fun taking pictures (from a safe distance) of a couple of bull elk across the street from the hotel. After checking into our room, we opted for pizza at a local pizza joint (good, but not as good as Outlaws Pizza in Gardiner had been) and called it a night.

Despite our plan of getting an early start, we failled utterly (even though poor Karen got up at 7:00) and we didn’t leave the town of Banff until almost 10:00 a.m.). Tranis-Canada 1 is in the process of being widened to a 4 lane divided highway (what they call “twinning”) and while they are doing that they are installing an 8 foot high wire fencing on either side of the highway to keep the animals safe. So, instead of driving up to the Lake Louise area on Trans-Canada 1, we instead took the Bow Valley Parkway (1A), which,for the most part, parallels the highway. We saw quite a few deer along the parkway, but no bears.

We stopped at Johnston Canyon and hiked up to the Upper Johnston Falls, a little over 1.5 miles each way (with a lot of elevation changes). At the view of the Lower Falls, there is a little tunnel (created once upon a time by the river and widened by man back in 1920) through the canyon wall that provides a unique (and very misty) viewpoint. The trail up the canyon was actually very well maintained. At some points it was actually a catwalk suspended above the river from the canyon wall. Unlike our Jenny Lake hike, there were a fair number of people on the trail.

After our 3 hour hike, we continued north to Lake Louise. We had been warned that the view had been spoiled by all of the boats and such on the lake, but that sure wasn’t the case for us. There were absolutely zero boats on the lake in fact. Of course, that was probably due to the half inch of ice still covering the majority of the lake. The ice spoils the reflective nature of the lake, but it is still pretty (although a bit chilly).

After spending some time at Lake Louise, we made a side trip into Yoho National Park so that the girls could see the spiral train tunnel there. There were quite a few people (including a tour bus) there when we arrived, but no train. We looked over the exhibits at the tunnel overlook and thought about leaving, but nobody else seemed to be leaving (including the tour bus), so we waited around a while until we heard a train going past above us – it had to be heading our way! A little later the gathered crowd was greeted with a blast from the train’s whistle as it approached the overlook and everyone scrambled for a good place to watch. The girls were pretty excited to see the train enter the tunnel and a couple minutes later emerge 50 feet beneath itself with the end of the train still to enter the tunnel. We waited until the entire train had completed its circular journey and then headed back into Banff National Park.

As we headed back to Banff, we again took the Bow Valley Parkway, driving slowly in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a bear or moose, but only saw more deer. After a quick trip up Tunnel Mountain Road past our hotel to see the Hoodoos, we returned to the hotel for some more fun at the attached waterslide (although Rich mostly just soaked in the hot tub while Karen and the girls enjoyed the slides).

Day nine of the trip started with a drive from Kalispell, MT into Glacier National Park. As the Going-To-The-Sun Road that cuts across GNP hasn’t yet opened for the season, we were not actually able to drive across Logan Pass. Since we were 99% sure that was going to be the case before the trip started, we had made plans to go horseback riding in the park instead and then travel on to Banff, AB.

On the way to GNP, we had a moose cross the road a few hundred feet in front of us. We stopped and tried to get pictures, but he had already disappeared over a hill next to the road.

Our 2-hour horseback ride actually ended up being closer to a 3-hour ride (a pleasant surprise), but they had strict rules about no video cameras and having to be stopped for pictures, so we didn’t get any great pictures of our trip. Most of the pictures that Rich tried to take were blurry (déjà vu) due to the shade of the forest and the movement of his horse. Alyssa was very brave and worked hard to handle her horse on her own, but it kept insisting on stopping to snack on anything green, so the guide ended up leading her horse for about half of the ride. We crossed the McDonald Creek on a horse/footbridge, which we’d stopped at on our way to the corral. It was somewhat scary being above the level of the railings as we crossed the rushing glacial melt. In general, we had a fun ride and even got to see three deer during our ride (one right at the end by the horse corral).

After our ride, it was on to the Douglas Fir Resort and Chalets in Banff, AB. Karen wanted to get there before the adjoining water slide closed at 9:30 p.m., so we had to keep moving. We did stop several times for pictures of deer near the road (mostly after we had entered Kootenay National Park), a few times for scenery pictures, and once for pictures of a herd of bighorn sheep. The big excitement however, was a black bear and her two cubs! We spotted a couple of cars pulled over and when we pulled over they pointed into the woods before they pulled away. We quickly spotted the mother and what we thought was a cub following close behind her (they were all pretty deep in the woods). We followed on foot on the shoulder of the road trying to get a picture as the mother moved parallel to the road, but we quickly lost sight of the cub. When Rich started back for the binoculars suddenly TWO cubs bounded after their mother. Everyone got a quick glimpse of them (but no pictures) before they disappeared farther into the woods after their mother.

We ended up getting to the hotel in time for everyone to go down the water slides about a dozen times and then Rich went to get some late dinner while Karen and the girls played a little in the indoor pool.

Day 8 was primarily a “driving day”, driving from Gardiner, MT to Kalispell, MT. We did see what we believe was a bighorn sheep shortly after leaving Gardiner. Its horns were fairly short but the girls all decided that it couldn’t have been anything but a bighorn sheep. We got to Kalispell around 5:30 p.m. and spent 1.5 hours playing in their indoor pool where for the second vacation in a row Rich managed to hurt a finger doing something stupid while in water (nothing lasting, thankfully). After swimming we headed to a local restaurant for a non-pizza sit down dinner and a relatively early bedtime as we were to go horseback riding in Glacier National Park the next day.

The plan for day seven was essentially to be a repeat of day five. A drive around the main roads that form a rough circle within the park.

Somewhere between Mammoth and Norris, we encountered another “bear jam”. This time it was a brown colored black bear a couple hundred feet into the woods. We stayed there for a while before heading farther south.

The boardwalk at Fountain Paint Pots was open this time when we stopped (it looked like they may have been making some repairs to the boardwalk when we had stopped before). Most of paint pots were pretty “runny” and one of the signs along the boardwalk indicated that this was normal for spring when snow melt and rains provided plenty of water. Probably the most interesting feature here was Red Spurter which is a relatively new geyser (1959) and was bubbling dark red liquid.

We stopped at Upper Geyser Basin where Old Faithful is located in the hopes of catching Beehive erupting, but we were about 6.5 hours off in either direction. We walked around the large circular boardwalk surrounding Old Faithful and witnessed our third eruption from yet a different angle before heading down the trail to Castle Geyser and Giant Geyser and then back up past Beehive. None of these “big” geysers were erupting, but we did get to see several of the smaller ones spitting, including Plume Geyser which erupts in 3 to 5 bursts. On the way back towards Old Faithful, we got to see it erupt for the fourth time (this time from a distance).

We continued on our loop around the park and drove by Yellowstone Lake again. It was still mostly ice covered.

There were people pulled over where the rangers had set up the spotting scopes for the grizzly and her two year old cub on day five, so we stopped there. With the aid of our binoculars and a couple of helpful gentleman with spotting scopes we soon located a grizzly and cub (presumably the same ones as before) in the distance. As they were way too far away for pictures, we didn’t stay too long.

A little while later, very close to where we had seen the cinnamon colored black bear on day four, Karen spotted a black black bear down the slope from the road. We had soon created our own mini “bear jam” for what the girls quickly named “Bingle Bear”, since if we hadn’t seen it, probably nobody would have known it was down there.

After watching “Bingle Bear” for a while we continued on. We turned into the Petrified Tree turnout in the hopes of seeing the moose again, but he wasn’t where we’d seen him last. Since it is only ¼ of a mile down the road to the tree we figured we’d just turn around down there. Good thing we did, because as we rounded a curve the moose was grazing just about 100 feet off the road. We got some pictures and then turned around (next to a lone buffalo standing on the beginning of the hiking path) and headed back to Gardiner, seeing a bunch more elk (including some bull elk) and a Great Grey Owl along the way.

Today was rafting on the Yellowstone River with the Flying Pig Rafting Company. The launch point was just up the street from our hotel, so we put on our swimming suits and jeans and drove over. Our guide for the day was John, and we were to have 3 other rafters joining us in our raft, Brian, Dennis, and Sarah. After getting wetsuits, booties, and life jackets we had our obligatory safety meeting and headed down the embankment behind their storefront and loaded into the raft. Alyssa sat in the middle of the third row between Rich and Amber and acted as our unofficial navigator (i.e. she hung on for dear life).

We soon passed our hotel and entered into Swimmers Rapids where Rich, Karen, Ashley, and Amber each braved the cold to say they had swum in the Yellowstone River. Even with the wetsuits the water was COLD, probably about 46 degrees! We didn’t stay in very long, but that wasn’t the point anyway. John helped Rich and Ashley back into the raft, and Amber helped Karen back into the raft and later Karen returned the favor.

A little farther down the river there was a rope hanging from a bridge. John convinced Brian to grab hold of the rope as we passed under the bridge, and Brian went swinging out of the raft as we continued downstream. He swung a couple of times before realizing he had no choice but to let go and drop into the frigid water as we were not coming back for him.

We stopped a few miles farther downstream to pick up a second guide complete with his own two-seat catamaran raft. Safety Dan would be there as a backup if anything unplanned happened as we went through the class III and IV rapids to come. John chose the least rough lines through the rapids on account of Alyssa and we were soon through the toughest section. As Dennis and Sarah had yet to enter the river, John tried to take advantage of one of the last sections to spin Dennis out of the raft. He initially told just Dennis and Brian to unwedge their feet from under the tube of the raft but then expanded that to everyone. Rich stupidly obeyed the order and a few seconds later found himself tumbling backwards out of the raft!

The water had been cold before, but the four of us had all made a point of not completely submerging or letting go of the boat. Rich ended up in the water for a couple of minutes before Safety Dan managed to maneuver the cat into position to pluck him from the river, exhausted from the cold and struggling against the currents. Rich transferred safely back to the raft below the next set of rapids.

Right before the pullout to end our trip we passed under a second bridge. John convinced Dennis and Ashley to attempt to hook the t-grip of their paddles on the edge of the bridge as we passed under it and try to hang on (similar to the rope from the first bridge). Unfortunately the water level, the rigidity of the paddles, and the lack of grip all conspired to basically just dump Dennis and Ashley out of the raft and into the water as they attempted the maneuver. Brian and Rich quickly pulled them back into the raft and our trip downriver was at an end.

Like the previous year’s raft trip, the hours actually on the river never match the hype of the advertisements. Our “all day” trip turned out to be about 2 hours of actual float time. And just like the previous year, there was nobody on shore taking pictures as we went by (too early in the season, apparently).

We spent the rest of the day swimming in the hotel’s indoor pool, playing cards in the room, and napping. We had enjoyed our pizza the night before at The Outlaw across the street, so we went back to sample a couple more of their creations for dinner.

We headed back into Yellowstone National Park on day five with no real plan other than “seeing stuff” and “looking for animals”. We swung by the Upper Terrace Drive at Mammoth Hot Springs, but the road was still closed despite it being a holiday weekend. Since we’d already started going south, we decided to continue down the western side of the park.

There seemed to be a lot of buffalo out and about (we didn’t think they celebrated holidays). We saw several herds of 20+ buffalo (complete with cute baby buffalo), including one herd of over 30 buffalo that blocked the entire road. They seemed to show no fear of vehicles and at times seemed to prefer using the road rather than the grass for getting from place to place. Over the course of the day we probably saw over 120 yearling or adult buffalo and 15 or so babies.

Just south of Norris Geyser Basin we stopped off to see Artists Paint Pots (only ½ mile or so of walking). The most interesting pool was a pit of white viscous mud that almost looked like wet drywall mud. Every few seconds, it would belch up a handful of mud from one of two different spots to deposit the goop on the inside of the short cone surrounding the pool.

You could tell it was a holiday weekend as traffic in the park had definitely increased. We made a side trip over to the west entrance (with the thought of maybe going into West Yellowstone to grab something for lunch). On the way west, we passed by a mile plus long “buffalo jam” going eastbound, and were a bit worried about getting caught in it coming back. But it was the sight of the cars backed up going into the park at the western entrance that made us turn around and head back into the park before we actually left it and got stuck in the traffic jam entering the park.

Next was Lower Geyser Basin. We tried stopping at the Fountain Paint Pots next, but the walkway was closed so you really couldn’t see very much, so we decided to take the Firehole Lake drive instead and just missed seeing White Dome Geyser erupt.

On the road from Madison to Old Faithful, it wasn’t long till we came upon 2 buffalo “fighting” (mostly just butting heads) by a river. The loser (we figured that the one that walked away first must be the loser), waded/swam the river to the far side where two other buffalo were waiting. A few minutes later the victor also crossed the river. We thought we might see a continuation of their jousting, but they just peacefully grazed on the fresh grass.

At Midway Geyser Basin, we stopped to take a short walk up to Excelsior Geyser Crater (pretty much just a hot spring and no longer a geyser) and Grand Prismatic Spring. Grand Prismatic Spring is huge! Combined he two springs pour something like 4000 gallons of hot water a minute into the Firehole River.

We stopped at the Old Faithful area and again just missed seeing Beehive erupt. We waited about 30 minutes and watched Old Faithful erupt from a slightly different viewing point than on day four of the trip. We wanted to drive around the lower loop past Yellowstone Lake and it was already close to 4:00 p.m., so we decided that we would skip hiking around the other geyers near Old Faithful and hope to see them another day.

It turned out that Yellowstone Lake still had a thin layer of ice on most of it! We stopped for some pictures and as Rich was setting the timer for a family shot, Karen and the girls spotted an otter in the water. Rich ran over, everyone quickly turned to the camera, and then back towards the otter. A couple seconds later it swam under some ice and disappeared.

North of tower of tower we started encountering bear jams. First up was a female grizzly and her two year old cub. They were quite a ways off the road over on a treeless hill. Luckily a park ranger had a couple of spotting scopes set up so that people could get a chance to see that there actually were bears way out there.

A couple miles farther down the road, there was a black bear walking along a ridge. He didn’t stay around too long though, so we continued on.

The next bear we believe was a grizzly. It was a ways up on the snow covered side of the mountain and appeared to be digging something out of the ground, presumably looking for something to eat.

The next two bears were both black bears and were within a couple of miles of each other (but definitely different bears). The second bear stayed around for a while, despite somebody who decided to try to get too close for a picture. We were shooed away by the same ranger from both sites. Definitely not the same attitude as the ranger who had set up the spotting scopes for the grizzlies, but these bears were much closer to the road.

We decided to turn in at the turnout for the Petrified Tree on the road from Tower Junction to Mammoth and it was a good thing we did. As we turned in we noticed that there were several cars parked about two hundred feet from the main road (and the tree is actually about ¼ of a mile from the main road). Karen spotted the reason almost instantly. It was a moose! He was a few hundred feet away amidst some fallen trees, but we spent quite a while trying to take a good picture before heading on.

Next we spotted a black bear (our seventh and last bear of the day) near the same pond we had seen a bear at the day before.

Right before reaching Mammoth Hot Springs we encountered lots of elk including exactly one elk baby. Unfortunately, it was too dark for pictures.

Back in Gardnier, we had pizza at the western themed (and apparently Bulgarian run) Outlaws Pizza right across the street from our motel.

Day four was to be devoted to doing things in Yellowstone. We started out with a visit to Mammoth Hot Springs. Even though we were on a boardwalk the entire time (obviously), even this turned into a hike as we climbed and wound our way up the terraces.

Next was Norris Geyser Basin. We could have turned the basin into yet another long hike, but ended up only doing the smaller loop there as the information kiosk wasn’t to open for the season until the next day and we had no idea if or when anything would be erupting. The two steam vents as you first go down into the basin are pretty impressive, belching out huge plumes of steam.

From Norris, we cut across the park over to Canyon Village. Right before arriving at Canyon Village, Rich thought he spotted a wolf running across the road. We stopped and everyone got a glimpse of it just before it disappeared into the brush in the distance. We drove back a ways hoping for a better angle, but never saw it again. We did however find the wolf’s footprints in the snow where it had crossed the road.

Next up was Lower and Upper Yellowstone Falls. To get to the brink of Lower Falls requires a 3/8 mile “walk” each way with an elevation change of 600 feet. Yep, you got it, more hiking. We spent the next couple hours taking pictures at all of the various overlooks of the falls.

By this time it was getting late and we wanted to drive from Canyon Village to Tower Junction as the road had literally just opened for the season. Elk and buffalo sightings were becoming so common now that we would only stop if they were right by the road (or if there were any baby buffalo). We were trying to keep a watchful eye for bears and Rich had just commented minutes earlier that it sure would be nice if we were to see a bear ambling along right near the road when we encountered our second “bear jam”. Karen and the girls piled out of the van and Rich drove a little ways farther down the road to find a place to park. This time it was a reddish colored black bear down the embankment from the road working its way along a creek eating. Technically, we were closer than we really should have been, but the embankment was pretty steep and we stayed pretty close to the park ranger who was trying to manage the situation. Only once did he warn us “if he starts up that hill we give him a big gap to go through”. We stayed there for quite a while watching the bear and slowly following it back up along the road. Eventually we decided that we were getting cold (everyone had jumped out of the van without their jackets) and it was getting even colder with the sun setting, so we reluctantly headed back to the van and on our way again. But that wasn’t to be our last bear of the day afterall. On the road from Tower Junction to Mammoth Hot Springs, we spotted a couple of guys with tripods hiking their way along the road back to their cars. We stopped to ask if they had seen a bear and they told us it was down the road a ways sleeping behind a tree on the other side of a small lake. Sure enough, about a half mile later we spotted a black bear snoozing peacefully 150 yards or so off the road. Amber was so excited that we had surpassed last year’s bear count (we had seen two on our last day in Yosemite last year).

We arrived back in Gardiner around 9:00 p.m. again (seeing a couple hundred elk as we passed through Mammoth) and had buffalo cheeseburgers for dinner, turning in around 11:00.