June 20, 2012

Greetings again from Yellowstone. 
 Another couple pictures of bison jams.  We have been stopped for up to 45 minutes while letting the beasts past.  Lots of babies (red dogs) this time of year.  You feel safe sitting in your car watching them go by but there was an incident this season with a family sitting in their car watching a herd, something spooked the herd and they ran up and over the car.  No one was injured but the car was totaled. 





 Caught this momma coyote feeding on a baby elk carcass.   She would get her fill and run over to her den which was approximately 30 feet away in the bank and regurgitate the food to her pups.  She did this a number of times with the pups waiting anxiously for their meal.  They would come out of the den a few feet and she would turn and bark at them and they would duck back in the den.  Of course it caused a major traffic jam.  The ranger is a gentleman we met last year through a mutual friend.  He and his wife work out of the Canyon area. 

 We tried our hands at fishing this weekend in Yellowstone Lake.  We caught four lake trout.  There is no limit on this fish because they are endangering the native cutthroat trout and the park service wants you to take as many out of the lake at possible.  Actually you are not allowed to put them back into the lake unless you kill them first.  But they have found a new home in our freezer.  The restaurants here will fix them for you so we will give them a try.  The biggest was 24" long.  Jim was quite proud of that one.  It was a cold blustery day so we didn't stay too long but were fishing near a couple from Oklahoma that had been there awhile and think they had a couple dozen.
 Took one of our many driving tours up through the Lamar Valley on the north side of the park where we spotted a mountain goat and a kid.  They were too far away to get a picture but it was exciting because they are pretty hard to find in the park and pretty elusive.  We drove out the north entrance to Cooke City which is an old mining town.  Thought the old ramshackle houses were interesting.  They looked like some of the originals from the 1800's and some obviously still inhabited.  We liked the one with the board over the window - bear proofing.

More to come

Ann & Jim