Sept 26, Sat - day 51
West Yellowstone, Montana
Weather - low 26(-3C) to high of mid 70s (22C) clear and sunny
Knowing our days were numbered here at Yellowstone we started out just before sunrise, with the intention of a short day today (back by noon) and a long day tomorrow. To begin the day we picked an area just outside the park to visit, Ghost Village at the end of Earthquake Lake. We had been told that lots of birds and animals have been seen at this location and that meant ‘photo ops’ to us. It took about a half and hour to get there and we saw eagles, ducks, and herons, along with some buildings that may have met their demise during the 7.1 magnitude earthquake of 1959. It was good place where you could probably spend most of a day. We’d got there just a bit too early and the light hadn’t begun to hit the area. It looked like it would be another hour before it would be light enough to begin shooting, so we revised our plans.
We traveled back to town, and since it was still early we decided to venture into the park, just to the end of the Madison Valley. Rae was hoping to shoot part of the local high school homecoming football game later in the day and we still had 2 ˝ hours before the game started, so it seemed a reasonable amount of time to get up the valley and back.
We saw some elk, people, and bison, all pretty inactive, so we decided to go on up the Firehole. Basically we were looking for just about anything that was moving and in good light, but as with the Madison it was a fairly docile scene. We were still within our time schedule, still looking for photo ops, so we decided to go just a bit further to the two pass area of the Grand Loop. We thought that perhaps the forest fire near Bridge Bay, may have caused some animals to head up to the higher ground. Nope….. so we went a bit further towards the area overlooking Yellowstone Lake.
We could see lots of smoke from the fire and where it had spread to over 1600 acres over the last two days. The fire was fairly near the road in several spots and it had intermittently closed the road over the last two days. We checked with a ranger and found out the road was currently open, and with the wind blowing in a favorable direction we felt the chances for it being open all day were good, so we decided to drive on up to the Fishing Bridge area of the park. While this meant we wouldn’t be able to catch the football game, we felt some good park photo ops would make up for missing it.
Once we got down to the lakeside we couldn’t see the actual fire, but did note that all the smoke was heading toward Cody Wyoming. In the Fishing Bridge area all we found were a few ducks and some smoky scenery. We were somewhat surprised to find that this weekend the shops were all closing for the season. The Park itself is closed on Nov 6th and reopens just before Christmas for the winter season, with all its’ snowy activities.
We’d decided that since we were fairly far along the way this trip would be our last big trip in the park. I’d wanted to check out the display at the Information Center at Canyon Village and that also seemed like a good place for lunch, so up the road we went with our plan of action in place. While I was talking to the ranger at the Information Center he excused himself to answer the phone, and guess what, he announced to the other rangers that the Bridge Bay Fire had closed the road once again, due to a wind change and worsening conditions. Great…so much for our plan of action. Lunch still seemed like a good idea, and then we could check and see how things were and revise our plans if necessary.
It was a great lunch; there was no change in the fire or the road closure. Instead of sitting around and waiting to see what was going to happen we decided to head on up to Mammoth Hot Springs and look for the elk herd. We found the elk and we were amazed at the amount of weight the bull had lost, but apparently he hadn’t lost any of his harem. As usual, the Park Rangers were at work keeping everyone safe and doing an excellent job of it. We took a few shots, but again nothing too interesting was happening…it looked like an afternoon siesta in the middle of the town.
We checked and found out that the road was still closed and we couldn’t make it back to West Yellowstone through the park, so we made the decision to travel an extra 60 miles via Livingston, Montana, west on I-5 to Bozeman and then south on 191.
Before leaving the park we were fortunate enough to see a dozen or so big horn sheep just below Mammoth. We were so busy shooting the sheep that I forgot to shoot the photographers and the HUGE traffic jam, luckily Rae got a bit of it. We both were really excited about our shots of the sheep and then just down the road we found an antelope was posing for the travelers, so we got some close-ups of it. A nice way to leave the park, after a rather unusual and none to fruitful trip to the north end.
It turned out to be a nice drive, with great scenery all the way to Bozeman, then the sun set and it was dark heading south. We finally returned to West Yellowstone 14 ˝ hours after we left in the morning for a four hour shoot….sometimes you just never know how the day will turn out. The adventure continues…
To see more of our Yellowstone National Park images click HERE
To see more of our animal images click HERE
