We left Glacier National Park for the long drive to Yellowstone. Ten years ago we visited Yellowstone with our son, Mark, while he was a college student. It was a wonderful trip which we very much wanted to repeat.
After a long day of driving we spent a night in a large campground in the tourist town of West Yellowstone. My AAA guidebook was very complimentary about a place called The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, so we decided to check it out. The Center is kind of a home for bad bears and their cubs. While each bear has his own unique story, they are all nuisance bears who had learned to obtain food from people, had been aggressive towards people, or who had damaged property in their search for food. Problem bears are usually caught and euthanized, but the 8 bears that live at the center were rescued from that fate. The Center is also home to eight wolves who were born in captivity and were scheduled to be destroyed because their owners were no longer able to take care of them.
We spent several hours over two days at the Center watching the animals in their naturalistic habitats and learning about how to respond to an encounter with a bear while hiking in Yellowstone. Before we left home we had, by chance, watched a tv documentary about a pair of hikers who were badly mauled by a bear in Glacier National Park. The man and his daughter were enjoying an early morning hike on a sparsely travelled trail when they encountered a mother grizzly bear and her cub. The bear attacked the pair, severely injuring them both, and causing them to fall off of the trail. We found this quite sobering and, back in Colorado, we acquired a cannister of "bear spray." Bear spray is a form of pepper spray similar to, but much stronger than, the kind that police officers use. Between the tv documentary, the information we received at the Center, and repeated warnings in the form of written literature and signs by both of the national parks, we were concerned to say the least!
We had managed to score reservations at the Fishing Bridge RV park, a full-hookup RV park centrally located inside Yellowstone. The park allows only "hard sided RV's," no tents or pop-ups. The reason for this is because it is located in "bear country," and bears have been known to rip through tents and canvas covered RVs in an attempt to get the food stored therein. While the campers were allowed to use propane grills, they had to be cleaned and stored inside the RV during the night. We were also told not to leave dog food or water bowls outside and that even things like toothpaste needed to be properly secured.
Once we got to Yellowstone, Rick was recovered from his bronchitis and ready to hike. We began studying park brochures and hiking books that we bought at the park bookstores to find hikes that appealed to us. Our first hike combined several trails around the very popular Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone area.
It was a fun hike with wonderful views of the canyon and its beautiful falls. Our return route took us through forest and meadow areas where we saw several geothermal features called fumaroles, which basically are holes in the ground with steam coming out. Yellowstone is located atop a huge active volcano, and is home to more Geysers than anywhere else on the planet
We also encountered a herd of bison which, thankfully, took no notice of us. I carried the bear spray on a special belt on my hip, and Rick carried his Glock in a fanny pack. I told Rick that I felt dorkey with the bear spray, and was glad to take it off once the hike was over.
Rick was reading a book called Death at Yellowstone that evening. It described all of the many ways that empoyees and visitors have found to die inside the park over the years. There was a long section devoted to animal attacks. He read that in 2011 a man had been killed and his wife badly injured by a mother bear whom he encountered on the exact same trail we had taken at the end of our hike! Yikes! I didn't feel dorky anymore! Interestingly, though, many more people have been injured or killed by bison attacks than by bear attacks. A child was killed earlier this year when his idiot mother tried to get a picture of him standing next to a bison.
A few days after we had left Yellowstone, we heard news reports of an employee of the clinic at Yellowstone who had gone hiking on his day off in an area of the park that he loved. He had been killed and eaten by a mother grizzly bear and her cub. The trail where he had been killed was very near to our campsite and it was a trail that we had chosen, and would surely have hiked, had we not cut short our stay!
But bison, not bears, actually caused us to cut short our Yellowstone visit. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons why we had chosen the Fishing Bridge campground was because of its central location. But its central location put us adjacent to the beautiful Hayden Valley area and its abundant wildlife, and consequent "bison jams." A bison jam is caused by photo op hungry tourists who see bison, antelope, or whatever along the roadway and then proceed to stop their vehicle in the middle of the road, get out, and snap their picture or video. In fairness, sometimes the bison would actually be in the road and block traffic themselves, but more often it was the tourists. This caused horrible traffic backups, often of an hour or more. After we had suffered through our 4th bison jam we had had enough. The crowds, the traffic, and the fact that we were less than thrilled with our campground made us decide to move on.
One of the culprits in an hour long traffic back-up.
We did take the time to tour some of the thermal features at Yellowstone before we left. The below photos are from the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We also visited Old Faithful and I took video of its eruption. I would post the video if I could figure out how!
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