Great White Stump Hunters

Day 5: Yellowstone National Park, WY – South Loop. Trip Total 1,803 miles.

We wake up early and it’s cold again, low 40’s, and after breakfast head to the nearest showers (a 4 mile drive away). Here Katie finds more unmelted snow, and makes her first snowballs.

With that out of the way, we do the obligatory gift shop stop, where Katie wants to buy everything, but settles on a small baby black bear (because she saw one the day before) and wolf, a bigger carved wooden bear with Yellowstone written on it, a plush black bear, a mug with her name on (which she later explains that they didn’t even know she was coming!) and a few smaller items. And a bag of colored rocks – she’s collected polished rocks for about a year, and although her younger brother and sister were too young to come, they both wanted to be involved. Alex kept saying he wanted to come to Yellowstone, while his sister Amy kept telling people that she is going to Pinkstone! (her favorite color – when She Who Must Be Obeyed picked her up from pre-school a couple of weeks ago, there was a tray of ladybugs the kids had made drying… about 20 red ones with black spots, and one bright pink, so she instantly knew which one was Amy’s). Katie made sure she had a pink stone for Amy and a yellow stone for Alex in her bag.

Then the three Great White Stump Hunters set off to drive the south loop of the park, this time refusing to stop to take pictures of Buffalo. Without the Buffalo, the first couple of hours were largely uneventful, since we’d driven this part of the loop before, just the occasional hot spring or animal.

For lunch, we head out the west entrance of the park into Montana, and stop by the animal refuge just out side the gate. We get there just as they let out 3 of their Grizzly’s to feed.

We also finally see real wolves, although the were all asleep up against the fence. Then as we leave, Katie has to play on their playscape, and exiting through the gift shop she adds more toy bears and deer to her collection.

Then after having to go to one restaurant to feed myself and Katie, and another for the Veggie, we head back into the park and continue on the south loop. There were plenty of stumps, but very few animals in this part of the park – we saw a wolf running down by the side of the road, but by the time we stopped we lost it. There were a bunch of cars and Rangers stopped at one point looking out into a field – apparently two more wolves hiding in the tall grass, but we never saw them. However this side of the park does have some spectacular scenery:

Then on down to Old Faithful, managing to arrive shortly after it had erupted, so sat and ate ice-cream while we waited an hour for the next one. We also had a cell phone connection for the first time in a couple of days, so checked in with family, while me & my brother got sunburned (Katie sat in my shadow out of the sun to be safe)

Then back round to the campsite, by late afternoon, for the shortest driving day of the trip – a mere 120 miles. Scavenging for firewood just outside the campsite (probably 75 yards from the tent), we came across what looked to me like bear prints – big round print about the size of my hand with 5 toes – somewhat unnerving. Despite this we had a relaxing evening, played more blackjack, then retiring to the tent for our final night in the park. Katie got in her sleeping bag happy with her new plush bear joining her elephant.