Yellowstone National Park: Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower- Roosevelt
Friday, August 26th, 2011August 7th-August 8th
We were very excited to visit Yellowstone and to take a break from driving, so Sunday morning, we arrived at the park early and got a campsite easily at Mammoth Hot Springs, a popular area of the park located near the North Entrance and famous for the hot springs terraces. We started with the visitor center, which was a museum to Yellowstone’s history- we saw photos from the late 1800s and learned about Fort Yellowstone (from the time when the military still managed national parks.) Yellowstone was America’s first national park. From there, we walked up to see the hot springs terraces, large white travertine (calcium carbonate) terraces with colorful pools. The terraces are constantly changing as one spring dries up and another appears. On our way to the campground, we saw elk grazing on the lawns of the resort area (we guessed they were safe from predators here.) Yellowstone is also home to grizzly and black bears, mountain lions and wolves. Just as we finished our lunch, we had a thunderstorm, so we waited it out in the tent.
After the storm, we decided to do a longer hike (about five miles) to Beaver Lake. We spotted several pronghorn antelope grazing in the distance and several elk. We also saw a lot of water fowl but unfortunately no beavers. Back at the campground, just as we were finishing our dinner, another storm kicked up and blew over in time for the evening program. It was an excellent program about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park.
The following morning (Monday), we set off early to do the drive east-ward toward the Tower-Roosevelt Lodge. Along the road we spotted a pronghorn antelope. As we are always very careful about where we stop, we drove up to a pullout and walked back to where we saw it. We watched it run across the road, dig a hole in the dirt and poop. We stopped at an interpretative trail about the animals of Yellowstone. I saw something strange on the hill a couple hundred feet from us. I looked through the binoculars and saw a brown furry rock. When it started to move, I realized that it was a large black bear. (Despite the color, we are fairly sure it was a black bear and not a grizzly bear since it didn’t have the requisite hump behind its neck.) We watched it foraging for food for a while and then it made its way down the hill towards the trail. We slowly made our way back towards the parking lot- not wanting to disturb the bear’s lunch hour. We finally arrived at the lodge and at the trailhead of a longer hike that we wanted to do. We hiked up through some forest past a pretty lake to a petrified redwood tree (today, we only find redwoods on the northern California coast.) After that we did another hike along the Yellowstone River and saw a badger on the trail. (I didn’t know what it was from sight- I had to look it up in a guide.) The hike took us to some amazing views of the canyon where we saw ospreys. On our drive back towards the campground, we saw a bear cub playing in the trees near the side of the road. A lot of people had pulled over to get a look at him, but he was too far away to get a good picture. Further down the road, we saw some people stopped with binoculars. At first, we didn’t see what they were looking at and suddenly we saw a bison in the distance, rolling in the dirt, scratching his back. It was an amazing day for wildlife viewing. Back at the campsite, we had another storm during dinner that blew over in time for the evening program on the geology of Yellowstone.
Posted from Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
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