Jackson/Yellowstone Trip

Friday morning, September 4, we headed out to Jackson, Wyoming with Gary & Jolene and their son, Brett. Actually, we drove to Colter Bay and stayed there for two nights. Now....let me take myself back a couple of days and see if I remember our trip right. (I just get tired of this "sometimers" disease)

I also posted MANY, MANY, pictures. EVEN the blurry ones. I want to remember how close we got to the amInals and how BIG they were. A few of the pictures are for the Hansen's benefit and some for Claire but most for us because we had a lot of fun!

After we parked the trailers, Doran and I went and hauled some water. (Too many hills to haul it while travelling with our truck.)

We saw this little friend in the camp ground.

Then we all climbed in Gary's truck and went site seeing towards Jackson. We saw a herd of elk on the west side of the road and on the east side of the road we saw this guy yelling at one of his women to get over with the rest of them....

She finally gave in after a chase and headed back to the rest of the herd.

Here is daddy trying to avoid us while he crosses now. Two shots of each picture. The first because of the scenery, the second to see what a beautiful animal he is.

Now he has them all back to one side of the road. There were a bunch of them.

Here he is smirking... er smiling at us.

Here are the bird watchers. Wait.....the ELK watchers.

Gary is trying to get a "shot" in. I can't wait to see HIS pictures. He has a much nicer camera than I have.

I learned TWO things. One......upgrade my camera. Two.....buy another set of binocs for occasions such as this. NEVER go to Yellowstone with one pair of binocs for two people. Uh uh. No way.

Jolene and I. We were animal and people watching.

He was pretty much tired of us by now so off we go.

We went to camp, built some hamburgers. Mmmm Mmmm good. Built a fire and Jolene taught us how to cook homemade fruit pies over the fire. Thanks Jolene! I can't wait to teach the kids. What a great day we had.

Saturday morning we got up and Doran and I had a mozy walk through the camp ground. After a relaxing morning we all headed in to Jackson to play. We visited some art museums, bought FUDGE and watched an art auction. Holy Cow!! I can't believe how much some people can and WILL pay for art. Most of the paintings the artists themselves introduced their work and why they painted certain pictures. I kind of wish we would have gotten there earlier and had good seats to watch more.

Then we went to eat at Merry Piglet's. Mmm Mmm good! We did piglet out! Either their salsa was SO good or I was WAY hungry.

I had to get pictures by the famous arches.

Brett, Gary & Jolene.A close up of our guides. They were great!

Why in the world didn't I take my glasses off?? Oh ya....squint.

And the best part of the day for me.....BAR J WRANGLERS!!!

My best friend and I.

Group picture

Ok Audrey. These are for you.

Doran, Me, Scott (one of the Wranglers)

Brian (another Wrangler), Me & Doran

This is Brian "Swooning" the women. Just like every year, he had us in stitches and laughing until we cried. Well me anyway. What great food and entertainment. Sure wish I could go up EVERY year at LEAST ONCE.Sunday morning we got up, hooked up the trailers and headed out for Mammoth just after 6 am. This little guy was out to tell us goodbye. "Oh Give Me a Home, Where The BUFFALO Roam....." Momma!!! Feed me!!

Why do girls have horns? Are they considered "Menopausal"?We saw some wolves and coyotes. We watched these guys for a bit. After they woke up from a nap they were howling for breakfast I guess.After setting up the trailers in Mammoth, we had a quick bite to eat and headed out with our packed dinner. This guy was running around in Mammoth chasing women.

This is when I need a better camera. I didn't know we would get so lucky and see a bear on our first day. Doin' the HAPPY DANCE!!! "Midnight" was taking a little nap by time we got there at 3ish. Isn't he SO CUTE!!! I love bears. If I make it to heaven I hope there are CUDDLY bears there.

Time to wake up!It was so cool to be this close. I sat on the ground to get the camera low enough to go under the trees. Don't worry, there were rangers there telling us how close we could get. Isn't he cute!!??

I still get giddy when I look at these pictures!

This picture ended up blurry or did it? I was going to delete it but decided I liked it with the grass as the focus and "Midnight" in the background. I might go in and do some bordering with this picture.Lookin' for lunch. Found some! Here he is feasting on White Bark.

A closer look.

Which way do I go? There are too many people that way, I will head back this way.

Did I mention how CUTE he is?

This was pretty fun. There was a crow that joined "Midnight's" party. He would get quite close to the bear and then bounce further away and then go back. I thought he would be the bears lunch but "Midnight" didn't seem to be bothered by the crow. The crow is the black spot off to the right. He was bouncing away about this time.

See ya later..... sniff. I could watch him ALL day.

This was another interesting sight. Couldn't tell if he was trying to make a fashion statement, if he was a little unprepared for the weather or if he just got out of bed and threw his "pants" on.

This was a beautiful fall. There use to be a walk down to it but it has been washed away and they haven't bothered to redo it.

After our bear excitement we headed towards camp. We were going to stop along the road somewhere and cook, as a matter of fact we DID stop, but decided that it was too cold. We went back and Gary cooked us up some mean steaks. My FAV!!

When we were done visiting "Midnight", the park rangers told us to skip breakfast and get out early in the morning. Sooo......we did. Actually we grabbed yogurt and a bagel and junk food and got out early. We saw a couple of black bears WAAAAYYY across the mountain. Too far to get any pictures. But on up the road a bit, THIS guy was waiting. Actually when we parked the truck there were tracks coming from a stream and across the road. I am still kicking myself for not getting pictures of the paw prints on the road. They were still real wet and muddy. But I was in too big a hurry to see "GRIZ".

He is diggin' big time under this log."GRIZ" took a moment to smile for me.A closer look by zooming in. There were no rangers this time but after yesterday, I knew my place. There were SOOOO many people and I was making dang sure I knew where the truck or the first car was that I could climb in and who looked like they would run slower than me. This morning I also sat on the ground and squatted. I didn't want to get caught sleeping on the job.

GRIZ came out in a clearing just before the bear..........

the bear.........

the bear....

EVERYONE......"The.......

Bear went over the mountain..... The Bear went over the mountain

The Bear went over the mountain... To See what he could see......."

"I'm a Bear Watcher....I'm a Bear Watcher." La de da

The adventure is over by 8:30. Off towards camp to have some breakfast.

Back on the road for some more adventure!!! We had the opportunity to watch some antelope and coyotes for a bit.

This picture is for you Gary...

Free ride!!!!

Cheese

I guess this is the coyote crossing area. We were stopped and he walked right in front of us.

We stopped a bit to "scope the slopes". Ah ha ha ha. I just thunk of that on my own. Most people would call it "glassing". Psha. Anyway, we saw a couple of bull elk playing. Ok, maybe they WEREN'T playing. They were actually fighting. I know you can't see it but this is the best my camera could do. If you had the binocs you had quite a show. It was cool. We called the left one "Brown" and the right one "Dirty One". I guess he rolled in the mud before he came out to fight. Kinda like WAR PAINT I guess. Well it didn't help him because he lost. "Brown" pushed him down the hill until "Dirty One" stumbled over a boulder. Off "Dirty One" goes. While we watched "Brown" go over to his woman there began another fight off to the left and up on the mountain. If I remember right "Dirty One" got in another fight with another bull and ended up winning that one. We spotted FIVE bulls and several women on the hill. After the fights they headed under cover and over the mountain. It was pretty neat to watch that. They boys of course LOVED it. Men and their machoness.

If you look close "Brown is on the left facing right and "Dirty One" is facing left. There is a fallen tree in between them. They are actually in a head lock right now.Guess what time it is?

On our way back we found a herd of elk with a couple of daddy elk. It was pretty dark and my pictures didn't turn out so I didn't put them on here.

We couldn't find a good spot to pull of and take this before the sun went down too much, but it was beautiful. We then made it back to camp pretty late and made some quesadilla for dinner and hit the hay.

This picture doesn't show it very well but this guy has frost all over his face and back just mozying up the road. I missed some beautiful pictures of the hot pot areas that were steaming.

For our last little jont before Doran and I headed home after breakfast, we went back to where the big herd of Elk were the night before. We were able to see them through the binocs pretty well while it was getting dark the night before. Amazing thing those binocs are. kinda like night vision goggles. Anyway, when we went back, there were a few cars there already. We eventually scared them further into the trees. They were on both sides of the road and the daddies were hollerin' back and forth...."Head to the hills, these humans are bein' a bother." So they did. Well we all got out and followed them on foot. We found the ones on our side of the road but ended up scaring them off even further into the trees. Gary got some pictures before they were completely gone. This is how cold it was and we were out chasing animals? Not cold enough to freeze snot, but we needed buckets for our noses.

What a beautiful area. I can't believe how thick the fallen and dead trees were to climb over.

Poor Jolene. I think she forgot she had a bumb knee and followed us in the trees. She is actually getting a scope done next week. That's how owie it was, so coming back to the truck was a chore. We then headed back to camp. Doran hooked up while I made breakfast burritos for everyone. We ate, showered and headed home. We debated whether to go straight home or stop half way but we chose to get home.

I saw everything I wanted to see except for a moose. I hope that Gary & Jolene see one for me. They are staying until Friday.

We had a wonderful time!!! Thanks Gary and Jolene for being such great tour guides and chauffer.

My favorite had to be the bears.

Doran's was a toss up between the bears and the elk fights. Both so cool!

That's our trip....hope you enjoyed our journey as much as we did!!