| (Yellowstone Trip - June 9 to June 24, 2000 - Part 7 ) | |
| Friday,
June 16, 2000
We rose early to find
snow on the car! In June! |
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| Thank God there’s no accumulation on the road. Looking for griz, we headed south down the Hayden Valley, seeing nothing unusual (for Yellowstone), just pelicans, Canada geese, elk & bison. Ho-hum – had we become jaded? We pulled out the scope at viewpoints around Fishing Bridge, Pelican Creek, and Storm Point, but we saw little activity and no griz. Coming back down the valley, we stopped to check out the LeHardy Rapids and tried to imagine bears fishing there in just a few weeks. | |
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| Although we had snow squalls off and on all morning, the weather cleared in the afternoon to be a beautiful day. So we headed over to Norris to look at geysers. | |
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| In the sunshine, the pools had such bright colors with light blues, as well as pinks and reds, compared to the dull tones we saw last year in a downpour! | |
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| Steamboat was splashing an steaming a lot and we just missed some activity at Echinus. | |
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| Green Dragon Spring was a neat surprise; a smaller but more colorful version of the Dragon’s Mouth over near Lake. On the down side, both Whirligig and Little Whirligig were inactive. | |
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| Walking back toward the visitor center, we spotted an elk cow with a calf, who stopped to pose for us . | |
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| After returning to Canyon, we changed for dinner and headed toward Lake. We stopped past Trout Creek where we saw some people pointing. | |
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| We got out of the car, saw some movement in the water, then… that’s a beaver! He then hopped up on the bank and munched on some willow before returning to the water and disappearing in the reeds. | |
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| At the Lake
Hotel, the beautiful dining room overlooks Yellowstone Lake. Our tasty
fish dinners matched the setting, only to be topped off by a string quartet
playing in the lobby. Quite elegant!
We took one more sweep of the Storm Point and Pelican Creek viewpoints, looking for griz and finding nothing! Stopping at the Fishing Bridge Ham Store, we again run into John D and Mike. This time we parted saying "see ya tomorrow" rather than "good-bye." |
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| We "scoped" our way back up Hayden valley to Canyon, seeing white pelicans, ducks, bison and elk, but no griz. (John D and Mike saw a grizzly sow with cubs moments after we parted!) We stopped again near Trout Creek, but no beaver, just some geese swimming in the still waters . So peaceful! The clear sunny evening portended another cold night. |  |
| We return to Canyon to get our Moose Tracks before bed. They were closing and had some excess to get rid of – we were glad to help out in any way we could! | |
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