Yellowstone Memorial Day Weekend 2018, Our Last two Days

By checking out friends posts on Facebook, Renita had found that a sow and fully-grown cub were digging grubs and roots at the Butte lake View. Its located on the east side of Yellowstone lake, just before Sylvan Pass. We decided to spend the day with George and Val and so we headed to the overlook.

Driving through Hayden Valley we saw lots of buffalo and elk, but we didn’t see any bears. Driving further we reached the Fishing Bridge and turned east toward Cody, Wyoming. Just after the Fishing Bridge we neared a buffalo that was in a having a difficult day.

The park service had cut down trees to widen the road and the bull buffalo was pissed about its path being blocked. It proceeded to attack one of the downed treed, butting it and rolling on the branches! Luckily it only looked at us once to see if we were an issue, before crossing the road and heading on its way!

Arriving at the overlook we saw a crowd of bear watchers that told us that the two bears had been digging on the hillside right next to cars. The bears had feed for a while before climbing the steep hill and apparently taking a morning siesta. The day before two people had followed them and had almost surprised the sleeping grizzlies.

The two bears have been given the names of Raspberry, (the sow), and Snow who is a three-year-old male that should be on its own. Everyone expected the bears to return to the grubs and so we waited and passed the time visiting with other bear lovers, taking images of a blue grouse, and even finding some bear scat that was full of wood chips, (from when the bear had been tearing apart deadfall looking for grubs.

We waited for three hours but the bears never reappeared and so after lunch we drove to Sylvan Pass where there was so much snow that there was no sign of any wildlife. Returning to the Butte Overlook we stopped to take some images of the wildest place in the lower forty-eight.

It’s a place called the Farrow Pit and a trail leads into it where a person would be almost fifty miles from the nearest road. We know people that grouse about places without coffee shops and easy internet access!

The rest of the day was anticlimactic as we never did see any bears. Still it was a pleasant day in the park, lots of wildlife but no bears or wolves. It was obvious that we had been spoiled and it was the first day this year in which we had not spotted any bears.

Day four arrived and we changed our plans deciding to head back to the Lamar Valley. The black bears, that had been entertaining everyone had disappeared from near Tower, but when we turned into the Lamar Valley we ran into a large bear jam. The black bear sow, with her three cubs had moved down the valley.

Nearby a black bear boar fed and so mamma kept her cubs near the top of a tree. The park interpreters said that she would probably cross the Yellowstone Rive bridge and when we returned later she and her cubs had wandered off. Crossing the bridge another traffic jam was happening but this time it was Bighorn sheep and their lambs.

 Parking to take images, one of the sheep looked at us and as it approached we retreated to the truck. It finally walked into the ditch and we watched them for a bit before heading up the valley.

Deciding to head up the Lamar Valley we spotted two cars that were watching a grizzly sow and cub clear across the valley. We set up our own scope to join the viewing,

As we watched the two grizzlies one of the other watchers got a message that a male grizzly was hunting elk calves. Turning his scope around he quickly spotted the boar and we all watched as it searched through the sagebrush looking for young elk.

It disappeared from our view and so we headed further up the valley, in search of more bears.

Reaching Pebble Creek, a crowd were watching mountain goats across the creek and up a steep cliffside. There were two goats visible and easily spotted with a good pair of binoculars. We set up our scope and tried to take some images with the cell phone.

Heading back to camp we stopped but just missed the badger mom and her three kits that had been digging for gophers. In Yellowstone you are either the hunted or the hunters, the same as everywhere else but more obvious.

It had been a good day with three grizzlies and four black bears! If you really want to see bears and wolves you need to come to Yellowstone in late May and spend your time in the Lamar Valley. They are either hunting elk and bison calves down on the valley floor or feeding on the lush spring grass!

Our wildlife total was twenty bears, both grizzly and black and eight wolves. We had also spotted lots of other wildlife bison, elk, deer, and of course birds. In comparison while driving the Alcan Highway to Alaska, we had spotted seventeen bears in three weeks of driving, (we took our time). Clear skies.