From My Last Trip Inside the Park

With my work schedule providing Sunday & Monday as my "weekends" off, I've been able to get into Yellowstone National Park every week since my arrival . . .  that is until June 13th when the flood took out the road providing access from Gardiner through the North Entrance into Mammoth.  At this point in time, the one lane Old Gardiner Road has been worked on to provide limited access into the park for essential personnel and administrative support of concessionaire operations.

So for now my only route into the park is by going north to Bozeman and then southwest through the West Entrance at West Yellowstone, Montana.  This would be roughly 3.5 to 4 hours, depending on road construction between here and there.  With the time involved and price of gas, I don't know that I'll be making that journey any time soon.

For now, that's alright, however as today it's raining AGAIN.  Plus my car developed a bad rubbing sound a couple of weeks ago, which I've learned is a wheel bearing.  So until I get that fixed, I'm pretty much grounded to local driving to/from work (which is less than 3 miles round trip).  Hopefully the part arrives in the morning and I can get it taken care of this week.

During my trip last Sunday (and a week ago today), I was up and out early and on a nice bear viewing opportunity south of Tower Fall.  It was in full grazing mode, munching through the grass right along the road.  Fortunately there was a turnout in the area, providing for a comfortable spot to simply watch.

More and more people arrived, stopping to take a photo or two, and then moving on.  I enjoyed just watching . . . and was provide a wonderful viewing when I realized this was a momma bear with two COY (cubs of the year).  It wasn't until one of the little guys decided to come down and check out what mom was doing, that folks had the excitement of seeing these first year cubs.  Shortly after they made their appearance a ranger came to the area, to maintain traffic and crowd control.

This little fella spent time eating, and would seemingly get startled, and then head back up to the safety of the tree.  Unfortunately its sibling wasn't as adventurous to come down from the tree where they had been.  It wasn't until much later when they were summons down, as she was ready to head off into the woods, and the family went out of sight.

Here's a short video of this Momma and cub eating grass on the hillside.

Later in the day, I made my way to another area of the park where I had been successful in seeing the pair of brown/grizzly bears known as Raspberry (mom) and Jam (her 2 year old cub).  By the time I got up to the East Entrance road that they had been seen almost daily since coming out of their winter den, it was raining pretty good.

Bear jams don't lie and while they were way up on the hillside, there were a lot of vehicles stopping to catch a glimpse.  In the rain, and given their distance from the road, you could barely see them with the naked eye.  Fortunately, I had binoculars, plus my Nikon P900 which has great range.  Getting decent photos was a challenge due to low lighting and the distance, but I did get a couple worth sharing here.

I feel blessed and fortunate to have been able to get inside the park each of the times I have.  It's unfortunate that my access is going to be seriously limited moving forward.  For this reason, my friend Valerie's visit scheduled for next weekend has been cancelled.  We'll see if it might be possible later in the summer.  Right now, I'm keeping focused on not worrying and waiting for things to settle into whatever the "new normal" will be for the operation and visitor experience at Yellowstone National Park.  Because things continue to evolve here, I encourage those interested, to follow the official announcements from the NPS, which are being posted on the Yellowstone National Park website and Facebook page.

The good news is that our YPSS stations will continue to provide work for us in the offices here in Gardiner.  While things were pretty slow Tuesday through Friday, yesterday was a nice 8.5 hour day for me.  And I know there will be a lot of work coming in for my return to the office on Tuesday, so no worries for job security at this time.