So we did actually get out of the car for a bit and go for a little hike. The first place we were going to hike was where the bison were stampeding. It looked good — pretty open country, a nice game trail that went up to the top of the ridge. However, when the German tourists came down from the same game trail we’d been looking at, they told us that there was a bear up in the patch of trees you could see from the road, and that he was “very grümpy” (there was definitely an umlaut on his pronunciation!) and that the bear had woofed at them. Considering the events of last week, and all the chaos in that particular stretch — hiking tourists, a couple of runners (?!), stampeding bison, we decided to go someplace where all the animals, including the humans, seemed less riled up.

So we drove down the road, found a turnout and headed uphill. We were on game trails most of the time, but there was a lot of bison sign.

This is a little tricky to see (my iPhone is pretty good, but it’s not a real camera) but it’s a stick, about 18 inches high, covered with bison fur. We saw a couple of these, along with some shady places where the bison had wallowed, and then when we came up and over the ridge (the photo above shows the view from the top) we came across a big sandy buffalo wallow on the edge of a heavily eroded gully. We stopped and looked at the view for a while. One of the other things one forgets about Yellowstone is what the sheer size is. There is SO much country without roads. That entire valley below us was just there, no roads, no improvements, no scenic overlooks.

On the way down we passed an enormous, burned log. It was probably 25 feet long, and there were tow or three of these places where the tree had been polished. It looks like the bison had been using it to scratch themselves on, and it was really beautiful. The grain in the wood was both polished and worn away in grooves.

While one always has to keep an eye out both inside and outside the park for big animals — whether it’s bears (black or grizzly) or lions or elk/moose/deer/bison — if you keep your wits about you, and use some common sense, it’s completely worth getting out of the car, off the boardwalks, and taking an actual walk in the park. This was just a baby hike — we maybe went uphill for half an hour, forty minutes, then looked at the view and came back, but we saw stuff we would never have seen otherwise.

This time of year the only safe place to hike is Yellowstone, so since it was a gorgeous day yesterday, off we went.

It was the last day that the roads are open, so we headed down to Swan Lake flats and took off to the west. About an hour in, we saw two grizzlies, high on a ridge to the south of us, eating grubs or something. I don’t have a photo, but they were unbelievably beautiful up on the high ridge with the sunlight gleaming off their guard hairs. They were illuminated. Meanwhile, a couple of magpies were making a big noise in the gully just below us — which usually means someone is afoot. I’m always a little nervous about bears, especially this time of year, but it turned out to be two big bull elk, who picked their way out of the gully, and went to hide in another glade one ridge over from us.

We had our eye out for antlers, because my sweetie is a dedicated horn hunter, although in Yellowstone you’re not allowed to collect them. We’d been hiking about an hour and a half when we found this festive pile, which some other frustrated horn hunter had left behind.

The weather was spectacular. There was a big storm system moving in from the southwest, but we lucked out and spent the entire day in a doughnut hole of sunshine. This is the view to the southwest — by the end of the day those big peaks were all engulfed in snow showers.

We tend not to hike on trails, but rather just take off across country. We spent a lot of time yesterday on a big exposed ridge like this one, hiking from elk antler to elk antler. We also saw a couple of buffalo — solitary bulls — who kept a wary eye on us from afar. And one funny little group of young bull elk who we later figured out had been spooked up from the bottom by a couple of hikers on the trail, then were really freaked out to find us coming down from the ridgetop. There were maybe seven or eight of them — mostly four- and five-point bucks, with weirdly enough, a couple of cows mixed in, as well as a spike or two. They were quite beautiful.

Finally, way up on a high ridge, we found another, even bigger, festive horn assemblage. This was at the top of a ridge, and you could just see the white tines sticking up from below.

On the way out of the park, we encountered four big bison on the road, just ambling along, owning the road. My camera ran out of batteries so I didn’t get a photo of them, but they passed maybe five feet from the open driver’s window, and they’d clearly come out of the timber, because they were festooned with sticks.

All in all, a gorgeous day in the park. Animals, beautiful views, piles of horns, and aside from the two people we saw over there on the trail, we didn’t see any other people all day. Then home, slighly sore, to a beer and dinner and a fire in the woodstove. A perfect day.

On Sunday, Chuck and I went off on an adventure — we headed over to the backside of Livingston Peak to look for mushrooms and elk horns. We’d just crossed a ridge that bordered private land, and were talking about how goofy the Icelandic horses in the field looked with their long long manes when Chuck stopped suddenly.

About 100 feet below us, under a big fir tree, was a bear. A pretty big bear. Not a stupendously big bear, but big enough. He didn’t seem to see us, and the Icelandic horses didn’t seem too upset, so we figured he was a regular in the neighborhood. Chuck pulled out his binoculars, and because I’m a scaredy-cat, I watched the bear through the little space over his shoulder and under the binocs.

The bear was digging for something under the tree. We quietly got down closer to the ground, as slowly and silently as possible I unclipped my pack and unzipped the outer compartment where the bear spray was (astonishing how loud things can sound when you’re trying to be silent). The bear was still down there, digging around under the tree, eating small plants. Chuck kept passing me the binoculars, but I was too scared that I’d see them fill up with charging bear, so I kept handing them back.

But the bear didn’t charge. We watched him for five or ten minutes before he ambled down the drainage. From what we could tell, he was maybe three to five years old, with a beautiful grizzled coat. He didn’t have a big hump (which is why we think he was young) but he did have big claws, and Chuck said he saw through the binoculars that he had “big shiny white incisors”. He was a gorgeous, healthy bear, doing bear things, and we felt so grateful (even if I was really scared) to have had the chance to watch him for a little bit.

After the bear left, we continued hiking. We bushwhacked up through a lovely fir forest. It was much more open inside than it looked like from the outside — glade after glade, many of which were speckled with yellow Glacier Lillies. We found a very cool exposed ridge at the top, which, when we came around on the downhill side turned out to be a really spectacular cliff. On the way down we followed a creek, which met another creek, and then another one. It thunderstormed in the afternoon, and the creeks came up visibly. We saw a lot of elk and moose sign, as well as some large bear scats, but we didn’t see any other animals.

It was such a fun adventure. Bushwhacking around, looking at things, the bear, and then the kind of soaking rain we so rarely get around here. We made it back to the car, drenched, and about five minutes from being really cold, then drove home through nearly-flooded roads with the heat on high, and the car steaming up, drinking a beer and talking about what a fun day we’d had, and how lucky we are to live here.