Blog Post: Yellowstone National Park (Trek to the West Part 1)

The “lost” journal from my trip out west in 2014. I hope everyone enjoys!

Note: Some of this I wrote while on the trip while others I added on later, so the tense is all over the place!

8 July 2014:

The first day!!! Nothing much scheduled on this day, but we’re on a whopping drive from NE Kansas all the way to some hidden (though not really) town in Wyoming in one fell swoop.

By early afternoon, we were on the prairies of Colorado…it’s quite interesting to see how much of it is still left, unlike the plowed over ones across most of Kansas (barring the drive across the Flint Hills Area).

Annnd, now we’re stuck in traffic outside Denver…wonderful… However, there were prairie dogs poking their heads above the soil just right within the sides of the highways! I’ve never actually seen prairie dogs in real life before, so that was a treat to say the least…

Still rolling grasslands/hills of Colorado….

Okay, I see some mountains in the distance…

Spotted my first pronghorn antelope! It was just a lone individual, but still an interesting sight…no pictures unfortunately. It was too far away and the car was going too fast!

Well, nothing really happened else. We reached Wyoming and got to our hotel. Seriously, this town doesn’t have 4G. -_- Okay, going to bed.

9 July 2014:

Well, today actually was supposed to be the first official day of the trip. The drive from the hotel to Yellowstone National Park took a few hours, but the scenery during the drive wasn’t too awful.

Finally saw my first black billed magpie feeding on a dead animal on the road! It flew by so quickly I failed to get a picture! Hopefully later!

We arrived outside of Jackson Hole and got our annual pass. Which, amazingly enough for $80 dollars, could send you to most of the protected National Parks, National Monuments and National Wildlife Preserves in the country. I know my family will get good use out of this in a few years.

So…first we entered Grand Teton NP. To say the least, it was supposed to be a precursor to all these national parks on our trip. We were just pulling up to the scenic pull off to get a few pictures.

Spotted my first raven a few minutes after entering the park! Large individual, powerful wingbeats…glided across the water.

Okanagana sp. of cicada heard calling near where the raven flew by! I think it is an O. bella. I did take a video of it!

So we paused at the pullouts to take photos. I also brought out my spotting scope, but all I saw were Canada geese. I did snap a few good photos of a longhorn beetle, though. It had a few phoretic mites hitchhiking on its thorax.

I seriously just saw a group of Australians driving Harleys saying they want to see a wolf…

Finally actually entering Yellowstone!

We decided to pitch the tent up in one of our sites, first, before moving on to see anything. My GOD, the tent site was a mosquito warzone! We hoped they would die down as the temperatures dropped at the end of the day. Right now, temps were in the low 80’s (Fahrenheit). The site was dominated by pines…maybe some interesting pine forest birds will pay us a visit. For now, we’re just pitching the tent as quickly as we could. And then dashing away to avoid the mosquitoes’ quest for my blood. For the record, make SURE you bring insect repellent, especially if you are visiting in the summer. I assume at these almost subalpine altitudes, mosquitoes don’t have a large breeding season, which concentrates their numbers dramatically. Spray with deet is preferred to keep other biting arthropods away as well! After we pitched the tent, we left it there and got back into our car for the drive through Yellowstone!

It took us about thirty-ish minutes to drive to Old Faithful Village. The place is very much a little resort surrounding some of the active geysers, most notably Old Faithful. We parked and got out to see some of the shops after noticing that it would be awhile before Old Faithful itself erupted.

Here’s a sign which shows when the geysers are approximated to erupt. As far as I know, only Old Faithful has the most “scheduled” of all eruptions.

Wildlife were minute in the area due to a large number of humans, but, there were lots of large-mammal droppings near the geysers. So, perhaps they come here when it is more quiet in the morning. There were a number of ground squirrels which ran under the boardwalk around the geysers. Oh right, they had a boardwalk around the geysers, I guess that’s to keep people from getting off track, acting dumb and damaging the ecosystem!

Boardwalk:

However, there were large numbers of ravens in the area, which allowed me to take my first ever photographs of ravens! They’re MUCH larger than what I had imagined. Almost looking 2/3 heavier than the American crows I was used to seeing back in Kansas. A few posed nicely on the pine trees. I also found one with a deformed beak. Though, I think its surviving just fine despite the deformity. Also, I have to say that the common raven certainly has a very unique call. The caw was very-much corvid-like (crow-like), but definitely throatier and richer. If it weren’t for the human noise, I’d say their calls would make for a very eerie sound.

Ravens:

Okay, it’s getting close to about when Old Faithful was starting to erupt…lots of people sitting around waiting for it TO erupt. I just sat down and did nothing at this point…but away in the distance, despite the noise, the ravens’ calls continued to echo across the village…deeply, cautiously, hauntingly.

Old Faithful Teasing Us:

Okay, wow, that was amazing! Old Faithful’s eruption lasted a lot longer than I thought. Spewing hot water into the air had never looked so beautiful, yet so odd at the same time. It was like a watery volcano, cascading down only to pick up again. What a wonderful experience!

I got some of it on video here:

So, now that Old Faithful has been seen, we decided to just go along the boardwalk to see what we could find. Not so high in terms of wildlife at this moment, but there were some blackbirds (either Brewer’s blackbirds or brown headed cowbirds) wandering about in the springs around the area. I was a bit surprised as to how lush some of the areas were. I honestly didn’t expect rooting near scalding water would yield too much plant diversity, but I guess I was wrong.

And here’s a random killdeer I saw. Not a life bird or anything special, but I decided to document it anyway:

Some other geysers and hot springs we saw on the way:

Spotted this golden-mantled ground squirrel on our way back to the car:

Only have a few more places to check tonight. One of them happens to be Yellowstone Lake. I wanted to see whether there were any birds.

Edit: well, there weren’t any birds aside from a few Canada geese at Yellowstone Lake…It’s too bad.

Picture:

WELL THEN, on our drive back to our campsite, we ran into a small herd of elk. The large majority were females (along with a few calves). A long male was wandering about guarding his harem. I guess he wasn’t too please when cars started piling up trying to see them. He eventually corralled the females into desert forest, but not before I snapped a few photos.

Last stop for the day before camp was a small pond where a few white pelicans had taken residence. I guess they were ready to rest for the night as well. It was very peaceful to watch them preen from a distance. However, there were mosquitoes here as well and I most certainly received a few bites.

Saw this crazy kid on our drive back to camp. People need to not get this close…especially if it’s a single person:

And, despite the temperatures dropping down into the 50’s, the mosquito warzone continue to battle on into the night. We cooked some hot dogs on the skillet, ate some bread and carrots…then pretty much called it a night. I’d say fairly successful day. However, the bird count was still exceedingly low and, aside from the ravens, I actually didn’t see any new bird species today. :/

Bumpy ground under the tent isn’t helping with my sleep. 8000 feet in elevation, dipping temperatures and silent nature…still can’t fall asleep. At least, not yet…