Spring Snow Makes Good Show – West Yellowstone to Missoula

It did not take long to go up and over the pass and turn on Idaho Highway 87 and drive by Henrys Lake.  In 2012 we stayed at Henry’s Lake during our first ten day “RV” visit to Yellowstone.  You can read about our stay at Henry’s Lake and our drive around the lake here.  (That post includes the story of a young boy who now goes by the name of Arny who got lost at Henry’s Lake while camping with his mom, brother and dad...and who is now married to my sister, and how he ended up walking all the way around the lake before finding his way back to the campground.)  There is a nice State Park ($25-$30 per night), two “RV Resorts” (aka: parks) and “Boondocking” (free camping) at Bill Frome County Park, at a BLM area, and at Island Park nearby (BLM and Island Park boondocking not included in our post, but can be seen here).

The snowfall of the past 36 hours made for a nice trip up to I-90 today.  Here are a few of the sites we saw.  Holding your mouse over a picture will tell you a bit about the picture.  If you click on a picture, a larger version will open up.

   

Once we got to I-90 it was a pretty swift trip to Missoula, except when we had to climb a few passes, especially Homestake Pass, elevation 6,329 feet, where we climbed at 40 mph in second gear for a mile or so.  We are camping at a KOA in Missoula, and plan to get the oil changed tomorrow before we head north-west towards Bonners Ferry.  This is a change from our original course, which would have gone to the eastern side of Glacier National Park and into Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada…but the weather is not cooperating with us, and we will be warmer overall entering Canada above Bonners Ferry, Idaho, than above Browning, Montana.  We are waiting to cross the boarder until Monday because the weather is suppose to be warmer in Banff and Jasper after this weekend.

Grizzly Bear, Wolf, Elk, Bison – A Good Morning Yellowstone

Knowing that the best time to see wildlife in Yellowstone is in the early morning, I told Marcia that we should be on the road by 7 am.  I think we were entering the park‘s West Entrance at 6:40.   It did not take us long before we saw our first bit of Yellowstone Wildlife…

…yep, a Bison, aka: Buffalo.  Back in 2012 I promised Marcia that we would see a lot of Buffalo.  Took a quick trip into the park the first evening we got to the area…no buffalo.  Took a full day trip the next day, saw Old Faithful, some Elk, some Deer, but no Buffalo.  The next day I promised her that we would see some Buffalo before we left the park, and sure enough, we had a close up and personal encounter with them.  By the time the week was over, she was Buffaloed out!  Well today, we saw this lone Buffalo first thing headed toward the valley as we were barely into the park. 

A little further down the road we see a few Elk.  Seems like we always see some Elk between the West Entrance and Madison Junction.  These three looked a bit thin, but they did survive the winter, and I am sure they will be looking better in a month or so.  Later we see a couple larger Elk while we are on our way back to the motorhome, those pictures will come later.

At Madison Junction we see our first herd of Buffalo.  There seemed to be three distinct herds today between Madison Junction and Old Faithful, with a few stragglers here and there.

    

On the left this multilegged Buffalo turns out to be a mother and baby on the right.  (Note, the sun came out from the cloud cover and really highlighted them.)

When you see a car pulled over, especially this early in the morning, you slow, pull over, and watch…and if you are lucky, you see a wolf cross the road in front of you.

   

And “if” you are really lucky, the wolf will stop, look back at you, before it heads back along to its real interest, ducks swimming in a small, shallow stream along some tall grasses.  If you are a bit unlucky, the wolf will be standing with the morning sun behind him making it hard to get a good picture.

So as you continue on toward Old Faithful, your wife praises the Lord for allowing us to see a wolf out in the open as we did, and adds, “Ok now Lord, how about a bear?”   A few more miles down the road and we take the Old Faithful exit, which takes us up and over the main roadway we were on…and just as I start to follow the turn to the left over the roadway, a very large grassy field appears over the elevated roadway, and there it is.  “Well Marcia, there is your bear!”, I say. She thinks to herself, “Ya, right…” and she looks out into the field, as I slow to a crawl, and then a stop, and yes, there it is.  A very large Grizzly Bear.

Well, that is the biggest bear I have ever seen in nature.  Thank goodness we had a good enough camera to capture it from a safe, very safe, distance.  And as for Marcia?  She took every single bear picture, and many of the other pictures today too.  She said that taking the pictures of the bear gave her the chills…and as she talked about our day at breakfast later, she said it still gave her the chills.

On our way back to the motorhome, we did see the larger Elk that I talked about earlier, and some more buffalo.  Way off in the far distance I saw another wolf or Coyote, but even in full zoom mode I can only tell that it was the size as a large, thin dog.  Saw a guy with one of those cameras with a lens that’s a mile long…good for him, not interested in lugging one of them around...but I'll bet he can see the hair on its head with that thing.

Rest of the day was spent doing laundry and resting and trying to figure out where to go from here on Monday.

Note: Yesterday I said that the camping in the park was not open yet, but there are three or four places one can camp now, and there are empty spots.  Full hookups at Fish Creek RV Park, about $49 per night and senior pass will NOT give you a discount (but will give you free entrance into the park of course).  Madison Campground is open, $11.50 with senior pass and reservations are taken, and Mammoth Campground, $10 with senior pass and is first come, first serve, and all three are not currently full.  Here is a good link for those interested. (We might stay in Mammoth Monday night after we leave here.)

West Yellowstone – Change of Plans

Before talking about our change of plans, I want to talk about the RV Park we just came from, and the ones here in West Yellowstone, where we traveled today (no pics of today's travels).

Look how EMPTY the park is when we arrived a few days ago, and it pretty much stayed that way.  Then WHY, WHY, WHY did we end up like this:

   

Yes, smashed between two 5th wheels, and look closely in that picture to the right, do you see them???


Yes, those chairs…those are not camping chairs…they are not adult chairs…they are LITTLE KIDS CHAIRS, and I do mean LITTLE!   The only saving grace was that these people left the park (kept the 5th wheel there) after the man of the family got home from work.  I saw the young mother loading up blankets, some food, and a suitcase which looked like it could carry a couple days worth of clothing.  WOW, we dodged that bullet.  Our electric and water hooked up on the other side, what most call the wrong side.  Due to a mechanical breakdown, that 5th wheel left after he got home from work on Thursday, but when he disconnected his water, ours got turned off too.  Should have taken a picture of this configuration, but we were split on a main spicket, but he had now way to turn his water off except by the main spicket, while we had a separate faucet knob.  When he left, he should have moved us over to the main, but he just turned it off and jammed, never saying  a word. 

So WHY did the park bunch four of us up to within five spots, three in a row, an empty, then a fourth RV, while so many other spots were OPEN???  It just does not make sense.  Saw a sign that said the park, Teton Valley RV Park by the way, that it was up for sale.  Like other Passport America parks this one is old, but that does not mean you have to bunch everyone up together so that you can hear dogs bark, babies (kids) cry, etc., etc., when the park is not even 1/3 full.

And here in West Yellowstone the RV park prices are out of this world!  We are at the Rustic Wagon RV Campground & Cabins, a park which has been around since the early 1960’s.  Cost is $48 per night, discounted rates by 10%.  It has been in the owner’s family from the beginning, and he has owned it since the late 1990’s, and until last month, owned another one down the street called Wagon Wheel RV Park, which was just bought by a Chinese group.  He said that they immediately pushed their prices up to $95 per night.  The KOAs, two of them just outside of town, are charging $65-$70 per night when they open in the next week or two, more later in the season.  The owner here said that other RV parks have boosted their prices up to the $89 per night range too.  Drove by the Wagon Wheel, and they don’t have anyone in there, yet they are open.  Perhaps in the middle of the summer they will get some business…but now, these prices are just crazy.  As for the Rustic Wagon, where we are, their website says, “Monthly & Off-Season Rates available on Request”, yet when I inquired about weekly and Off-Season rates, I was politely told that there is no such thing.  I guess the $48 per night for full hookups isn't that bad after all, and there are trees between the sites in this quaint little park.  (Last time we stayed at Henrys Lake State Park about 18 miles away in Idaho.  There is a Passport America park near there that opens on the 15th where you can stay for $25 per night for two nights.)

After seeing the Tetons yesterday, and thinking about how much Yosemite changes from season to season, I thought a change of plans was in order with our travel.  We can drive north into Canada without driving over to North Dakota, saving us over 700 miles, and giving us the time to visit Yellowstone and Glacier again, our last visits being in August of 2012.  It will also allow us to visit Waterton Lakes National Park after we enter Canada, and still get up to Banff and Jasper around May 20th.  Yes, parts of these parks will be closed still…but that is what Spring visits to some National Parks is like.  Only the northern portion of Yellowstone, along with western access to Old Faithful, are open.  But we will see mountains with snow on them, and snow on the ground in some areas, and the wildlife is much more prominent in the spring when less people are in the parks.  As for North Dakota…another time (we hope).