On our last day in Yellowstone and our last day together with Jay, Carl and Ashlan, we decided to get away from the maddening crowds. But first we had to navigate the ever present animal jams. We drove north to Mammoth Springs, but avoided the main attraction and instead headed for the trailhead, for our little five-mile hike to beaver ponds and back.

The trailhead was conveniently placed next to the bathrooms, so we watered our horses and then headed out on the trail. The hike began with a climb out of the parking lot into the heights above. We saw a deer, a prairie dog, some coots and a crazy sparrow who danced in front of us along the trail for a while. I think that it was leading us away from its nest. Halfway through the hike we arrived at the beaver ponds which were in fact just dammed rivers, but that is what beavers do. While we stayed together on the way out bound, we got strung out on the return leg. The combination of heat (87 degrees, but it was still a dry heat), flies and photography had us spaced out over a quarter mile when we descended upon Fort Yellowstone. We re-watered the horses at the visitors center and I hike the extra quarter mile back to the SUV. We had our picnic lunch next to the visitors center.

After lunch we jumped back into the vehicle and headed east towards the Lamar Valley. The Lamar Valley is suppose to be the best part of Yellowstone for seeing wildlife. True to its reputation, it was the primo part of the park to find wildlife. Where as, we saw dozens of buffalo on Friday in the Hayden Valley, in the Lamar Valley we saw hundreds. We also found our own personal bear. We didn’t happen upon a bear-icade, we created our own. Unfortunately, the Lamar Valley is as far from West Yellowstone as you can nearly get in the park. So we didn’t get to spend too much time in it before we had to start back. If we had only one more day …

Thursday turned into a geology day for us is Yellowstone. In fact at our final stop for the day, at the Grand Prismatic Spring, a visiting group of geologist were in attendance. The lecturing park ranger was all over one of them as we were walking into the Midway Geyser Basin. I had to bite my tongue not to yell out, “Is there a geologist in the house?”, as if their was some emergency of tectonic importance. 😉

We spent most of the day visiting the smaller geyser basins north of the Old Faithful basin. We probably walked five miles, so much for taking a rest day, on the day before Jay and Company arrived. Most of the geological features are not as impressive as those at the Old Faithful basin, but some are and none of them come with screaming kids, rude adults or anything in-between. I got another tourist to take our picture at the Spasm Geyser.

In 1988 the park was burnt in a summer of forest fires that consumed large portions of the park’s forest of lodge pole pines. Twenty-two years later you can still see signs of the fire. Burnt tree trunk poles still rise above the new growth. The new growth has risen to between ten and twenty feet in height. The new pines are growing as close together as corn stalks in an Illinois cornfield. The difference between the Illinois cornfields and Yellowstone’s new crop of lodge pole pines is that in Illinois there are farmers planting that crop. In Yellowstone most if not all of the new pines are naturally seeded. Go figure, a specie that evolved to live in Yellowstone, where wildfire is part of the ecology, would come back so strong after a wildfire.

On the way out of the park we ran into another bear-acaide. This time it was caused by a grizzly bear. It was across a river and we never left the SUV, so we were pretty safe. Anne‘s not totally sure that it is a grizzly, but I think it is and I’m writing this post.

We knocked off three hours early, in order to meet up with Jay, Carl and Ashlan, the cavalry.  We had our best diner yet in West Yellowstone.  It still involved a lot of read meat and sides.