On Safari In Yellowstone

Yellowstone surprised and excited in so many ways. This was my first experience in the United State's first National Park. I knew that people came from all over the world to see this gem.  But I hadn't heard that it was called the "American Serengeti." I would quickly understand how apt the description really was.

We drove to Yellowstone from Butte Montana in beautiful 78 degree temps. It was so warm that we stopped at a beach along the Madison River just outside of the west entrance to the park. It wasn't long before the eagles started soaring overhead. First a pair of adults and then a juvenile. We had hiked about a quarter of a mile along the only narrow path leading to the beach, and once we were there we felt very isolated. I couldn't help thinking about the grizzly bear maulings that had occurred a couple of months earlier at a campground outside of Yellowstone. Were we close? I wasn't sure. Humans are rarely attacked and killed by grizzlies. Yet it had happened.... My concerns were heightened when Louis Leakey, I mean Hilary, discovered the skeleton of an elk just off the path that was our only escape route. Yikes! Yellowstone was the real deal. We made our way back to the car, warding off potential attacks by singing songs to alert any lurking predators. Hilary instructed me that once attacked, however, I shouldn't run or make any noise at all. Rather, I was to lie face-down with legs and arms spread. Why? Hopefully to save at least a limb or two. Comforting thoughts as I picked up the pace.

The advantages of seeing Yellowstone in the fall included fewer crowds.  But we didn't know that fewer crowds meant fewer opened campgrounds. And because it was late it the day (it seems we are chronically late for everything,) our options were pretty limited. So our campsite was not ideal.  It was exposed to the rest of the campground, it was close to the road, and we were surrounded by RVs the size of Muni buses. To make matters worse, our air mattress deflated in the middle of our first night (we suspect Layla) and we ended up sleeping on the very cold (30 degrees,) very hard ground. I felt 100 years old getting out of our tent the next morning. And the sound of those f___ing RV generators... But we eventually settled in and even after the nicer campsites opened up, the trouble of re-locating didn't seem worth it.  We were bonding with our neighbors and the elk regularly walked through our campsite. All in all, "it was the best of campsites, it was the worst of campsites."

On our way to get a new air mattress, we stopped to watch a herd of elk and chatted up a ranger who told us about a grizzly and her cubs that were in the opposite direction of the sporting store we were headed towards. Screeech. Stop the presses. We turned the car around and had a new mission.  And that's pretty much the way it went for us in Yellowstone. We'd get a hot tip and we'd go for it.  On that particular day, we never found the griz (please note the local vernacular) but we were directed to the Lamar Valley where wolves were supposed to be eating the carcass of an elk. We were all over it.

When we arrived in Lamar Valley coyotes were on the carcass, but we didn't have to wait long for the wolf to return. She hit the scene at a full run and the coyotes were, in the words of Duane Kuiper, "outa here." This wolf was beautiful. She was a grey wolf, though her coloring was a tawny red, similar to that of the coyotes. But she was much taller and much bigger. We were told that she was the alpha female of the Lamar Canyon pack, a newer pack that included two darker male brothers and four pups. Apparently, the "group" had just become the "pack" because they had reproduced (there are people in this park who are truly obsessed and know everything about these wolves.) She ripped away at the flesh of the unfortunate elk while the coyotes hovered in the background. What a sight! We high-fived each other for such excellent luck oduring our first 24 hours in the park.

Back on the home front, things would temporarily take a turn for the worse. We had abandoned our plan to get the air-mattress in order to chase bears and wolves. So by the time we got to the stores, they were closed of course.  Damn. We were going to have to sleep in the car. Oh well, it would be a character builder, right? And how bad could it be after sleeping on the ground the night before? Actually, it wasn't that bad for me, but Layla shared Hilary's side of the car and apparently it wasn't as good for him.  We bought a new air mattress first thing the next morning.

Lamar Valley is where most of the action takes place in Yellowstone. Unfortunately, our campground was almost an hour and a half away, so we did a lot of driving. But driving is really the best way to see the wild-life at Yellowstone and we  never knew what we might see around the next bend. This was a true safari. We saw herds of elk and stampeding buffalo. We saw pronghorn  antelope with exotic tribal markings and the healthiest and most beautiful coyotes I've ever seen.  We saw eagles, albino red-tail hawks, trumpeter swans, river otters and more.  But we were in "big game hunter mode" and we wanted to see the bad-ass grizzlies. 

It took a couple of days. And the false alarms were sooo disappointing.  Once, I was so sure I'd spotted a bear, I was literally jumping up and down on the side of the road.  And then I saw a tail move.  F__ing buffalo again.  This happened more than once.  But just when we accepted that our bear adventures were a thing of the past, there they were - two grizzlies at one time - one chasing the other up the hill at full speed.  There is something that's both comical and beautiful about these huge bears running. It was close to thirty minutes before we lost sight of them and moved along to follow the next hot tip.

We were told that a really big grizzly had been on a bison carcass earlier in the day.  By the time we got to the scene, there were only ravens on the carcass.  But we were told that the bear, and maybe even wolves, might be back at daybreak.  So we got up at 5:30 in the morning and headed off.  There were already about 20 cars lined up when we arrived and dozens of people with scopes, some the size of a small house. This was a very good sign.  As I adjusted my binocs, I asked the man next to me what was going on.  I'll never forget his response.  In a thick German accent, and with the "Moonie eyes" of someone who'd just seen God, he said "a bear and seven wolves."

We had already seen the National Geographic television series a couple of times.  But this was the National Geographic movie. The biggest grizzly that most watching had ever laid eyes on, was standing over the bison carcass while the Black-Point wolf pack circled it. They were all grey wolves but two were actually black, and two were a tawney color. One of the black wolves would try to grab a bite of the carcass and the bear would paw at him and he'd quickly move back.  The largest grey wolf, the female leader of the pack, would nip at the bear's leg and he'd turn around and do a face-off until she'd back down. The wolves circled and harassed the bear like this for over an hour, but the bear never left the carcass. We were later told that this bear was a very "experienced" bear. A less experienced bear might have chased one of the wolves, allowing the pack to move in and surround the carcass, making it difficult for the bear to return.  But this big boy stayed put.  Even when he was full, rather than leave, he actually took a nap on top of the carcass. Even seasoned Yellowstone experts said they had never seen anything like this before.

Then it got even better. A second grizzly, a beautiful cinnamon colored bear, appeared on the scene. While the wolves couldn't make the big guy budge, they were able to move as a pack toward the cinnamon bear and chase her back into the woods.  They did this twice. The cinnamon bear was obviously an "inexperienced" bear. When the Ranger showed up and was filled in on the details, he paused for a few seconds and summed it all up with an accent that was pure Montana, "Well that sounds like quite a show."

We hadn't had coffee yet, so we drove to Cooke City, now infamous as the scene of the earlier grizzly maulings. The locals were understandably upset by this unfortunate event. It was a horrible tragedy all the way around. One man was killed and two others were injured when an undernourished female grizzly marauded a campground. To make matters worse, business was suffering because all of the campgrounds in the immediate area were closed and tourists were generally staying away. We seemed to sense a little resentment towards the wolves. I knew there was a raging controversy surrounding the restoration of the wolves into Yellowstone fifteen years earlier. Elk hunters didn't want any competition and farmers were afraid that the wolves would wipe out their stock. But some of the locals seemed to think that the bears had become more aggressive after the wolves appeared. They suspected that the grizzlies had less to eat because the wolves were competing for the same food.  Not so, according to representatives of the Wolf Project, the group that initiated and still closely follows the restoration project. They say the grizzlies are healthier than ever before. They point out that wolves, unlike grizzlies, are excellent hunters.  But once the wolves kill an animal, the grizzlies can easily muscle their way in and take over the kill. So the bears are actually getting more food than they did before the arrival of  the wolves. In addition, the wolves keep the coyote (their enemies) and elk (their favorite prey) populations in check. And the antelope population, previously close to extinction, has once again become abundant. According to the folks at the Wolf Project, the wolves are responsible for restoring balance to Yellowstone. By the way, I got most of this information by eavesdropping on "Rick" from the Wolf Project giving a lecture to a visiting class of high school students. Hilary joined me well into the presentation and when Rick asked the class if anyone could explain why the antelope population had increased after the introduction of the wolves, Hilary blurted out the correct answer (the decrease in  the coyote population was responsible.) I'm not sure that the class appreciated the input, but Rick and I were both very impressed.

While we were in Cooke City, we were encouraged to drive along Beartooth Pass, a scenic byway spanning Montana and Wyoming and called by some the "most beautiful road on earth." Mountain goats and Bighorn sheep inhabit the cliffs, some as high as 11,000 feet. We saw dozens of perfect mountain lakes and the views were spectacular. Then, another hot (literally) tip led us to Boiling River, where thermal waters rise from the ground and then fall into the Gardiner River forming jacuzzi like pools of warm water. We let the waters carry us downstream to the warmer waters and it was very relaxing until we tried to get back upstream. The guy struggling along side of us said it was the hardest thing he had ever done. I'm a criminal defense attorney, so I have done harder things. But the currents were very strong and it was difficult to move back up the river with my bathing-suit bottom intact.

After 6 nights in Yellowstone we were ready to move on. It was one of the best experiences of our lives, but camping is really hard work, especially in the rain , and our enthusiasm was waning. We were starting to feel like farmers with a million early morning chores. Sometimes we were exhausted by the time we left our site for the day. Worse, I found myself growing envious of the RV crowd and all their "stuff." I''d grimace as they smugly drove their noisy, politically incorrect Munis past out campsite every morning giving us those "thank God it's them and not us" looks. Enough was enough. But we weren't quite ready to leave the wilderness behind. We had gotten a taste of Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone's achingly beautiful next door neighbor on a day trip. But we hadn't found the moose that famously reside there and we wanted to give it another shot. And so it was decided. We would stay a few more days and stalk the moose in the Grand Tetons from the luxury of a new base camp - the Motel 6 in Jackson Hole.

* Hopefully, our friends with zoom lenses will forward us some of the more dramatic events that could only be seen with binoculars.

The Road to Nowhere

And a Grizzly Find

Welcome to Yellowstone

You Never Know Who Is Around The Corner

Mugging For The Camera

The Mule Deer Are Very Cute

Tower Falls, Yellowstone

Old Faithful

Beartooth Mountain, Cooke City

Consider Yourself Warned

Dangerous when irritated or harassed in any way

We are getting close to the top

Very, very close to the top

And finally the top

We have arrived

Hilary with our neighbor Terry - we like him even though he has a big RV

Quaking Aspens in Grand Teton

Looking pretty good after 6 days without a shower

Hilary and Layla have some alone time on Jackson Lake in Grand Teton

This black bear walked right in front of our car

And stopped to drink out of a mud puddle

We think we are the luckiest people alive

Still the most beautiful wildlife of all

S'cuse Me While I Kiss The Sky

We made it back into the US last week without incident.  Some countries are happy to see us.  Before heading for Seattle to pay homage to Hilary's Guitar God, we spent a couple of days with a friend in Friday Harbor, the only real town on San Juan Island, Washington. We took the ferry from Sidney, B.C. while reading the brochures that told us to get ready for "island time."  I thought that only applied in tropical climates but I was wrong.  On any island, you can't just get up and go - at a minimum, you have to wait for some way to get off of an island. So you are almost forced to relax a bit.  That was fine with us - we've been on "island time" this whole trip.

San Juan Island is the second largest and most populous of the San Juan Islands with about 6800 people in an area of about 55 square miles.  It seems to be a fairly upscale community, although we did see a smattering of single-wides with confederate flags covering the windows as we drove around the island.  And our friend Bill told he thought he saw a homeless person once (he has lived there for about seven years.)  As we chatted with the islanders, I sensed what seemed to be a bit of an independent, pioneer spirit.  These are, after all, people who have chosen to live a little off the grid.  And apparently you get to do stuff here that's not allowed on the mainland - like running around and shooting deer with bow and arrows.  Sadly, Bill reported finding a victim on his front lawn last week.  So we were cautious as we toured the rest of the island.  It was fun to hook up with another rabid Giants fan while on the island; we watched the Giants beat Arizona and the Cubs beat the Padres on Bill's satellite TV while we were there.  And by the way, how fun is it to be a Giants fan right now?  I can't wait to watch them in the playoffs on a 60" screen in some bar in Rapid City South Dakota.

Next it was on to Seattle where the big event was going to be the Jimi Hendrix Museum.  Only there wasn't a Jimi Hendrix Museum.  But there is something called the Experience Music Project, which does contain the largest collection of JH memorabilia in the world.  That would have to do.  We made the best of it, but I have to say we were disappointed.  There were a few great film clips but it's not like we learned anything new.  But we did get to see the butterfly outfit from his last concert on the Isle of Wight and the white stratocaster that he played at Woodstock.  And then we played around in these simulated sound studios for a while.  Oh well, you can't hit a  home run at every at-bat.

I have to say that I loved Seattle though.  Maybe it wouldn't have looked as spectacular without the perfect 75 degree weather.  But it just had a great vibe to it.  In fact, it felt a lot like San Francisco.  And although I haven't been away long enough to get homesick, I felt the strong attachment I have to my own very cool city. We are heading for Yellowstone now - straight into an oncoming thunderstorm actually.  But we don't care; we seem to have excellent wildlife luck in bad weather.

                                                Can you tell where we are now?

                                               Paying homage to fallen hero

                                               So-So Experience Music Project

Fooling around in the sound studio

Drum solo

Mix-master "Mos Deaf" Hilary

                                     Hanging with our gracious host on San Juan Island

                                 Layla walking Bill around the island

                                              Lime Kiln Lighthouse                                                

Cool tree

                                     Getting ready for the Giants game with devil dog

                                      Big sky on way to Spokane

Bonnie and Clyde hit British Columbia

We love the Canadians.  We have had nothing but wonderful experiences with every single Canadian we  have met so far.  They are charming, engaging, and really, really funny.  However, the Canadian customs agents who met us at the border were none of those things when we disembarked the ferry that had taken us from Port Angeles to Victoria.  Looking back, we are quite sure that we were met with suspicion and hostility before we ever opened our mouths.  What? After all these years, did we still fit the "smugglers profile?"  What?  It spiralled downward quickly when the first customs agent we encountered (hereinafter "Canadian Bitch #1") took issue with our rather vague travel plans. When Hilary's response to "Where are you going while in Canada?" and "How long will you be in Canada?" was "We're not really sure," we were pretty much screwed.  It turns out that "not really sure" was not really the best response.  I seemed to make matters worse when I tried to clear things up by telling her we were thinking  in terms of "week-ish" (you know, close to a week) as opposed to "month-ish."  But when I blurted out that we were pretty sure we would be going to San Juan Island at some point during our stay (San Juan Island is in the USA not in Canada,) that was it.  You'd think I'd just told her that I was there to shoot eagles. While all of the other cars from the ferry were waived through the various stations, we were directed to an ominous stall in the far corner of the parking lot and turned over to a second customs agent (hereinafter "Canadian bitch #2".)  Hilary, still unaware that we were being sent to the gulags, asked Canadian Bitch #1 if she could recommend a place for lunch.  Suspicion and hostility turned to incredulity.  No, she had no lunch recommendations.  Just move along to the the public enemy #1 stall please.

Not that appearances matter, but both of the Canadian Bitches looked like major league umpires.  I'm not sure if it was unfortunate breeding or just large bullet-proof vests.  While CB#1 had made us feel really stupid, CB #2 scared us.  Sarcasm oozed when she asked where we would be spending "this, uh, week-ish of yours?" Geez, Lake Louise.  They were not going to let my "week-ish" blunder go.  CB#2 proceeded to interrogate us about our backgrounds, what we did now, what we used to do, who we used to work for, how it was that we were no longer working, whether we had criminal records, whether we had ever been turned away at a border before, etc., etc., etc.  Our passports were taken and the umpires conferred amongst themselves for what seemed like a really long time while we sat in the "suspects" stall , sadly waving goodbye to the friends we had made on the ferry.   CB#2 finally returned, handed us the passports and without saying a word she gestured toward the exit gate. We left without a recommendation for lunch.

The upside of our chilly reception of course was that things could only get better for the "Ugly Americans."  We found lunch on our own, thank-you very much, and took in Victoria's picturesque and fairy-tale like sights.  But we didn't stay long.  The next day we set off for Tofino, a small town on the western coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Rim National Reserve.  We were ready for some serious wildlife action.  So far, our most exciting wildlife sighting was the cow vs. elk match in the Lake Quinault region of the Olympic Peninsula (we were surprised that it was the cow that prevailed; after a mock charge, the herd of elk beat a hasty retreat while the cow gave a couple of victory donkey-kicks and swaggered back to his pack.)  Anyway, our mission on Vancouver Island was clear.  We were going to find the bears that the Australians told us were eating salmon along the banks of the rivers on the wild western side of the island.  The drive from Victoria to Tofino took us north along the infamous Malacot Highway, much like our Highway 1, and then west through rain forests and First Nation reservations.  The water here is spectacular.  There are lakes of every shape and size.  There are rivers and there are creeks.  And there are hundreds of waterfalls that trickled down the cliffs on our way to Tofino, and that gushed down the cliffs on our way back after three continuous days of rain.

We had planned on camping at one of the four star campgrounds - "Provincial Parks" as they are called here in Canada.  But the rain put a serious damper (pun intended) on our plans and we were forced to upgrade to a small cabin on the ocean (alas, no Motel 6s in Tofino.)  And given the weather, it was really nice to have a little "home" to return to after our increasingly wet and wild adventures.

We began to see eagles almost immediately - soaring in the sky and perching on snags - sometimes in pairs and sometimes alone.  But the bears were the main attraction.  And after our initial attempts at tracking were met with frustration, (as it turns out, they were not just sitting on the side of the road waiting to entertain us) we hit the bear lottery.  Some of the locals directed us to the Thorton Hill Hatchery where we were told that bears were often sighted fishing for salmon in the streams.  And that's where we found them.  Looking just like a National Geographic special.  On our first day we saw five of them. They waited patiently and then pounced on the fish that were desperately struggling to make it upstream.  Apparently the salmon only "run"  like this for three or four weeks out of the year as they return to their own breeding grounds to spawn.  This  alone would have been worth the price of admission.  These salmon were actually launching themselves out of the river and up the waterfalls before our very eyes.  We were very lucky to be in the right place at just the right time to witness this spectacle.  We watched the bears for over an hour that first day and only left when my fingers went numb and I was afraid they would fall off.  We went back the next day and there they were again.  This time, three of them.  Catching fish that were three feet long.  Sitting on rocks to rest.  Watching us from the forest above before they moved into the river.  Moving in and out of the forest.  And my favorite, standing with all four paws on one rock and peering into the water.  I took hundreds of pictures, but none of them really captured what I saw.

You need to know that our adventure was not without a measure of danger.  We were warned to move slowly when approaching the bears and to give them space if they started moving toward us.  But there were times when I couldn't see them all at once, and all of a sudden one would be climbing out of the water 20 ft away.  Yikes!  Hilary was definitely braver than I was.  At one point, he just sort of stood his ground as one of the bigger bears climbed out of the water with a huge salmon in its mouth and walked right in front of him.  All I could do was hold my breath and hope that the bear was more interested in the fish than in Hilary. I did have the presence of mind, however, to ask the guy standing next to me to snap a photo if anything horrible happened.  "That would work well in the blog" I thought to myself .  I'd call that one "husband getting eaten by bear."  Luckily, the bear was more interested in eating his salmon than eating Hilary and he took off into the woods without a sideways look.  But man, is that an adventure or what? 

On that second day, it was really hard to get back in our car and leave those bears behind.  We knew we might never see anything like that again.  Then I realized that what had made this whole experience so exquisite was that we knew that as we were experiencing it.  We were fully present, watching those bears, in that river, at that moment. It was "zen and the art of bear watching," courtesy of the bears of Vancouver Island.  And all we could say was "thank-you."

                                                     My favorite bear pose                                    

                                                      Hunting for salmon

                                                 Wish I were a better photographer

                                                  Hilary watching it all unfold                                      

Hanging with Kurt Cobain in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington

Layla enjoying the ferry to Victoria

The beautiful Oregon coast

Sand art after the storm

           My favorite sign - (if we don't stop having so much fun, I may need these soon)

Going Rogue in Oregon

That's "Rogue" as in the Rogue River.  It's all about the Rogue in southern and central Oregon. The Rogue River runs through Grants Pass, our first stopover on the way to Crater Lake.  And it's Rogue this and Rogue that.  There's the Rogue Cinema.  All of the restaurants are called Rogue something or other.  There's the Rogue Tattoo Parlor.  And it's very green and beautiful, but of course all I can think about is Sarah Palin.  Especially because the nice Canadians we keep running into actually say "you betcha."

Did I mention that Grants Pass is gorgeous?  It sits in a valley surrounded by cedar forests that encircle the horizon with these unusual scallop shapes. The white water rafting industry is big here and a there are a million places along the river offering various camping and boating excursions.  But we Motel Sixed it again in Grants Pass.  My concerns about whether Motel 6s would do it for us, as we've become a bit more "high end" over the years, have been completely assuaged.  We are just fine.  In fact, we fit in a little better there than in some of the chi-chi resorts that we've gotten ripped off at over the last 20 years.  And dogs are always welcome. 

Grants Pass also has the best YMCA I've ever seen. We've been trying to keep up our morning swims wherever we can and the pool there is the size of two Olympic pools and has a cedar roof that gives you the sense that you are swimming in the forest.  We have noticed, however, that there is a large retiree population in both Northern California as well as in Oregon.  And they do tend to crowd you out of the swimming lanes as they come to life around 9:30 a.m. and the pools take on this "Cocoonish" atmosphere.  But Grants Pass wasn't as bad as Eureka a couple of days earlier when we felt like we were swimming in Lourdes.  They came with oxygen tanks, they came in wheelchairs, they came on stretchers.  Okay, there were no stretchers, but there are a lot of retirees in this part of the country, and we are finding it's best to get to the pools before the water-aerobic classes start.

We hoped we were ready for camping at Crater Lake.  We knew that this would be the test. Although we slept in our tent in the Humboldt Redwoods, the weather was warm there and we went out to dinner every night - not exactly roughing it.  Crater Lake would be different.  Temperatures dropped into the 30s at night and we would be cooking over fires - real manly-man camping.  Again, we did just fine.  The campsites felt remote and isolated.  And there's something about cooking your food and percolating your coffee over a fire - everything just tastes better.  And Crater Lake itself was pretty amazing.  It is a blue like no other blue I've seen.  It is the deepest lake in the United States (1943 feet) and apparently the intense color comes from the way light is reflected into such depth.  What we didn't know in advance, was how treacherous this place is.  The lake was formed when a volcano collapsed into itself and it is ringed by cliffs almost 2000 feet high.  This means stomach turning drops from all of the viewing points (many that have no walls or guard rails between you and the lake below.)  Once you are there, you see lots of  warning signs showing little stick people falling to their death.  And there are signs reminding us that off-leash dogs have disappeared forever.  Needless to say, Layla stayed in the car a lot at Crater Lake.

When we were packing up to leave a couple of days later, we got a hot tip from our Australian neighbors about some hot springs somewhere along the back road to the Oregon coast.  We found the Tokatee Springs in a lush and isolated Douglas Fir forest.  We hiked about a half mile up a very steep trail and there they were. Several natural hot springs - the hottest 110 degrees - overlooking the river and the forest below.  Heaven on Earth.

Leaving SF

                                                                    Confusion Hil

Tee in Tree

Redwood Art

                                                              Welcome to Crater Lake

                                                               And to a cool waterfall

                                                 Hilary teaching Layla how to guard the tent

                                                              Layla guarding the tent

                                                             World's best campsite

Heavenly Hot Springs

                                                                     Signing off