BISON OR BUFFALO - DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU WANT TO CALL THEM

      Yellowstone is well known for its Buffalo herds. At times they can be massive, however on this trip the largest herd I saw was about 30. Background information

• Can weigh up to 2,000 lbs
• Can be the size of a small car a.k.a similar size to my Honda fit
• Can run over 30 miles per hour
• Injure more people than bears almost every year

     Enough with the background information, for those that don’t know this is my second trip to Yellowstone National Park. The first trip I was between 4 – 7 (I don’t remember the exact year), but I don’t remember a lot. But what I do remember are the huge herds of buffalo and the traffic jams they create. In Yellowstone there are really two things that create traffic jams (three if you count the road construction on the one section). The first is a rarer animal siteing such as a bear or wolf. The second and perhaps more common traffic issue is a buffalo in the middle of the road.

     I was in the park all of 10 mins before I encountered my first buffalo traffic jam.

     This was the first of many buffalo traffic jams. My personal favorite was the one where the buffalo was just standing in the middle of the road. He had this air about him than said I am standing in the middle of the road causing problems because I can and there is nothing you can do about it. Another favorite was the buffalo that would walk down the road in the opposite direction of traffic. These were always funny. It is instances like this that kind of make me wish I was a buffalo so I could spend my life disrupting traffic in every way imaginable. If I was a buffalo, I would try to arrange buffalo at 30 yard intervals in the road to create an obstacle course.

      After you have been in the park for over an hour, you have probably seen more than 50 buffalo. After about the second herd of adult buffalo, it gets boring and the pictures all start to look the same. It got to the point where I would say “Oh look more buffalo” and just keep driving. After visiting Mammoth Hot Springs, I decided to drive out to Roosevelt and Tower Falls. As I was driving out there, I kept seen herds of buffalo. I didn’t take any note of these herds until I noticed one herd had about 15 baby buffalo with it. That got my attention, and I was suddenly re-interested in buffalo. I pulled off the side of the road and am about 100 yards away from the buffalo and the babies (calves if you want to get technical). As I am getting the camera out of the car and changing lenses, what I assumed was the bull buffalo (this could have be the lead female, because buffalo keep pretty separated herd of male and female unless its breeding season though I didn’t know this at the time) move himself about halfway between me and babies. I was a little nervous about this but I think the buffalo and I came to an understanding, I would stay where I was and take picture and as long as I didn’t come any closer I was fine.

For more buffalo pictures please click here

DAY 7 & 8 – YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

     Since I only had two days to explore Yellowstone National Park. I had to pick and choose what activities I wanted to do carefully. So my activities were carefully planned to get the maximum viewing for my time.
     I have decided since there are so many things to tell about Yellowstone. I am going to break each thing into its own post such as an entire post is going to be devoted to bison (buffalo). Keep an I eye out over the next couple of days for these various posts.

Day 6 – Ending Location - West Yellowstone

A. Starting Location – Jackson Hole, WY

B. Visit – Grand Teton National Park

C. Ending Location – West Yellowstone, MT
     Today started just like yesterday with a later then normal start. The only difference was that today was on purpose rather than an accident. First thing I did was pack up my bags and check out of my hotel. For there, I drove into Grand Teton for my final adventures there. 

     My first stop was the visitor gift shop, I need to get my National Park visit log stamped and pick up a patch for my collection. From there, I was considering going hiking on one of the shorter mostly snow free trails. But when I got to the trailhead it was starting to snow and with wind was gusting to about 20 or 30 miles per hour. Most of this trail was though dense forest, and for safely I decided it was best no to hike the trail. I did however take time out to build a mini snowman. I wanted to build a bigger one but the snow wouldn’t pack together.

     Right as I pulled out of the parking lot, I noticed a beaver lodge. I decided that since I had nothing better to do, I would hang around and watch. I spend over 30 minutes stilling there watching this lodge hoping one of the beavers would come out but alas they did not. For talking to one of the three people who stopped and asked what I was looking at, I found out that a Grizzly Bear had been seen eating from the carcass that I saw the wolves eating from.

     I drove up to the site and spend an hour sitting there watching the carcass, but nothing showed up. No Grizzly Bear, no Black Bear, and no wolves. I was sad, but I then spent the better part of the day hoping from turnoff to turnoff and scanning the woods for animals. Today was not for seeing animals; I didn’t see anything cool or interesting until my last turnoff before leaving.
     I was sitting in my car, scanning this field with my binoculars and didn’t see anything so back my car out of the space and notice 5 or 6 birds follow my car out. I had never seen any birds like these so I had to stop and take their picture. These birds had been clearly feed my humans because they came right up to meet. As I am taking their pictures, another car pulls into the parking lot, this is not just another car it is one of the park rangers. The ranger gets out of his vehicle with a angry look towards me. I am thinking, “crap he thinks I am feeding the birds”. Once he steps out of the vehicle the birds take off toward him hoping he will feed them since I am not. As they fly towards him, he realizes that I wasn’t feeding them; I was just taking advantage of the opportunity to photograph them. The ranger walks over to me and we chat for a little bit. Since I didn’t know what type of birds these where I ask him, and he tells me he has never seen them before so I get out my BORROWED bird book (Mom at least I am using it regularly and you now have an excuse to get a new one). I find out that these bird are called Yellow-Headed Blackbirds (though this name is very obvious I still had to look).

     After this, I headed out of the park and started the three hour drive to West Yellowstone. If you look at the map, it would appear that I took a very long route that is out of the way. I did, but I didn’t have a choice the roads out of the North end of Grand Teton as still closed from winter. This drive involved crossing the Teton Range. The highest point of the pass is 8,431 feet in elevation. It was kind of scary driving up the huge mountain, but the view from the top of the pass was worth it.

     The pictures do not do the pass justice. From there I made it safely to West Yellowstone, and am ready to enter Yellowstone National Park tomorrow.

P.S. Pictures are coming just bear with me.
P.S.S. Do NOT expect a blog post tomorrow. I am staying at Old Faithful Inn and will not have internet access.
P.S.S.S. I have add a page on things I have learned that I will update as I learn new things. Click Here