Saturday 6 SeptAbout Yellowstone - formed by a huge volcanic erruption 640,000 years ago. Most of the park is what remains of the crater or caldera. Mount Washburn is one of the only mountains left - the other being visible a few miles away from the top. The Geyers and hot springs as a result of channelled hot rock and air left over from the eruption. More amazing is the remains of a petrified tree 50 million years ago - a redwood (usually associated with warmer climates), there were 3 - but the tourists chopped bits off the other 2 and now the last one is enclosed like a national monument. The park was the world's first national park in the last 1800s - but even this did not protect it and the government sent in the calvary to manage the park the a while to protect it. The first tours went round in stage coaches! The park is huge - 2 main loops of about 80 miles each, with geysers, waterfalls, canyon, hot springs, wildlife (wolves, bears, eagles) - there is so much to see and learn - 5 days doesn't cut the surface. Sunday 7 SeptWolves - wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1980s ish - about 17 in all. There are now over 170 split into 7-8 packs each with their own territory - the size of which depends on the abundance of elk, deer etc as their main source of food. The wolves are completely wild - some are killed by fights between packs - there was one such fight 2 days ago in the North side of the park. Today we decided to do some serious animal hunting, the wolf and bear having alluded us so far. We got back to camp at 5pm and cooked up some burgers and couscous - half of which landed on the floor of the tent (another entry!), and set off at dusk to see what we could see. The rangers advice was to drive the road in the Lamar Valley as this was the best place to spot wildlife. Indeed, we did see pronghorn deer here for the first time in the park. As we got to the end of the road, CT spotted a group of cars, another piece of advice of the ranger - to join the crowd and ask what they had seen. It turned out there was a pack of black wolves roaming around an area about ½ a mile away. We weren't able to see this without the binos - but with them you could spot 3-4 black spots which occasionally looked like wolves. The children couldn't really see anything - so at 8.30pm we went back to camp Monday 7 SeptWolves - Part 2. Really cold night - frost on the ground and the camp tap was frozen! We set off at 6.30am back to the place we were yesterday, and there were about 10 cars parked up and about 20 people on the hillside observing the wolves with their scopes and super camera lenses. CT walked up the hill and radioed back that you could clearly see 8-9 black wolves and it was worth getting the children shoed & jacketed to come up. It turned out when we got there that many of the people were British - all of which offered for us to look through their scopes. The wolves had made a run for a prong horn before we arrived and were just milling about. It was freezing though and although the fog had been burned off by the rising sun, the girls could not feel their toes so we went back to camp for a porridge breakfast.We packed up and went back to Mammoth to get the girls sworn in for another Junior Park Ranger - announced in front of everyone at the visitors centre.