April 20,2017 we leave Medford for our season in Yellowstone, Several things stand out as I look back on that adventure; weather, people, learning, and living in a most unique place on earth.
Our weather was fine until we reached Ft Hall, Idaho. Up to that point the roads had all been dry as we were following a spring storm. Ft. Hall is a reservation and they have a casino, truck stop and an RV park. I knew some of the folk I would be working with in Yellowstone were camped there before they headed into the Park. The RV park had lots of standing water. Once settled in we contacted our coworkers via email and met them for a drink. These folks were going to be just fine to work with. They were all headed into the park day after tomorrow. We took the next day as an opportunity to drive into the park and check it out. We understood that there was a lot of snow and ice in our RV spots. If you were following me on Facebook you would have seen many posts of our struggles with snow and ice. Once we found the RV park our eyes were really big since you couldn't tell much as they were only dug out enough to back our rig in and hook up to utilities. Had to get the tape measure out and make sure we were going to fit!! Width was okay but length was likely to be a problem. We got to meet Terry who is the boss for the Central District and one other couple who had gone in the day before, Sue and Dave. Luckily Terry had gotten a Bobcat up there to dig out the 5 feet of snow. We would continue to shovel snow and ice to clear our site until mid June. We had the usual afternoon thunderstorms but only one of them was a gully washer (heavy rains, strong winds, and lots of big thunder and lightening. We were so very fortunate not to have any wildfires in the park this summer. We did get some small amounts of smoke from fires in Montana. It did snow 11 inches 2 days before we were set to leave. Made us a little nervous. We worked until October 9th and got out about noon on October 10. We drove out to West Yellowstone and spent a couple of nights just doing tourist things.
We were so blessed to work everyday with people who loved the park as much as we did. Even though there were dog and cat people everyone got along and were just fine honoring the differences. We laughed, bitched, and shook our heads at some of the remarkable actions we witnessed by the tou-rons (combination of tourist and morons) In all fairness I doubt they were morons. Probably just a different country with confusing signs, money and customs. We did decide we would unlikely ever buy a car that had been in a rental fleet. My guess is 60% of the cars in Yellowstone are rentals. We had some great evening campfires and got to know our neighbors.
We watched the snow melt and the rivers rise and furiously send melted snow on it's journey from the mountains to the sea. The rivers and streams of Yellowstone are wonderful. Then there is Yellowstone Lake. I wish I had more time to spend on the lake. My little inflatable just doesn't let us get very far from shore or journey many miles. We learned real quick that you really don't go any where in the park without your bear spray.
This year the bears were everywhere. We had a very close encounter with a young Grizzly. We had been watching the bear from Fishing Bridge down on the Lake shore. He took off up the hill. I figured he was headed up toward the road and there was a pull out right where I thought he should come out. We head up there and got pulled over. There was no sign of the bear so I decided I would walk over to the edge to see if I could spot him. The edge was maybe 10 yards from where we were parked. Bobbi said she would stay with the pups in the car. I took two steps toward the edge and my foot sank into muck and yuck from the high water table. Know this if you stop at a pull out and move away from your car there will be plenty of people who stop to see what you are seeing. As I was pulling my foot out of the muck a guy walked up behind me with his camera and a lens that gave me lens envy. When I looked back toward the edge, about 8 yards from me the Grizz had just topped the ridge. Believe me from that distance that bear was HUGE. My new friend and I started walking backward slowly toward the car. The bear just kept strolling along not really paying too much attention to us. We kept backing up and he kept walking toward us. We finally reached the car. The dogs were going crazy, Bobbi was working on getting the windows up. I thought the bear would veer off to the left and go around us as there were no other cars that way and it was a clear path to cross the road. Bear at 5 yards. Photo guy and I said it was time to get in the car. Photo guy was about 6 ft 3 in tall and our back seats were laying down so Lucy could run around. He dove in drug his legs and HUGE camera lens in and was trying to continue to take pictures. The bear decided to walk down the passenger side of the car. As he walked by his backbone was even with the top of the car. Thankfully he just kept walking, crossed the road and hopped a fence and continued on his merry way. It took us a few minutes to catch our breath. I was so grateful for the car and this bear not wanting any of our chips.
We watch baby bison being born, Great Horned owls fledge their young, Osprey raise babies, Great Gray Herons come and go from a rookery with 8 nests, saw wolves, heard wolves, almost as cool as seeing them, had antelope run right in from of us maybe 20 feet when we were walking the dogs, watched mature bull elk rest behind our RV and chew their cud, got to see a long and plentiful wildflower bloom, watched river otters play in the river, beaver build a lodge in the river, saw some really big coyote, saw more Moose then we had ever seen before. Animals and people taught us so much about themselves and ourselves.
I hope to be able to do it again someday.
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