Into The Great Wide Open, Day 9, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone, and Cooke City, Montana
Up early, head to the main hotel for coffee but the biscotti are already sold out, even though the shop just opened. The Tauck bus or the Le Bus group must have bought everything available. No matter, we grab our coffee, we have tangerines and AdventureMan still has a brownie left from yesterday.
It is cloudy and sunny. AdventureMan hikes to Wraith Falls, a place we hiked last year and reports back that the falls are not so full as they were in the Spring, no great surprise. Together we take a nature hike highlighting the volcanic and geologic nature of the Yellowstone Crater; we have it entirely to ourselves.
It is still early, barely sunrise, when we take a turn off the main road onto Black Tail Butte Road, a six mile, one way dirt road closed to campers and large vehicles. It goes high into a mountain, and the vistas are stunning.
Then, all of a sudden, an old bull bison is strolling down the road towards us. He doesn’t look particularly concerned, but AdventureMan slows to a stop out of respect. Occasionally, he gives us a glance. He seems benign, but with wild animals, you never know, anything can happen.
AdventureMan doesn’t say it until well after the bull has passed, but he is thinking about how isolated this road is, how few people take this route and what if the bull charged us and damaged the rental car. None of this happened.
The road rejoins the main route just before Tower Junction and the Roosevelt Inn, a great rest stop for coffee drinkers and also a place with sturdy trash receptacles. We’ve learned to keep an alert eye for both.
We spend some time once again in the Slough Creek area, meet a delightful guide named Rachel who is with an adventure/eco tour and helps us spot white sheep up on a distant hillside. Skipped the photos; even with my large telephoto, they were just white dots on the distant hill. Rachel had a glorious standing telescope that helped her spot wildlife.
Today we head outside the park past Lamar Valley (lots of groups stopped looking for wolves) and out to Cooke City, where we have trout at The Bistro. We look around a little, then head back, timing what it takes us to drive different segments:
Lamar to where the Osprey nests: 20 minutes
Osprey nest to Roosevelt: 10 minutes
Roosevelt to Mammoth Springs: 30 minutes.
Of course, when we stop to watch or to photograph, it takes a lot longer.
Today we see one of the crazy people, out of their car, trying to get close to bison who are well aware they are there, and a lot faster than they look.
We head on for Cooke City, where we find the Bistro. We don’t even have to look at the menu; we have eaten here before and we are eager for trout!
Tonight we find sandwiches at the Mammoth Springs Trading Post, and we eat on our front porch, watching the colors change on the terraces as the sun goes down. We drink the last of our cherry juice, treasuring every drop. It looks like we are drinking red wine, but we are not.
We keep hoping that bull elk will come by once again. If he does, we don’t see him.
Yellowstone: Dunraven Pass, Tower Falls and Lamar Valley
Today we are headed north out of Canyon Village, through Dunraven Pass, which just opened a few days ago, up to Tower Falls and Roosevelt Lodge, and out to Lamar Valley. Lamar Valley is where after decades of killing wolves, wolves have been reintroduced and are rebalancing the Yellowstone ecosystem.
The early morning is cloudy and dark, we worry about ice on Dunraven Pass. We watch the temperatures drop below freezing as we head up, but soon we are safely on the other side. (We had snow on the way home, coming through the pass.)
Along the road – you have to keep your eyes open.
We took a short hike to the outlook over Tower Falls – it is an easy hike, and if you get there early enough, there is good parking. The General Store was not open, though, so we fixed apples and peanut butter for breakfast.
This is not a tour bus. This is a Yellow Cab, a special kind of tour vehicle that makes me smile every time I see it. I heard they stopped using them for a while, but they had so much appeal that the management brought them back. Good call!
Little deer jumping over a creek
Bison on the road at Slough Creek, one of our favorite haunts in Lamar Valley. Unpaved, but drivable. Rumored to be one or more wolf packs that hang out there, but we never saw them.
AdventureMan getting a snack at Slough Creek
AdventureMan loved these little rodents; they were everywhere.
It’s past noon and we head into Cooke City, outside the northeast entrance to the Park for a bite to eat. We find The Bistro, and I have a meal I love – trout, pan fried with garlic and parsley in butter. Simple, and so good. AdventureMan has the same meal, with fries. The Bistro also has burgers and salads, but we wanted trout.
It’s hard to think about dinner when you’ve just had a meal so satisfying, but we remember the horror show dinner of last night and decide to order food to take with us. AdventureMan goes to one restaurant for a chef’s salad, and I cross the street to Buns and Beds for an Italian Sandwich.
Next door is the Beartooth Cafe, a place I would love to try next time:
We buy some T-shirts for the grandchildren at the Yellowstone Trading Post, and they tell us we spent enough that we get to go in and see the wildlife exhibit. Someone has an amazing skill with taxidermy.
Do you have the National Parks Senior Pass? I think we paid $10 or $20 each to get one; you can get them when you turn 62, but now the price has gone up to $80. I still think it is a deal. If you have the pass, you have free entry into all the national parks – starting, for us, with Fort Pickens, here in Pensacola, and taking us to all these amazing places we’ve been going through the years. They pay for themselves quickly.
Leaving Cooke City
Heading back into Yellowstone through “Silver” pass:
Big horn sheep
Coyote running near Roosevelt Station
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