We again had some visitors for breakfast, a trio of elk this time.
We checked out some of the maps we got from Cameron and set off hoping to find wolves.
It's been pretty cold all day with showers here and there. At times it's gotten down as low as about 7C! That's well below what we get as an overnight temp in the middle of winter.
Along the way we encountered a lot of pronghorns and bison including one walking along in our lane causing a traffic jam. It was a much bigger traffic jam though that was caused by a black bear family. Dad just below the road foraging alone and mum and Cubs high up a tree. The ranger said a bit before we arrived the male had had a bit of a "scruff" of the female who had thoroughly put him in his place lol after about half an hour of watching them all the male decided to cross the road catching some of our fellow Watters by surprise but he didn't care about them, he just ambled over, drank from a puddle and went in up the other side.
There have been some fires through the park, one of them where a wolf den is/was? Either way we couldn't see any signs of wolves.
We took a walk along a river and Pete found a chunk of buffalo hair. Having tried it out as a beard then hair he decided as hair it really worked, helping to keep him warm lol
A gorgeous swan caught our attention for a few minutes just before we stopped by a pretty river for some lunch.
We went looking for pika and found nothing. We climbed down to some lakes that are supposed to have muskrats but again, nothing. I did find some sort of bone, maybe a leg bone?? Pete went all Fred Flintstone on it pretending to gnaw at it lol The ground around the lake was really spongy and when Pete jumped the whole surrounding area undulated.
The road to Norris is partially closed but we decided to check out the section from Mammoth that we could go down. Nice scenery but only a few bison.
We returned to the Lamar Valley in the hopes of seeing some wolves. No luck with that but I did find another bone and an antler lol
We spent half an hour or so talking to a woman who is a frequent visitor, coming here for weeks at a time and photographing wolves. She knew all the various wolves by name, their history etc. She had a big spotter scope and through that we saw a wolf carcass which was being fed on by an American vulture on one side and a golden eagle on the other. She was in the same spot three nights ago when the wolf was killed by a rival male. While talking to her it started to rain quite heavily and thunder rolled across the valley. We decided to give tonight's wolf search a miss and returned to our hotel instead. Along the way the rain stopped (of course it did) and some dramatic cloud formations kept appearing around us. By the time we returned to our hotel it'd been a 10 and a half hour day in the park.
I cooked dinner while Pete went to the laundromat and did our washing.
Another great day in Yellowstone.