Eventually the bears got satisfied and wandered away, slowly at first, up the hillside and then abruptly running straight towards the crowds of people lining the road, sending visitors and park rangers scrambling to get out of their way. 

The big bears charged right through them and across the road and out of sight into the trees.  Then the wolves moved in and had their feast, as darkness enveloped the valley and the rain intensified enough to drive most of the people back to their cars and back to their cozy lodgings at Mammoth Hot Springs.

I might have missed the whole thing if it hadn't been for a friendly ranger who saw me photographing some bison near the Minerva Terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs earlier that day.  She was emptying a trash can, and she called out to me:  "wanna know where to see some grizzly bears?"

"Hell yeah I do!" I told her calmly.

She said to go straight over to the Blacktail Ponds, which lie on the north side of Yellowstone on the Blacktail Plateau, between Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower Junction.  That's where the carcass was, in a little pool adjacent to the ponds about one hundred and fifty yards from the road, in an open valley. 

Grizzly bear takes a swim at the Blacktail Ponds in Yellowstone Park.

When I got to the ponds, there was no sign of grizzlies, except for a few oddball photographers who were hanging around.  I asked them if they had seen anything.  The grizzlies were here a couple of hours earlier, they said.  I couldn’t see a carcass, so I asked if they knew where it was.

“It’s down by the lake where the raven is,” said a tall guy with long hair and nerdy glasses, which made him look suspiciously girly even though he was dressed in camouflage clothing.  I squinted and after a moment was able to see the raven poking around at a heap of something indeterminate.  The photographers were blabbing on about camera settings and seemed annoyed that I had dared to interrupt their lofty conversation about F-stops and ISO numbers.

I decided to move on and maybe check back there later on in the day to see if anything was happening.  Further down, I passed groups of people clustered at various points along the roadside, excitedly viewing bison and elk.  A little farther along I saw some photographers ogling some bighorn sheep.  Bighorns are usually shy about being watched or photographed, but not these guys.  I stopped the car and unpacked my camera rig.  The bighorns sat quietly while I snapped a few frames, and then the ram put his head down for a nap. As I was shooting, his head and eyelids kept drooping as he struggled to resist the sleep that was overtaking him.  It reminded me of times when I was in class in college, fighting with all my might to keep my eyes open and my head upright, but losing.  Farther back in high school,  I would simply give in to flat-out, open-mouthed sleeping through class and waking up with a stiff face and drool on the desk.  One time, my friend Juan fell asleep in English class, and he slept right through the school bell.  The entire class, and the teacher, snuck out quietly so that we wouldn't wake him.  He woke up about ten minutes later in an empty classroom.  Ha ha!  Ahhh, those care-free high school days.  Not like Yellowstone Park, where it is Kill Or Be Killed!

Moving along, I found a large crowd of people gathered along the road, where there was a mother black bear with her two yearling cubs. The bears moseyed along amongst the trees and didn’t seem to mind being watched and followed by a hundred or more eager people.  The cubs would occasionally burst into some rambunctious wrasslin' and running around, but they stayed pretty close to mama bear throughout.  We only caught momentary glimpses of them through the trees and brush, but they didn't seem to be in any hurry to get away, and they kept teasing us with glimpses of themselves.  The attendant ranger tried to predict when and where they might dash across the road, and he directed us accordingly.  The bears did not comply with his authoritative predictions.

A yearling black bear cub near Tower Junction attracted droves of eager roadside photographers.

Those baby bears are so darn cute.  I spent about an hour trying to beat the crowd and get a good photo of them.  The one above is the best I came away with, from about fifty yards away and severely cropped.  Park regulations prohibit approaching bears or wolves closer than one hundred yards.  If an animal moves closer to you, it is your responsibility to move away and maintain at least one hundred yards of distance.  However, when animals are close to the road and a bunch of people have stopped, the rangers have a more difficult time keeping every one in line.   Other animals have a limit of twenty five yards.

I surmised that some mama bears with cubs might like to linger near so many people because it makes them feel safer from male bears, who sometimes kill their cubs.  After a while, the ranger told us that he suspected the same thing.  Maybe I should be a ranger. 

I pressed on to see what else was happening.  I was eager to get to the Lamar Valley, which is one of the best places in Yellowstone Park to see wolves.  That's where the wolves were officially reintroduced to the park in 1995 and '96.  It's an excellent area for wolves to live in, because it gets less snow and has more prey than the rest of the Yellowstone area.  I got out my map and located Slough Creek, which was rumored to be a hotbed of wolf activity.

Once I got there, I was unsurprised to find a bunch of people loitering around with spotting scopes, but no wolves.  These were apparently the hard-core wolf watchers, as some of them had custom license plates on their cars that said things like "WOLF 39" or "DRUIDS99"  'Druids' is the name of one of the local Yellowstone wolf packs.  The packs are usually named for where they live, and Druid Peak is a local mountain. 

It's interesting to see that wolves, after being hated, feared and persecuted for centuries, indeed millennia, are finally starting to get a little bit of respect.  Now, the wolves are a new industry in themselves, attracting droves of curious and outright fanatic people who come from far and wide to view them.  Retirees park their RVs, set up their lawn chairs and spotting scopes, and patiently wait for hours to catch a glimpse of a pack member or some fuzzy wolf cubs. 

I asked some of the folks at Slough Creek if there was anything going on, since I couldn't see anything.  A woman with the pointiest chin I have ever seen told me that there was a den on the hillside across the valley, about a mile away, where there were eight or so wolves, four adults and four pups.  The wolves could only be seen through a scope at that distance, and it wasn't possible to get any closer without crossing a river and the trackless valley, and climbing a long slope beyond.  Most of the people said they weren't seeing anything, but one guy with a thick North Carolina drawl, slow and easy like molasses, told me that with his scope he could see a wolf resting in the grass high on the hillside near the den.  I looked through his eyepiece and was able to see only the wolf's face as it sat as still as a statue, partially obscured by the grass.  This was my first view of a wild wolf, but I wasn't quite satisfied because it was at such great distance and such a vague view.  It was kind of ethereal and surreal, because I couldn't be sure I was even seeing a wolf, but on the hand, its face seemed perfectly clear.  Weird.  Most of the other folks couldn't see it, even with a detailed description of exactly where to look.  The guy with the scope claimed to have seen it move.

The Lamar River winds through the northwestern portion of Yellowstone park.

Since there wasn't much to see at Slough Creek, and access to the nearby trail that I wanted to hike was closed, I decided to hike the Lamar River trail in the northwest corner of the park.  Along the way, I encountered some pronghorns (they're not antelope).  At first, they dashed off when they saw me, but they quickly turned back, and curiously approached me.  I couldn't tell if they were scared or inquisitive.  The females of the troop collectively pranced by me and it really seemed like they were showing off.  If I was a male pronghorn, I definitely would have dashed after them.  The male who was with them plodded along slowly behind, like he was old and jaded.  I know that feeling.  He didn't even look at me.

Farther along the trail, I scattered a herd of more than one hundred bison, who fled in alarm at my approach.  It's funny,  because any single one of them could have trampled and gored me into the dust.  However, these were mostly females and young males.  A mile or so later, I came across three bulls standing near the trail who looked at me like:  Who The Hell Are You To Be In Our Meadow?!?  I tell you, when bison bulls get a wild look in their eyes, you don't want to be in their way.  I stepped off the trail and made a wide detour around those three.  They eyed me warily until, satisfied, they went back to munching grass.  It's amazing that an animal can get so damn big from just eating grass.  Curiously, all of the biggest living creatures in the history of the earth were vegetarians.

Most of the people who get injured by animals in Yellowstone don't get hurt by bears or wolves or mountain lions.  No.  Most casual visitors won't even see one of those animals.  By far, most injuries occur when people approach bison or elk too closely and get trampled or gored as a result.  This amazes me, because bison are huge animals with fearsome horns and a wild, unpredictable look in their eyes.  Park regulations say to never approach bison or elk to within twenty-five yards.  Many naive tourists assume they are docile and a few approach them within touching range.  Wrong!

Nursing bison have the right-of-way in Yellowstone Park.  The bison calves are quite playful.

When I got back to the campsite, it was gloomy and raining, but I was warm and cozy in my camper van, typing away on my battery powered notebook computer and listening to Peter Tosh on the sound system.  There was a young couple with a camp stove trying to cook dinner at one of the picnic tables, but the rain forced them to retreat to their bright yellow car, while their cooking equipment stood forlorn and inadequate in the drizzle.  Poor saps.  More tourists showed up, excitedly taking photos of the nearby river, even though the sun had set an hour ago. The three of them were running around with expensive cameras snap snap snapping away, regardless of the dark and rain and lack of any good light.

The next morning, I awoke before dawn, quickly broke camp, and made my way to the Blacktail Ponds in the dark.  I was the second person there and so I got one of the very few dedicated parking spaces that happened to be right there near the ponds.  Front row, so to speak.  This time I was hoping for better light and a big show.  Most of the weather so far had been cold, gloomy and overcast, punctuated by bouts of rain and light snow.  When I decided to visit in May, I knew I was taking my chances with the weather.  I had hoped for bright sunny days in the fifty-to-sixty Fahrenheit degree range.  Instead, I got chilly, blustery, wintry weather.  Oh well.

Despite the cold, by sunrise the roadside was crowded with people, most of whom had the biggest, most expensive cameras imaginable. It looked like an artillery brigade lined up along the roadside, pointed menacingly at the dead bison.  But no bears or wolves appeared, just a single coyote who had a leisurely breakfast alone. After the coyote had its fill, a raven settled on the corpse and tore off a chunk of meat with its black beak before flying away to enjoy it in private.   Not long after that, a young mottled-brown bald eagle came in to have a few bites.  I didn't have enough reach in my camera lens to get photos of those smaller avian scavengers, but I got a decent shot of the coyote as it passed by.  The carcass was about one hundred and fifty yards away from the roadside viewing area, and by this point, the rangers wouldn't let anyone get any closer. 

Meanwhile, the herd of photographers stood around and waited for bigger spectacles, shuffling around in the cold and talking incessantly, endlessly about shutter speeds, aperture settings, f-stops, and ISO numbers. Yawn. I’m a photographer too, but the technical numbers only stay interesting for not very long before I’m ready to talk about something else. That’s when the conversation becomes a bragging contest about who’s been to the most exotic locations and seen the most amazing wildlife:

“The other day, I saw a black bear with two cubs over by so-and-so."

"Yeah, but l saw penguins riding polar bears at the south pole."

“That’s cool. I was in Greece in a couple of summers ago and I saw a Pegasus and a Unicorn on top of Mount Olympus.”

"Hmmm.  Last year in Ireland, I found two leprechauns getting drunk at the end of a rainbow. They said they had lost their pot of gold in the market crash.”

“Oh yeah?  I was in the Amazon jungle and saw a tricerotops killing a tyrannosaurus rex.”

And so on.

For a wilderness area, it sometimes felt a lot like a trade show convention.  I wondered how all those people could afford to spend all day standing around with an eight million dollar camera, waiting for a bear to show up.  Most of them weren't professional photographers.  It's good to know that everyone has a great job making tons of money.

Suddenly, there was tremendous excitement.  Two wolves were coming down the hill towards the carcass.  They made their way across a muddy patch, stepping tentatively like little girls who didn’t want to get their feet wet.  One of them came to the carcass and began to scratch and tear at it, while the other one started to howl.  I had never heard a wolf howl, and I have to tell you, it made me tingle.  Not just me, because some of the other photographers made groaning and moaning sounds as the wolf bayed.  A few of the women sounded like they were having orgasms.  I’m not kidding you.  It was pretty intense.  It’s amazing that wolves elicit such strong emotions, from the vilest hate to the profoundest admiration, especially considering how closely related they are to the dogs that so many people love and cherish.

Typical canine behavior exhibited by wolves in Yellowstone Park.

Speaking of, I found it odd that the young couple with the custom "WOLF 39" plates on their SUV had two wolf-look-alike husky dogs locked in their car, ignored, while they stood around outside for hours with their hands in their pockets, waiting to see wolves.  I wondered why they didn't leave their pseudo-wolf dogs at home.  It seems silly to bring pet dogs along if you going to leave them locked up the whole time, watching you have fun.

The howling wolf lost interest fairly quickly and wandered off with a piece of meat to enjoy in private.   All of the people were chatty and excited, and all because we had watched an animal that looked like a mangy stray dog chew on some bloody flesh and then lift its leg to pee on some sage brush, before wandering away.  The other wolf trotted around the pond to where some other parts of the carcass had been dragged, and gnawed on those while some Canadian geese floated quietly past nearby. 

Not long after the wolves left, a pair of grizzly bears came around for lunch. 

A coyote was sitting nearby in the tall grass, patiently waiting for the bears to leave, and when they did, it made its way over to get a nibble. But then the younger bear took notice and ran towards the coyote, scaring it away. The second bear joined the chase, but of course they weren’t fast enough to actually catch the coyote, and it scampered away unscathed.  In the cold windy drizzle I got some fuzzy pictures of the drama.

Eventually the bears had enough and wandered back from whence they had come.

One average-sized bison carcass is enough to feed dozens of animals for several days, so this tableau repeated itself numerous times over that amount of time.  I came around a half dozen times myself, hoping to get a more dramatic glimpse than the last time.  The proximity to the park road gave everybody a nice clear view of the spectacle of nature, yet the animals almost completely ignored the throngs of spectators watching them play their game of "Survivor:  The Real Version."

Don't forget that Yellowstone is brimming with amazing hydrothermal features.  These are the most touristy areas of the park, but they are still worth seeing, as Yellowstone has more geothermal activity than any other place in the world.  In fact, half of all the geothermal activity in the world is in Yellowstone. 

The Midway geyser basin is steamy and surreal.

I had more hikes planned on this trip, but wasn't able to do most of them.  It was May, and much of the park was under snow, especially the southern regions.  Many park facilities were still closed for the winter. The northern areas of the park are at lower elevations and usually get less snow than the south does.  Next time, I'm bringing snowshoes.

I did have a nice walk along the Gardiner River where it flows through the Sheepeater Canyon.  There, all of the crowds and road noise disappeared, and it magically transformed into the Yellowstone that I had come to see, the Yellowstone of wilderness.  I took just a few steps away from the parking lot before all signs of human activity, other than the trail, disappeared and it was just me, the river, the canyon and the woods.  The trail itself faded away after a while. During this visit, I spent a lot of time thinking about my last girlfriend, who was the last person I visited Yellowstone with before this solo trip.  It made me sad until I realized that, without her, I could go wherever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, go to sleep whenever I wanted, get up whenever I wanted, eat whatever I wanted, and not have to feel like a criminal for any of it.

I had really hoped to find some river otters on this trip, and although I spent some time specifically looking for those guys, even at Otter Creek, I didn't find any.  I also hiked up to Trout Lake.  A sign said to watch for river otters, but I didn’t see any there either. Too bad, because that would be a great thrill.  I love those guys.  At the trailhead, there was a nasty photo of a miserable otter with a fish hook and line stuck in its mouth. If sport fishing isn’t one of the most sadistic things ever, I don’t know what is.

On the slope beneath Trout Lake, I did see some fresh burrows that looked like they were dug by hungry badgers. Those creatures are amazingly prodigious excavators, and they hunt simply by digging their prey out of their burrows.

The loop around Trout Lake was only a mile or so, and afterwards I was ready for more. So I went farther towards the northeast park boundary where I planned to hike along Pebble Creek. But when I got there, it was cold and overcast and starting to rain, so I got in the back of the van and took a nap instead. I also went up to the Beaver Lakes near Mammoth Hot Springs, because someone said they had seen an otter there.  When I got there, I saw a muskrat, which I think had been mistaken for an otter by the other folks.

Beaver Lakes near Mammoth Hot Springs.

Regardless of my failure to find otters, this particular visit was a smashing success in terms of wildlife viewing, having seen many bears, wolves, pronghorns and bison.  I also was lucky enough to see three moose, a couple of bald eagles, a nesting great horned owl, a ring necked pheasant, a swan and some wading birds.  I saw more wild animals the first day I was in the park on this visit than I saw in an entire summer spent in the park working concessions in 1988.

Crafty ravens frequent Yellowstone parking areas, looking for scraps and handouts.
Despite their boldness, it is illegal to feed them or any other park animals.
I couldn't resist and tossed a few sunflower seeds out to this guy. 
But I kept all of the smoked almonds to myself.  Those things are devilishly good.

Road construction is a never-ending process in Yellowstone National Park, and you can expect to encounter delays and closures during your visit.  Be sure to check the park newspaper and pay attention to the signs.

On my way home, I got caught in a ferocious hailstorm near Cheyenne, Wyoming, which left a bunch of little dents all over my van.  I couldn't believe that it didn't crack the windshield.  Hailstones were coming down like bullets and hitting the glass and metal.  The noise was like gun-shot sounds all around me, and worst right in front of me, which was rather distressing.  I stopped on the open highway, and turned my vehicle around facing the wrong way on the median, to try to minimize the force with which the hail was pelting my van.  It helped, but not much.  The few other cars and trucks had stopped too.  I saw some horses in the field nearby and felt bad for them having to stand around in the storm.

Wyoming is one of the toughest states to drive in, due to the extreme weather year-round and lack of services.  Almost every highway in the state has gates in various places to close the roads when the weather gets brutal.  Help is little and far between.  If you are going to drive across Wyoming, be sure your vehicle is running good.  I changed the alternator on my van before I embarked on this journey, even though the old alternator was still working fine.  But it had about two hundred and fifteen thousand miles on it, which is a pretty long time for an alternator to run before it dies.  So I decided to pre-emptively replace it so that I wouldn't have to worry about it the whole time, like I did when I went to Santa Fe a couple of months prior to this trip.

Here is more information about Yellowstone from the National Park Service:

http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wolves.htm

And, here is a video of how NOT to interact with bison!:

Just before the bison goes beserk, you can see that
it was hit by a shoe thrown by someone off camera.