Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks
June 17-25, 2006
June 17, 2006
Saturday morning Susan woke me by asking what time it was. I looked at the clock and it was 4:23 AM. I had mistakenly set the alarm clock for 4:00 PM instead of AM and we were about to miss a very important flight. We jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, brushed our teeth, and were parked in long term parking by 4:45 AM, early enough to check our bags at the parking garage. The clerks seemed confused and almost forgot to give us our baggage claim check for the cooler. I looked at Susan and said, “that is the last time we are going to see that cooler.” The flight was uneventful and we landed in Jackson, WY on time but sin cooler. All day I complained that the baggage clerk was enjoying the container of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies Susan had made, my North Face lumbar pack, and half pound of Peet’s Coffee, all of which were inside the cooler.
After landing we went to Jackson Hole and bought some groceries. The prices were outrageous—even higher than San Francisco. Back out on the highway we stopped at the National Elk Refuge where we saw some Redheads and Trumpeter Swans in the Flat Creek. Two Sandhill Cranes in breeding plumage were in the field. Next we entered Grand Teton National Park and hiked 3.4 miles around pretty little String Lake. We had intended to hike around Phelps Lake but our plans were in disarray due to the absence of our cooler. Arrow leaf balsam root was blooming all around String Lake and there were many birds including Western Tanagers, Western Wood-peewees, White-crowned Sparrows, and one Hairy Woodpecker. After our hike we checked into our room at the Elk Refuge Inn just across the street from the refuge. After dinner we went to the Taggart Lake trailhead to look for birds. We saw Dusky Flycatcher, Calliope Hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world at just 3.25 inches, and two gorgeous Mountain Bluebirds.
June 18, 2006
In the morning we got up early but the sun was already long since in the sky. Our cooler had not been delivered as promised but we enjoyed some of the complimentary breakfast in the lobby and then checked out. We drove along Highway 26/89 with outstanding views of the Grand Teton Range. We drove back to Taggart Lake Trailhead and hiked 13.5 miles round trip to Amphitheater Lake at 9698 feet. Most people start this popular hike at Lupine Meadows but I think our route was much prettier because we were able to enjoy the incredible wildflower display and the many birds along the drainage creek from Taggart Lake. We were the only people on the trail for the first three miles until the junction with the Amphitheater trailhead. We saw and heard many MacGillivray’s Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Western Wood-peewees, and Western Tanagers. The views of the Grand Teton from Taggart Lake were sublime. Along the trail between Taggart Lake and Bradley Lake I mentioned that it looked like bear habitat. Just then we heard the sound of a heart racing. I thought a bear was behind us but it was actually a long sought after Ruffed Grouse which the guidebook said are frequently found sitting beside the trail. There are also Blue Grouse in the park which also reside in California but they do not make this racing heart sound. Still I wanted to see a Ruffed Grouse not just hear one since it was my first but we were unable to find it in the thick under-story. We continued up this very difficult trail, climbing 3000 feet to the end at Amphitheater Lake. It was especially difficult for us as we were carrying video cameras and binoculars. We soon came to beautiful Bradley Lake at 7000 feet with the Teton Range reflected in its calm waters. We gazed and gazed all alone in this pristine wilderness with only the birds and flowers as our guests. As we gained elevation there was more and more snow on the trail making the hiking even more difficult. At 9540 feet we finally reached Surprise Lake which was a disappointment as it was completely frozen. We were exhausted and stopped there for lunch. There was a chill to the air and so we moved on after a rest to Amphitheater Lake, also frozen. I am guessing the lake is much prettier later in the season when it has thawed because otherwise I cannot see why this trail is so popular. We plodded up the snow covered slope surrounding the lake trying to get to Teton Glacier Overlook which we never found. We came to a precipitous crack in the rocks with a 3000 foot drop then turned around and slid back down to the trailhead on our butts over the snow. Half way back down the trail we found a Pine Grosbeak feeding her chick. This was only the second Pine Grosbeak I have ever seen. While hiking down the trail we came upon a black bear with her cub. She had a long gash all the way across her side from head to rump. Susan said it was cute until she saw the gash and then she got scared and insisted we leave. We returned to the trailhead at Taggart Lake but saw few people after leaving the Amphitheater trail junction. I was glad we had started from Taggart as this is undoubtedly one of the most pulchritudinous trails in Grand Teton NP. The wildflower display was incredible especially as framed by the peaks of the Grand Teton Range. After our hike we proceeded down the John D. Rockefeller Parkway into Yellowstone National Park.
In 1994 when I went to Yellowstone for the first time evidence of the 1988 fire was everywhere but on this trip evidence of the recovery was remarkable. We stopped at Lewis Creek where we saw a raft of Barrow’s Goldeneyes and a few Common Mergansers. At the entrance station we got out for a picture by the park sign and were devoured by mosquitoes. So we hurried back to the car and continued to Lake Lodge not stopping much on the way. We checked into our home for the next week, the Lake Lodge Cabins. The cabins are similar to the ones at Grant Grove Village in Kings Canyon NP. The main lodge sits on the shores of Lake Yellowstone and the cabins are lined up behind it concentration camp style. Nevertheless, they are very quiet for the most part and offer much privacy. We did have to share though as our cabin was a duplex. Our cooler was waiting for us at the lodge when we arrived and we were so relieved to have our coffee back and somewhere to put our beer. No one was occupying the other side of our cabin the first night and we soon fell asleep soundly in the quiet even though it was still twilight outside.
June 19, 2006
We arose as early as possible for an early start at Norris Geyser Basin but the sun was already up. Being in the park during the longest days of the year we were never able to see the sun rise and only saw the sun set once. We were the first people to arrive at Norris and Susan enjoyed seeing her first ever geysers. She claimed to be able to feel the ground move when the geysers went off. Yellowstone NP sits on a vast caldera created by a massive volcanic eruption 640,000 years ago. The caldera is responsible for the many geothermal features in the park. It could go off again at any time in the next 600,000 years including during our visit but it didn’t. The tallest geyser in the world is in Norris, the Steamboat Geyser; however, it is unreliable and its eruption times are unknown. The last major eruption was May 23, 2005. We stopped and watched as it had a minor eruption. After enjoying all the steaming vents, fumaroles, geysers, and hot springs we left just as the crowds were arriving and drove to Blacktail Deer Creek Trail on the Tower Road. On the way to the trailhead there were numerous cars parked in the road watching some bears near the road. This is a very common occurrence in Yellowstone and very frustrating and annoying. We just drove around the cars when it was safe. These idiots drive around and around the Grand Loop Road in their giant trucks with cheap binoculars around their necks trying to see mammals from their car completely oblivious to the world around them; they know nothing about the birds, don’t even hear them, don’t know the flowers, and don’t know anything about the park beyond the confines of what they can see from their cars. I prefer to see wildlife from a trail far away from the madding crowds.
There were just two cars parked at Blacktail Deer Creek Trailhead. In 1994 John and I took this trail all the way to Gardiner, MT through the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. Later in the week Susan and I planned to hike the entire Black Canyon of the Yellowstone but on this hike we had a more modest destination of the Yellowstone River 4 miles away. The hike starts out crossing a meadow full of wildflowers, lupine, phlox, wild flax, sticky geranium, and harebell among others and then past the Blacktail Ponds where we saw Coots with chicks, Yellowheaded Blackbirds, Wilson’s Snipe, and Common Yellowthroat. After a couple of miles the trail drops down 900 feet following along the Blacktail Deer Creek all the way to its drainage into the Yellowstone River. There were many birds along the creek including Lazuli Buntings, Brewer’s Sparrows, Sage Thrashers, and more flycatchers. The only people we saw were a few backpackers. We soon arrived at the suspension bridge across the Yellowstone River which connects with the Yellowstone River trail into the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. We stopped at the river and while eating our lunch Susan spotted a river otter on the far bank. We cooled our feet in the river and then began our hike back up the long climb out. We never saw another human but did encounter many elk carcasses. After returning to our car we drove to Tower Fall which was crawling with visitors. Unfortunately the trail to the base of the fall had been washed out and was closed; we were only able to see the fall from the overlook with screaming children, large Midwesterners eating ice cream cones, and the sedentary types who never stray far from their cars. We took a picture and left. Next we stopped at the pathetic Petrified Tree exhibit. Susan walked up to it while I waited in the car. It is an entire tree that is petrified but still standing. Unfortunately it is surrounded by a fence to prevent visitors from stealing the petrified wood. On our way back to Lake Lodge we stopped at Sulfur Caldron which is a large gurgling sulfur lake. Across the street is Mud Volcano. We walked the extensive boardwalk to Dragon’s Mouth, a cave with steam and a hissing sulfur stream billowing out of it and many other geothermal features. Next stop was LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River. There is a boardwalk beside the river where you can watch Cuttthroat Trout trying to spawn up the fierce rapids. We saw them huddled in the pools below the rapids and saw a few boldly leaping into the air only to be pushed back by the rapids. Four Harlequin Ducks were sitting on a rock in the middle of the river and we had excellent looks and great pictures too. We also saw an American Dipper, the only North American aquatic songbird, in the river. In the shade the temperature was dropping rapidly so we moved on to Fishing Bridge, our last stop of the day. The park service allowed fishing from this bridge until 1973 when they finally realized that allowing fishing where trout go to spawn was decimating the fish population. Yellowstone was the first national park in the world established in 1872 by congress and signed into law by Ulysses S. Grant. It took the park 101 years to realize that fishing where fish spawn might have a negative impact on the population. We didn’t see any fish at the bridge but did see a flock of American White Pelicans, a scraggly looking Osprey, and a few Ring-necked Ducks.
June 20, 2006
During the night our neighbors had rudely kept us awake slamming the door repeatedly and then standing outside our doorway yelling. We arose early and I made sure to close the door extra hard as we left at 6:00 AM. I wanted to kick their door too but Susan wouldn’t let me. We drove from Lake Lodge to Mammoth Hot Springs. When we were almost to the springs there was a large traffic jam. A man stuck his hand out trying to stop our progress as there was a grizzly bear and two cubs near the road. As soon as the bears had turned back toward the meadow and it was safe I went around his hand and headed down the road. One of the cubs stood up on its hind legs before turning back. There was a ranger on the other side holding the crowd back and she waved us through. We drove on to Mammoth. Mammoth had changed a lot since I first saw it 12 years before. Minerva Spring was completely extinct while Canary Spring, a framed picture of which hangs in my dining room, had expanded greatly. We enjoyed walking around with few people at this ever changing geothermal feature. Devil’s Thumb had expanded and is now draining down toward some park buildings and the long ago extinct thermal cone, the Liberty Cap. We returned to our car and headed back in the direction from which we had come. We were disappointed to find the traffic jam still in full force. The ranger told me we could not drive further even though we were just 100 yards or less from our destination, the Bunsen Peak trailhead. On the right hand side of the car the grizzly bear and her two cubs were eating a freshly killed elk carcass. Dozens of park visitors were on their cars, wandering the road, and generally being a nuisance. I begged the ranger to just let me park in the Bunsen Peak parking area as we were most interested in hiking and not standing in a crowd looking at a bear eat an elk. The ranger made us promise we would only park and hike and not cross the road and I assured her I would not be crossing the road toward a violent animal feeding on an elk carcass. She let us into the parking area and we started down the Bunsen Peak Road. We only saw a small handful of people on the trail to beautiful Osprey Falls. This is a good area for raptors; walking on Bunsen Peak Road we saw an immature Bald Eagle, a Swainson’s Hawk, two Red-tailed Hawks, and a Peregrine Falcon. After 3.5 miles along the road the trail veers off and drops down 1000 feet in just 1.5 miles to the falls. The trail was dotted with beautiful wildflowers—gentian, sticky geranium, harebell, bluebell, penstemon, and common hound’s tongue, among many others. Two Ospreys flew over and we watched one fly into her nest on the rocky crags of the canyon. We rounded a bend at the bottom of the canyon and were greeted with a gushing waterfall. We enjoyed our lunch beside the Gardiner River and then began our steep ascent out of the canyon. Back at the junction with Bunsen Road we decided to hike up the backside of Bunsen Peak to the summit. The trail was lined with balsam root, phlox, yarrow, and other wildflowers and we saw some Pine Siskins feeding on the flowers. When we were close to the summit we found a Blue Grouse which in my excitement, I mistakenly called a Ruffed Grouse on my videotape. At the summit we were treated to outstanding 360 degree views of the Absaroka Range, the Gallatin Range, and Mount Holmes which I christened Striped Mountain because it was streaked with columns of snow. On the hike to the summit we ran into an elderly couple who told us that the park service had to fire some shots over the heads of the grizzly bears in order to drag the elk carcass away from the park road. Grizzlies are fiercely protective of a carcass and with so many ignorant people in the park it was necessary to do this in order to protect the public. We hiked back down Bunsen Peak to the trailhead. The bear jam and mayhem was over and we drove uninterrupted to Blacktail Plateau Drive to look for woodpeckers. We had to walk the road since it was closed due to poor conditions. There was little bird activity except for one female Cassin’s Finch that kept hopping on the ground near us. Next we drove down Tower Road and stopped at a self-guided nature trail called Forces of the Northern Range. The exhibits explained that this area of Yellowstone is the driest receiving only 12 inches of rain a year which explains the sage brush, yarrow, and other desert plants growing there. A pronghorn was digging at the ground just a hundred yards away or so. It decided to lie in the grass while we walked around. There were lots of Uinta ground squirrels running around and near the end of the loop a coyote walked by. It was getting close to dinner so we decided to head back to our lodge. Dark clouds were passing all around this area. On the Canyon Road there was a huge buffalo jam. It seems in the evening these large dumb animals like to wander into the road and stand around. We were held up an hour waiting for the buffalo to roam.
June 21, 2006
Wednesday we were the first people to arrive at Artist’s Point in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We walked the south rim trail of the canyon and down Uncle Tom’s Trail 328 steps 2/3 of the way into canyon with up close views of the upper falls and the colorful canyon walls. We took the south rim all the way to the lower falls and back to Artist’s Point. Then we drove to Inspiration Point on the other side of the canyon and took all five of the view points and trails into the canyon. We found another Osprey nest at Grand View Point. We spent three hours walking around and admiring this wonder of nature. From there we drove to Hayden Valley and took the Mary Mountain Trail into the valley. I had never taken this trail before because the guide books say it can be dangerous and full of grizzly bears. There were no grizzly bears but plenty of buffalo. We had to wait for three of them to clear the trail before we could proceed at one point. The trail is flat but boggy and our pants and shoes were soon splattered with mud. The wind was blowing hard and keeping the temperature cool. We almost turned back due to the inclement weather (I hate the wind) but decided to plod on. We were once again the only people on this outstanding and frequently overlooked trail into the heart of this lovely valley with rolling hills and sky that goes on forever. At four miles from the trailhead we came to some quick sand and some geothermal features along the banks of the creek. After enjoying our own private steam vents and hot springs we decided to turn around. While hiking back Susan spotted a Northern Goshawk chasing an American Kestrel. From Hayden Valley we drove to West Thumb Geyser Basin where we were greeted with some odd looks due to my mud caked pants. We ended the evening driving Gull Point Drive where we saw no gulls but some Lesser Scaup, Gadwall, and Ruddy Ducks. On the way back to the cabin we saw a Moose sitting in the grass on the side of the road.
June 22, 2006
We got up at 5:00 AM in anticipation of our big hike to the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. According to the guide book this is an 18.5 mile one way trail that requires a shuttle. We were unable to arrange a shuttle so we decided that we would park the car at the end of the trail in Gardiner, Montana and hitch hike back to the trail head at Hellroaring Creek on Tower Road. We parked the car and began to hitch hike. We walked all the way from the trail end in Gardiner under the famous Roosevelt Arch and through the entrance kiosk and no one would pick us up. Finally a few hundred yards after showing our park pass a nice lady from Montana picked us up and drove us to Mammoth. She told us she worked for Xanterra, the park concessionaire. In Mammoth we stood on Tower Road and again began to hitch hike. The RVs tried to run us over and the frightened suburbanites from the mid west glared at us as if we were criminals. Their children in the back seats looked at us wonderingly as if they had never seen a hitch hiker before, certainly not two ladies. I’m sure we looked perfectly harmless in our hiking boots, hats, and day packs yet no one would pick us up. Finally a nice man named Jim, another concessionaire employee, picked us up and drove us all the way to Hellroaring Creek Trailhead. It took so long to get a ride that we were not able to start our hike until 9:00 AM but we were relieved that our car would be waiting for us at the end instead of having to hitch hike after hiking 18.5 miles. The first mile of the trail passes through Douglas fir forest and more beautiful wildflowers before arriving at the steel suspension bridge over the Yellowstone River. After crossing the river the trail follows along Hellroaring Creek which you must cross in order to continue into the Black Canyon. The creek was high and so we continued upstream 1.5 miles to a stock bridge over the creek. What we didn’t realize is that this added 3 miles to our hike not accounted for in the 18.5 miles mentioned in the book. So we actually ended up hiking 21.5 miles! We saw a few people including a back country ranger who told us a bear had been seen in the area but once we crossed Hellroaring Creek we never saw another human being for the next 17 miles. Black Canyon of the Yellowstone is one of the most outstanding hikes in all of the national parklands. This trail contained many wildflowers we had not seen before including bitterroot, sandwort, and campion and many others we could not name. We made frequent stops to admire the wealth the show had brought. The trail drops down beside the Yellowstone River and leaves the fir forest to enter a desert like environment. We felt like we could just as easily have been in Utah at the Green River. In this area we saw two Williamson’s Sapsuckers, male and female. After 11 miles the trail reaches the trail junction with Blacktail Deer Creek and enters the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. Soon after the trail junction we passed by a lovely alpine lake, Lake Crevice, followed by Knowles Falls where we cooled our feet. We were peeling off clothing as the temperature rose and we dropped into the canyon. It is difficult to choose the proper clothing in the morning when it is chilly. The weather would warm up and then a chill wind would blow and it the mercury would drop, up and down all day. After passing Knowles Falls we were surprised to pass several vacant camp sites. I don’t know why no one was camping in this fantastic canyon but we felt privileged to have it all to ourselves. Before ending in Gardiner we passed several rapids on the river and then finally some geothermal features and then into a wet forest and out through a private campground to trail’s end. It was dinner time and so we drove into Gardiner for a much deserved beer and pasta dinner at Palermo’s. Each dish contained six or seven cloves of garlic that had been cut into four pieces. Back at the cabin we had new neighbors, three maybe four extremely large Midwesterners who were going to share one single room cabin with a very small double bed. As it turned out one maybe two of them had to sleep in their SUV.
June 23, 2006
Friday had been set aside as geyser day, a day to walk around the easy boardwalks in order to recover from our 21.5 mile hike. As we prepared to leave our cabin our new neighbors mentioned that we had gotten in late the night previous. Poor things must have woken when we pulled the car up next to theirs. The lady told us she had seen us taking a picture of the “os-te-prey” at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We started out early in the morning at Artist’s Paint Pot. Unfortunately half of the trail was closed due to the changing course of the mud pots, I guess. We were able to walk up to the main pot which is so beautiful in the proper lighting. Next we stopped at my favorite geyser spot, Fountain Paint Pot. The paint pots here were much as I remembered them from my last visit. We watched one of the geysers spewing in the morning sun. Next we stopped at Midway Geyser Basin, location of the colorful and gorgeous Grand Prismatic Spring. Then we moved on to Biscuit Basin where mineral deposits used to look like biscuits until an earthquake in 1959 destroyed their shape and then Black Sand Basin to admire Sunset Lake and the Emerald Pool. The south entrance road to Old Faithful has been widened into a four lane highway with a clover leaf to dump the thousands of park visitors wanting to see Old Faithful into the vastly overbuilt and expanding Old Faithful Village. We thought about driving into it, not to see the hideously overrated Old Faithful Geyser, but to walk the Upper Geyser Basin but once through the clover leaf and into the giant Disney land-like parking lot we became repulsed and immediately turned back to the main road. We headed back up toward Madison Junction stopping at the Firehole Lake Drive. One of the geysers on this road was due to erupt between 5:15 PM and 9:15 PM but that was too large a window so we had to move on. We looked and looked for the chocolate pot along the Gibbon River but couldn’t find it. In Madison we stopped in the bookstore to buy a wildflower guide to assist us with the hundreds of species of wildflowers blooming in the park. Our next stop was Monument Geyser Basin which is a cute 1.5 mile hike from the Gibbon River Bridge up to a small geyser basin with a little geyser cone shaped like a monument. I took out my camera to get a picture but there were two boys in my picture. Two teenage boys were walking on the thin crust over the geothermal area! They picked up a stick to poke at the ground as they gingerly walked back to the obvious log barrier. When they approached us I said to them, “are you f****** crazy? Do you know that hundreds of park visitors die by being scalded to death in geothermal features?” They said “we walked around them.” People are so dumb. On the hike back down to the bridge we found some yellow pond lilies blooming in the river. At the end of the day we drove to Norris picnic area and had our dinner before returning to our cabin for the evening.
June 24, 2006
On Saturday we had another long hike planned. We got up early and drove to the Lone Star Geyser Trailhead in the Old Faithful Area. The trail starts out on an old paved service road and goes 2.5 miles to the Lone Star Geyser. It was so chilly that morning that I was tempted to run back to the car for my coat but we pressed on and after a mile or so heard a heart racing—another Ruffed Grouse! A ranger was leading a walk and explaining about the endemic monkey flower. She completely ignored the Ruffed Grouse that crossed the road and I wondered if she even knew what it was. I did and so we followed it into the forest and got some great video of it. The Lone Star Geyser has faithfully erupted every three hours since it was discovered in 1872. When we arrived at it, it was not due to erupt for another 1.5 hours so we had to pass up on it and hope it would be erupting on our return hike. Our destination, Shoshone Lake, was another seven miles away. After passing the Lone Star Geyser we walked a trail lined with fumaroles, steam vents, and hot springs and then entered a meadow full of elephant’s heads and other wildflowers. The trail climbed slightly up to Grant’s Pass and then flattened out as it followed along the meandering Firehole River through the valley glades and into the Shoshone Geyser Basin at 9 miles. We walked the .6 mile trail around this geyser basin with its many colorful geothermal features all by ourselves. The trail ends at the back side of the north shore of Shoshone Lake where we looked up to see a Bald Eagle locked in battle with an Osprey. We had lunch at the lake shore and then soaked our feet in the lake. A back country ranger came by and asked us if there were any downed trees on the trail. He was surprised to see anyone who had hiked in and said most people took canoes. We told him the trail was in great shape but that the trail to Osprey Falls needed some work. He said “where is that?” I wondered if he really was a ranger. At one o’clock we started our hike back toward Lone Star. We arrived right at 4:00 PM with the geyser due to erupt at 4:30. Right on schedule it began a violent eruption spewing steam 45 feet into the air. It began to rain just as Lone Star erupted but it was a light rain and soon tailed off. After each little rain the mosquitoes would also erupt and we were soon being devoured by those horrible creatures. After the eruption began to die back we returned to our car and headed back up the park road where we had intended to have dinner again at one of the picnic areas. We first had to boil our water at Madison campground. The picnic area at Gibbon had the only off-leash dog I had seen all week and so we didn’t stop there. Then we couldn’t find a picnic area and got trapped in a dreadful buffalo jam for one hour! There was also a car accident clogging things too. I longed to be back on the trail again. Finally we got to Norris Picnic Area and had our dinner and a beer before heading back to our cabin for our final evening in the ineffable Yellowstone. For the first time all week it was late enough for us to witness the setting sun and it was spectacular. We snapped off some pictures of this special sunset and our final stop was an elk with a huge rack in the meadow near Canyon.
June 25, 2006
We packed our bags and left Yellowstone. On the way out the park road I saw somebody walking with a sign on her back. I stopped and offered her a ride. She was going the entire 90 miles into Jackson. She told us she worked for the concessionaire also and made only $7.40 an hour and out of that was deducted $150 every two weeks for lodging and food. I was shocked. She told us that on her days off she often hitched a ride into town for personal items and that she had been stopped on a couple of occasions by Grand Teton Rangers who told her it was illegal to hitchhike and she could not stick out here thumb, only use a sign. I thought that was absurd. What is the difference between using a sign and sticking out your thumb? We were headed for a final hike at Jenny Lake in Grand Teton and so I let her out there. We parked at pretty Jenny Lake and hiked 2.5 miles to Hidden Falls. Most people were taking the boat across the lake and the first part of the hike we had to ourselves to enjoy. The trail was packed with blooming thimbleberry and these huge gorgeous white and blue columbines. There were at least six different kinds of blooming currants and lots of other wildflowers. The thrushes were singing and there were more MacGillivray’s Warblers. We were running out of time and we only had time to walk up to the base of the falls and turn back. On the hike back to the parking area I got out my video camera to get a last shot of the Grand Teton; they are so hard to film because so brightly lit compared to the dark foreground of trees and are usually washed out. Just as I got my camera ready I heard a squeak and there was a Red-naped Sapsucker. I had my camera ready so I was able to video tape it for the last bird of the day and the trip before heading back to Jackson Airport.
Back at home the next day it was the third “spare the air” day in a row. That is where the air quality is so poor that it exceeds federal standards and they implore people to leave their cars at home and take public transportation by offering it free all day long. Everything had turned brown while we were gone and it was so hard to be inside all day at work. All that day I dreamed of returning to the incomparable Yellowstone with its many lakes and rivers, its geyser, steam vents, and fumaroles, its wildflowers and birds, and the inexorable call of the wild.
Michelle Brodie
6/27/06
