Yellowstone

This past weekend nine of us went to Yellowstone and it was totally awesome! We left at about 9:30 Friday morning and got to the North Entrance to meet with the head Wildlife Biologist, Glenn Plumb, at 3:00. This meeting went very well. He told us about some of the projects they have going there such as getting rid of all the hybrid cutthroat trout and the problems they are having with wildlife diseases, including parvo, TB and the Spruce Bud Worm, which causes the trees to have a reddish tint. He also informed me of a program at UC Davis which works on controlling these diseases so I think I may be looking into that. Then he told us the best times and places to see the wolves. After that meeting we went back to the West Entrance to set up camp.
The next day we drove all over the park and saw all the things you are supposed to see when at Yellowstone such as Old Faithful, the waterfalls and the steam/sulfur vents. Many of these impressed me more than I thought they would but at some of the spots the sulfur smell we horrible. Old Faithful was interesting but not as amazing as I thought it was going to be but that could also be because it was the last place we stopped that day. Then we headed back to the camp to get ready to get up at 4 am the next day to go see wolves. The last day there began at 4 am and we drove all the way to the north east entrance but the only thing we saw was an incredible number of bison. So we headed out of the park to go to the cafe that Glenn Plumb recommended but it was closed due to a wedding party. On the way back through the wolf and bear area we remembered what Glenn said and was on the look out for bunches of people on the side of the road. Soon we came across a crowd so we stopped and asked them what they were looking at and low and behold it was a pack of wolves! We got to watch them for about 45 minutes. I think I was able to figure out that the white one was the alpha and I'm not sure where the black one stood but he/she was very playful and tons of fun to watch. He reminded me a lot of Chase when he tries to get Brig to play with him and the grayish one, that the black one was playing with, reminded me of Brig because he/she just went along with it for a while then decided to lay down or get a drink or something and the black one went off to explore for a while. After all seven of them calmed down a bit we took off back towards the main part of the park. We had only driven no more than 2 miles when we saw another crowd of people so we pulled over again. This time it was a Grizzly Bear. He/she would look at us but pay us no attention and go back to looking for things to eat. My roommate Colorado got a really good picture of it. By that time it was 11:00 am so we went to one of the villages to get breakfast and continued on our way home. Since the pass to Yellowstone was good for seven days and the Grand Tetons we took the long way home. The Tetons were very pretty but not much in the way of wildlife. We got back to Twin around 7:30 pm and went to bed so we could get up the next morning for work.