On the road again, making our dreams come true !

Monday, the 27th we pretty much spent the day in West Yellowstone. We figured we might as well learn where things were in the town since it will be our “home” town for the next 5 months. We went to the Grizzly Bear & Wolf Center and met up with Peggy. She gave us a tour of the facilities and was very helpful in answering all of our questions. I’ve never realized how large a Grizzly could be until we met Sam. He was around 1000 lbs and stood somewhere between 9-10 ft. The pictures of him on the slide show were taken about 20 yards away. Sam is the largest Grizzly they have at the center and trust me; I would not want to meet one that size in the wild (as far as it goes I would not want to meet any size bear in the wild).

We are still here at Bakers Hole and probably will be until the 2nd week of May. Tuesday Vickie came out and took some time explaining the duties of “Campground Host” to us. We had a nice visit with her and learned just how serious it is concerning leaving things unattended. Here in the Yellowstone area all things must be put away before leaving your campsite. That includes food, drinks, toothpaste and pretty much everything. One would not think leaving a case of coke un-opened on a picnic table would be such a big deal. Here if a law enforcement office sees things such as this, and the campsite is unattended, it will result in a fine ranging from $100-500. They are very serious about keeping things put away. It is nothing for a bear to take an unopened can of pop, beer, juice, or whatever and squeeze it open and consume the contents.

Wednesday we headed up to Canyon Village. Several of the roads in the park are still closed due to the snow. We saw the usual amount of Elk, Buffalo and snow. Halfway up to Canyon, which is about 20 miles, we were again blessed to see something we haven’t seen yet. Probably less than 50 feet ahead a wolf ran across the road. We stopped and watched him climb up the hill on the side of the road and then he just stopped and looked at us. We were able to snap a couple of pictures before he headed into the trees. We continued into Canyon and found out that there was very little opened. Next week is the start of the tourist season. There are two advantages to coming to Yellowstone when the snow still has most of the roads closed. The first being, you do not have to contend with long lines of traffic (and impatient people) like you due in the summer. The second is that the snow totally changes the appearance of things here. For example, the canyon area is beautiful in the summer when all is green (that can be green) but to see the snow in the canyon is so much more beautiful than the canyon walls in the summer. We have been fortunate to see both seasons here, but I will take the trip this time and the beauty of the snow covered mountains over the green summer anytime. We pulled off of the road on a turnout and watched Elk grazing on the banks b the river. Cindy spotted another wolf and we watched him as he headed away. We weren’t close enough to take any pictures of him but we followed him with the binoculars. Came back to the cg and walked down to the river and viewed buffalo. Gonna call it a night and see what tomorrow brings (supposedly warm weather and melting snow).

Well it’s Friday and the snow is still here. Vickie said they might try and open up Bakers Hole this weekend. As far as Lonesomehurst, it is still snowed in so we will continue staying here until the snow goes away. We saw our first wolf in the campground yesterday and in the evening we decided to take the truck and drive down by the river in the cg. We parked where we could get a good view and waited to see if anything would wander by. Well we were excited to spot a Grizzly in the river. He was too far away to take any pics with the camera but I did manage to capture him on video, although not a very clear image. We used the binoculars and watched him eat what looked like to be fish. As darkness came we continued to watch him in the river, then he started swimming towards us. We were able to see him for a while then he left the river by an area of brush and Cindy knew for sure that he was headed toward the camper. We headed back to the camper and decided to call it a night. Oh by the way I guess he did not desire to visit us at the camper as there was no one there to greet us.