Sunrise at Yellowstone and Sunset in the Big Horn Mountains--which had the best wildlife?

It rained most of the night. The locals were glad, as this was the first moisture they have had in months. We were up to 6:00 a.m., and on the road by 6:30. We were just outside the entrance of Baybridge campground in the middle of Yellowstone National Park when the sun was rising and we had our first wildlife sighting of the day. 

A herd of elk were grazing in the grass around our campground. It was fun to see an elk cow checking out our early-morning departure.

But it was even more fun to see a very young elk calf amble across the road in front of us. We watched as the calf knelt down to suckle right beside the road in front of Yellowstone Lake. Yes, this was a magical place!

It was cloudy, but the rain cleared the smoke from the air. We saw the hazy view across this big lake right after sun rise.

While it was fun seeing wildlife right outside our campground, our real destination for the morning was Hayden Valley. Staying inside the national park meant we could be there in two miles. On other visits to this big park, we have driven eighty miles to get to this special place known for its early morning wildlife sightings. We stopped to see a bison ambling along the Yellowstone River.

But the real find of the day was a little further down the road. When we spotted a big group holding cameras and binoculars all pointed in the same direction, we knew we would find something special. They had been watching a grizzly as he swam across the river. Now he was walking through the sage brush.

With that signature bump over the front shoulders, it was definitely a grizzly. He would disappear in the brush, then reappear in the next opening. We could see him with our naked eyes, then it took our binoculars, then he was just a spot. We stayed with the hushed group of spotters until he was just a speck.

We had more bison spottings, then we made a short drive on a spur road to Artist Point. The canyon walls were wet from the rain, and were especially colorful this morning.

Artists come here to try to paint this canyon, but they can't match God's artistry. We could see Yellowstone's Upper Waterfall at the end of the canyon.

We drove as far as Canyon Village before we turned around to meander back towards our campground. It was fun to find bison along the road this early morning.

We spotted a large herd on the ridge line, silhouetted in the morning light. We pulled over and stopped, as it looked like the herd was moving our way.

Sure enough, they started moving down the hill, coming to a rest right beside our parking place.

Some of them were in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the herd. They were running full blast down the hill, with tails high in the air.

Our parking place in a dirt pull-off beside the road was a perfect place to get close pictures of the different generations within the herd.

The big bison were rolling in the wallows right in front of us.

When the herd decided that the grass was greener on the other side of the road, they started blocking traffic to get there. We now were in the middle of a classic Yellowstone traffic jam.

We have heard many stories about stupid tourists getting too close to the wild animals in the national parks. Here is pictorial proof that those tourists were visiting that morning as well. That big bull bison was just a couple feet away from the man that stepped outside of his car to get a better picture.

Our pictures were all taken from inside our pickup because we had a great spot.

Further down the road, we stopped in at Sulphur Caldron. We didn't take the time to cook eggs this morning, but it certainly smelled like rotten eggs from this overlook. It's normally crowded with no room to park. But this early in the morning, we had the overlook to ourselves.

We stopped to see the boiling mud pots, thinking that we had wandered into another of God's more stinky wonders.

Just across the road was the Mud Volcano stop, with its wooden boardwalk loop. While usually crowded, at 8:30 we got a picture of Mark by himself in front of the Dragon's Mouth Spring, belching sulphur steam. That wasn't Mark belching, it was the Dragon's Mouth gurgling and rumbling gray water through its hidden caverns.

The tiniest wildlife sighting of the day was posed on a bush not far from the Dragon's Mouth.

We were back at the campground at 9:00. Mark fixed the sway bar bracket that had slipped during our drive yesterday, and we left by 10:00 in the sprinkling rain. It was a 45-minute drive to get to the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park, where burned trees from previous years' wildfires make up much of the mountainous landscape. The rain had cleared the smoke from the air, and was hopefully helping to put out this year's wild fires. Lightning often starts the fires, so a gentle rain with no lightning was especially helpful. We drove between the tall chocolate brown rock bluffs on our way to Cody, Wyoming.

We drove 185 miles, and almost four hours this day. While we were wearing jackets because of the cold weather this morning, we were sweating in the desert landscape by the time we got to Greybull, Wyoming. It was 83 degrees in the foothills of the Big Horn mountains.

We started our climb into the Big Horn mountains at 3,700 feet in elevation in Greybull at 83 degrees. The pickup did a heroic job of pulling our trailer up the steep mountain roads. Forty-five miles later we were at 8,400 feet in elevation and needed our jackets again.

We first stopped at the Forest Service dump station to empty our tanks and fill up with water for free. Then we stopped at the Forest Service visitor center to get the latest information on the area. While boon docking was very popular in this area, we had reservations at Prune Creek Forest Service campground for the next three nights. We were in site #18 on the end of the campground with two great camping neighbors on either side.

One of those neighbors pointed out that a cow moose was lying in the shadows just ten yards from where we backed the trailer into its site. The wildlife--especially the moose--was why we had returned to this section of the Big Horn Mountains.

Last time we visited here was in 2023, and we were in the motor home. Because of our electric refrigerator, we were forced to stay in a terrible campground with an electrical site near Bear Lodge. This time we were so glad to have our solar power and a little trailer that fits well into this forest service campground!

We did stop at Bear Lodge, to use their free wifi and buy our first piece of pie. Last trip we tried a different kind of pie at the lodge restaurant every day. That was such a good idea that we planned to repeat it. After our first night, we could recommend the French silk chocolate pie!

We went on our first hunt to find moose at 6:00 p.m. We weren't sure if we would find many this year, so we started taking pictures of all that we saw.

Sometimes we spotted cow moose hanging out together . . .

and sometimes a lonely bull moose.

 

One difference this year was the presence of cattle in these grassy areas. When we were here in June 2023, if we saw a black dot in the distance, we knew it was a moose. This time those black dots could be cattle. The forest ranger at the visitor center explained that ranchers lease the land from mid-July through September.

We remembered some of our favorite moose-sighting places from our last trip. When we saw a group of people with big cameras and binoculars at one of those favorite pull-outs, we stopped. The three bull moose near the creek were easier to see if we stood on the back of the pickup.

One advantage to visiting in late August is that we got to see the big antlers on the bulls. They regrow these big racks every year, so when visiting in the spring they would only have antler nubs.

When they were feasting on the tender willow stems, sometimes all we could see were those antlers.

We moved to another favorite spot, and found this big boy by himself. It was at this stop that we met a couple from Florida that drove from Yellowstone today--just like us. But unlike us, they had spotted five different bears in their early morning drive in that national park.

He showed us his bear pictures on his cell phone. Without a zoom camera, he had to get close to get good pictures. We want to note that this crazy guy with graying hair in the photo below is NOT Mark.

We respect the wild animals' space and would rather take pictures from a distance--especially when they turn and look at the intruder like this.

We watched the bull saunter through the creek bottom, and then stop to get a drink in an open spot.

Again, our Florida friend got too close for our comfort. This was a big wild animal that could charge very quickly.

He was mirrored in the water below. What a great wildlife sighting!

He did keep an eye on us, but we guess he was saving his energy to fight off competing bull moose during the upcoming rut season--rather than pesky tourists.

He finally got his fill of water and sauntered off, but we certainly enjoyed the time we got to spend with this bull moose this evening. Because the wildlife were so numerous in this area, we had learned to keep a tally sheet from each sighting. We stayed out until it got too dark to see any more animals.

This evening's count:

21 moose

23 deer

4 sandhill cranes 

We had a great time at both our early morning Yellowstone National Park wildlife sightings, and our sunset in the Big Horn mountains. We've been doubly blessed today!

Welcome to Yellowstone National Park

Our one-night stay in the city campground in Drummond, Montana, was loud. It sounded like the trains were going right through our trailer several times during the night. We were glad we weren't planning to stay any longer! This was the third one-night stay in a row, something very unusual for us. Because we didn't unhook the pickup for this short stop, it was a fast departure the next morning. We were on the road at 8:00 a.m. for our long drive. Google maps estimated a five hour drive to today's destination, but that was based on driving 80 miles per hour on I-80. Our preferred speed towing the trailer in the mountains was 60 miles per hour.

The further we drove away from the Windy Rock fire, the bluer the skies were. We liked this section of I-80 with four smooth lanes and very little traffic.  Our path took us down some long 6% grades where passenger cars were limited to 70 miles per hour, but trucks weren't supposed to exceed 25 miles per hour in these sections.

Our destination today was Yellowstone National Park. We've been there several times in our travels, but we've never been able to camp inside the park because our motor home was too big and needed electrical hook-ups. Last night we were able to reserve a one-night stay in the center of the national park--one of the advantages of traveling with our little trailer with solar! Even though the smoke forecast said that Yellowstone was clear, we found the mountains shrouded in smoke as we approached the north entrance of the park.

We also started seeing wildlife as we got closer. We spotted antelope, two eagles, and ten elk. These three elk were resting in the sage brush in the middle of the day.

We also crossed the state line into Wyoming this morning. This was our eleventh state on this journey! This was the first time we had ever entered through the Gardiner gate into Yellowstone National Park. Even though it is one of the most visited national parks in the country, there was no line and no reservations needed at this north entrance in the middle of the afternoon.

We had never seen the Roosevelt Gate, just inside the north park entrance. We took a picture as we drove by because finding a parking spot big enough for the pickup and trailer inside a national park was almost impossible.

That's why we drove right by the travertine formations on the north side of Yellowstone. Driving through these crowded areas on a pretty day in August towing a trailer was a little tricky.

Even though we were already inside the national park, we still had a 90-minute drive to get to our campground in the center. We've mentioned it many times before, but some of our national parks are huge! We spotted one deer and 2 bison close to the road. We saw dozens more bison in the distance as we drove through Hayden Valley. When we plotted our route home across the country, we found that driving through Yellowstone was actually the shortest route in miles. It was not the fastest route, however, because of the 35-45 mile per hour speed limits inside the park. But with beautiful natural landscapes and animal sightings, it was a great route for us.

We arrived at Bridge Bay Campground in the center of the park in the middle of the afternoon, and got the trailer set up. We'll talk more about that fiasco at the end of the blog. Instead of staying around the campground, we jumped back into the pickup at 4:15 and started exploring the park. We made a stop at West Thumb Geyser Basin, where we parked and made the walk around the geothermal attractions. Our favorites were "The Abyss" . . .

and "The Black Pool." Even with such sinister names, both were delightful shades of turquoise. But through the clear steaming water we could see the bottomless crater beneath.

This boardwalk was right beside Yellowstone Lake, where a large flock of ducks was trolling together near the shore.

We watched as the leaders dove under the water, and the whole flock followed and flipped down in some natural version of a synchronized swimming routine.

We also made a stop at the Kepler Cascades. Most day visitors had left the national park by this time, and we had the viewpoint all to ourselves. That's one advantage to camping inside the park that we've never gotten to experience before.

We were on a bit of a schedule, as we were headed to Old Faithful next, with a scheduled eruption time at 6:32. We arrived around 6:00, surprised to see that all the benches around the perimeter were full even at this time of the evening.

The local birds knew that the visitors waiting for the show were probably snacking, and they were quite bold to check out the food options.

The 6:32 estimate had a qualifier. Old Faithful was faithful, but that estimate comes with a +/- ten minute qualifier. We got a teaser at 6:30, but the full geyser show actually started at 6:33.

It's hard to take a picture that shows just how tall the water sprays into the air. But the whole crowd hushed as we all watched another of God's wonders in this wonderful place.

We filled up with some $3.99-per-gallon gas at the gas station in the Old Faithful complex, and then headed down the road for another highlight. We've seen most of these things many times before, but how can you be so close and not feast on some of the best natural landscape in the country? We paused only for a moment to take another bison picture on our way, because we were losing daylight.

Our next stop was the Grand Prismactic Spring. Because it was so late, we got a parking spot in the closest lot, and started the mile hike up to the viewing platform above the spring. Even though the fading light didn't show the bright colors that made this spring famous, it was easy to take a picture.

Last time we were here, it was crowded with people. But this evening there were only seven of us on the platform. We took turns taking pictures for each other without anyone else in the frame. At this point, we were half-way around the south driving loop of the national park. We decided to finish the 58 miles it would take us to make a circle around this loop to get back to our campground.

It was over an hour's drive and we ran out of daylight. We did spot three bison, but it was dark by the time we got to Hayden Valley. We were disappointed to see that people were just leaving after a bear sighting. A big group was still talking about watching a grizzly in the water, and another group watched the wolves for the third night in a row in the same place. We missed all that fun, but we did see the herd of elk that hang out at Bay Bridge Campground. They were our welcoming committee when we drove back to the trailer at 9:00. Mark had been driving for most of 13 hours this day, and he was tired. We walked several loops inside the national park today, and managed to get 6.3 miles of exercise today.

We have to have a little rant about our national park camp site that might be helpful to others making a trip to Yellowstone. We were delighted to find a one-night opening, but surprised at the $42 price for a no-hook-up camp site. On the Zanterra web site, it didn't give us any opportunity to put in our senior pass number for the half-price discount. We found out quite by accident that you can get that discount only if you ask for it when you arrive. Our camping spot was literally a wide place on the side of the campground road. It was one of the worst sites we have ever had in our ten years of extensive camping. We had to come in backwards, or our steps and door would have been in the middle of the road. It was so angled that we used four leveling blocks, and we were still a bubble off level. Driving through the campground at 9 p.m., we assumed everyone was checked in. But at least 25% of the sites were vacant. Some sites were much better than ours, and we probably should have requested a different site if we only knew that so many were going to be unused. Having unused camp sites in the middle of such a beautiful place seems a shame.