Flowers

All the flowers are blooming in the park. They are quite pretty too!

Oh, if you don't see the screaming monkey. It's a profile of a monkey's head leaning back with its mouth open. Hope that helps...

Tourist Trip

Well this year has apparently had a record number of visitors to the park so far. And I can believe it, the place is packed! The Boss and I don't spend too much time on the trails, but recently we have been seeing a lot of tourists... or "tourons" as some people affectionately call them. Now I don't want to appear egotistical, but I don't really consider myself a tourist any longer. Maybe it is because I am a researcher now or because I feel as though I have more intelligence than the average tourist. Either way, I don't associate myself with the tourists of the park and also feel as though I can make fun of some touron stupidity.

This past week I have had some entertaining interactions with some tourists in the park. I talked to one lady who was amazed at how close she saw a bison earlier in the day and couldn't believe that it would just walk on the road. She exclaimed "I just know it wasn't real! It had to be some person dressed up in a buffalo costume walking on the road!" I assured her that what she saw indeed a living animal, but I am not sure she was convinced. One of my favorites is when we happen to see a tourist on the trail and they ask us what we are doing. This happened one time when Boss and I were scoping out some aspen with our binoculars from the trail. They were convinced that we had seen something very exciting and were disappointed when we told them what we saw, maybe a little confused too. By the look on their faces I am sure they were thinking Why would anyone waste time looking at trees through their binoculars... Or maybe when we say we are looking at "aspen" they think Ass-pin? Did they call me an ass-pin? I don't really know, but I am pretty sure they were expecting something besides some trees.

Now generally this lack of knowledge about the park is sad, but not really doing any harm. However I have seen some other things that are just dangerous. I saw one family hiking and somehow got off the designated trail. Soon the father yelled "Oh the trail is over here!" At this point I look over to see the family hiking through a thermally active meadow area, completely off the trail. The kids weren't too happy about stomping through the wet meadow, but I imagine they would have been even more upset if they would have ended up stepping in boiling water. Later that week I saw a bison near the road that attracted quite a crowd. He was sitting about 30 feet from the road, which was now packed with vacated cars. All around the bison was a ring of tourists taking pictures. The result was a bison that was completely encircled by cars and people. At the time it wasn't that big of a deal, but I can only imagine what would have resulted if the bison decided he was tired of his nap and wanted to leave... and had a crowd of people blocking his way.

I don't have to deal with the tourists too often, but when I do I sometimes find myself a little annoyed. At the same time, however, it still makes me pleased to see that so many people can appreciate the wonders of Yellowstone. So I think from now on I will try to be polite and helpful to the tourists I come across, despite their lack of intelligence.

It Has Been a While

Well I haven't posted in quite some time. Sorry. I got busy on my days off taking care of things around Bozeman and got a little behind on keeping the blog updated. The past two trips to the park have been fairly laid back compared to work before. We have been spending just about every day sitting around looking at aspen and not as much time hiking. It was a nice change of pace for a bit, but I think that in this last month the hiking should pick up again.

Right now I am in Kalispell visiting Miss Doe. We went and visited Glacier National Park yesterday. It was a lot of fun, but I was yet again amazed at how diferent it is from Yellowstone! Glacier is really steep and has real mountains that you don't see as much of in Yellowstone. This makes it harder to see a lot of the big wildlife that is seen in Yellowstone so much. However, we did see a Screaming Monkey (first picture) which was pretty exciting. I felt like Glacier is all about taking in the scenery and looking at the mountains. Which are fairly impressive. We also took a little hike and got to see a few waterfalls. I was amazed at how clear and clean the water was. There was one spot near a waterfall where the water was a deep turquoise and I really had the urge to jump in for a swim. It's too bad I couldn't.

Well I think I will be adding some more posts later about some of the things going on in the park. Probably some stuff about the crazy and abundant tourists that are visiting this year.

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures from this past week in the park. I am not sure if I can get more uploaded because the internet seems slow at the library.

I am off to work tomorrow again for another 10 days in the park.

Close (okay not that close) Encounter

I had a pretty heart-pounding animal encounter during this last work week in the park. While in the field one day I encountered a grizzly bear. It turned out about as perfectly as you can hope for a bear encounter, but it still had me a little nervous.

I guess I should start with a little background for this whole story. One thing that I had never really thought about is what happens to all the roadkill in the park. You never see anything beside the road, and if there was that would be a massive problem because it would attract a lot of scavengers closer to people. Well this past week I found out what they do with the roadkill. If you go down a service road, through a locked gate and past signs that read "Closed to travel due to bear danger" you come to the "carcass pit". It is just a little clearing in the woods that is now littered with bones, and sometimes a fresh carcass when an animal is hit on the road. Naturally this area attracts all sorts of scavengers hoping to get a free meal. Including bears.

Part of the study area is near one of these carcass pits in the park. In order to try and safely access the areas around the pit, Boss called the head bear biologist in the park and asked what he recommended for us to do if we needed to work in the area. He said to stay at least half a mile away from the pit and we could hike in the area. So we took his advice, planned to stay well more than half a mile away from the pit and we would do our work. No big deal. Right...

Well we had some park workers take us on the road and through the gate and past all the signs that say closed to travel. The plan was to keep driving on the service road till we were well past the carcass pit and then start hiking. Before heading out, Resource Management (division in the National Park Service) told us that there was no fresh carcass in the pit, that the last one was there two weeks ago and was already completely clean of any meat. Well when we arrived at the carcass pit in the car we were a little surprised to find a fresh (and I mean like that morning fresh) bison in the pit. Apparently someone dumped a carcass... and didn't tell anyone. I was already a little nervous about this whole thing, this didn't really help any. I started thinking about how far a half mile really is. Hiking quickly in the backcountry I can maybe hike half a mile in 15 minutes. Figuring a bear can move quite faster than me, say he could cover half a mile in 10 minutes. Awesome, bears are being fed at a distance they can cover in 10 minutes away from me. This didn't make me feel to great. But we were actually quite further than that half mile and that was further than the bear biologist said, so everything should be fine.

That entire day I made sure I was extra loud, yelling much more frequently and louder than usual. I also found my hand drifting to my bear spray more often (which isn't used like bug spray if you didn't know). Boulders, logs, trees, stumps, shadows, and the ground all pretty much looked like a bear that day. So I was a little jumpy. However after a full day of hiking, no bear! I was quite happy to reach the car and drive back home. However passing the carcass pit on the way out we find a large pile of bear scat on the road and a new meatless bison skeleton. So a bear had been there.

The next day I was a little disappointed to learn that we would be working in a nearby area, still close to the carcass pit. We didn't drive by it this time, but were soon hiking in the area, although still quite far from it. Again I was doing a lot of yelling, but was a little more relaxed than the day before. Near the end of the day, I hiked out of the thick sapling forest and found myself in a little meadow area. I cautiously looked around, since bears like these types of areas, and made a few extra loud bear bellows. I continued across the meadow, walked through a little patch of forest again and dropped down a hill back to the meadow. As I looked up this thin, finger-like projection of the meadow into the forest I saw an odd, reddish lump at the end. I paused and thought "that looks like a bear". But after looking at it for a bit I concluded it must just be a big rock or maybe a log. And that's when it moved and I thought "Holy $#!%, that is a bear!"

It didn't see yet. Later I realized the wind was blowing in a direction that meant it wouldn't get my scent. And this probably had something to do with it not hearing my yells. That and the little hill probably didn't help either. I started backing away slowly, I made a little noise to let it know I was there and hopefully so I wouldn't surprise it too much. When it heard me it looked over and just sort of stared at me for a few seconds. Then it stood up on its back legs and put its front paws on a standing, dead tree. This unnerved me a little. Okay, a lot. But I think it was just trying to see and smell me a little better, but at the time it was a little intimidating to see a grizzly bear stand up to its full height. It dropped back to the ground and just stood there watching me as I continued to move away from it. I got on the radio and let Boss know what was going on. He was on a hill overlooking the meadow and scanned around till he found me and the bear. The next thing I hear on the radio is "Wow! That bear is really pretty!" Yeah, that made me feel better, it was a good-looking bear that I was in danger of being charged by.

The bear just watched me move away. I met up with Boss and we hiked the rest of the way out. Part of the time we had our bear sprays drawn because we were on a hill and weren't sure where the bear had gone. Looking back on it, I wasn't really that close to the bear ever, but it still was closer than I wanted to be. I was scared at the time, I think it was pretty amazing to see a grizzly bear like that. A little intimidating, yes, but also amazing. And Boss was right, it was a really pretty bear. It was a reddish-blond color. That is also pretty much as good of a bear encounter can go and what I thought of as intimidating actions from the bear, were really just it trying to figure out what I was. Boss got tired of listening to me go on and on about how I saw a bear. But seriously, it was a pretty memorable encounter.

Back in Bozeman

Well I have returned to Bozeman for a few days off and am finally able to make another post, much later than I had planned. We had internet in the park for a little while, but our neighbor took it away after someone (not us) downloaded when they weren't supposed to. So again I am completely cut off when in the park, but I am starting to like it.

The research is moving along pretty well. We are still running into a few snags here and there, but overall we are working through a lot of things and making some good progress. The weather was splendid this trip! Hopefully the full days spent in the rain gear are gone for the rest of the summer. It has been warm and sunny, with a few early morning or late afternoon thunderstorms, which are pretty nice at times. I would say that the only condition that could have been better this last week would be the mosquitoes. They are absolutely horrendous. Sometimes I find myself basically drenching myself in bug spray, and that doesn't seem to work for very long. They are so bad if you stop moving you soon find yourself engulfed in a cloud of them, and no matter how many you smash and squish, there are still always more! One day I got so fed up with it that I just started running through the woods, yelling the whole way, to try and get away from them. Unfortunately I couldn't keep this up very long and they soon caught up and surrounded me again. They are extremely frustrating and distracting. You can't even focus on looking at a map to figure out where you are when they are all buzzing around your head. And I think that's all for my rant on mosquitoes.

I am really enjoying doing field research. But it isn't always that fun. Boss told me early on that field work is a love-hate relationship, sometimes you are miserable and other times you feel like you have the greatest job in the world. I think I am starting to see what he means. When I am hiking through the lodgepole pine saplings that are pressing in on me from all sides and constantly hitting my shins on stobs and logs as I climb over deadfall, it's torturous. Yet even after all this, I usually get to see something that just makes it all worth it. Sometimes it isn't even anything big, but I still find myself able to appreciate it. It's the things like hiking through a meadow and hearing a red-tailed hawk scream as it soars above you. Or having a bird fly from a tree right infront of you and pushing apart some branches to find a little nest full of eggs. It's hiking along and following a set of wolf tracks in the mud as they circle around a lake. I think another part that makes these experiences so special is the fact that I am out there away from everyone else, seeing the things that no one else ever sees. Most people in Yellowstone see it from the car and the boardwalks. Some people see it from trails, a little further from the road. I am seeing it away from roads, boardwalks, trails, and just about everything. And I think that is pretty amazing.

I have some more stories and stuff to post on my next few days off, which will happen this time. I also have some pictures which for some reason I can't upload right now... so hopefully I can get that figure out soon.

Pictures and Stuff

Well we have completed our first full, regular work week of 10 days. We got quite a bit done, but not really as much as Boss would have liked I guess. The 10 days were full of rainstorms and hiking through some steep terrain with a lot of deadfall and Lodgepole saplings thrown in there too. Which apparently is going to be the usual for this study area. I have a few good stories and things to post, but I have been busy working on repairing some gear for the next trip back to the park. So for now I thought I would add some pictures and maybe get in a few more posts in the next few days.

The first picture there is our original base camp, the public campground at Madison Junction. We brought along a small bear with a ribbon on its head as our mascot. Some of the campground workers thought that this was pretty funny and wanted to warn people that a bear was in the campground. However this probably would have caused mass chaos and confusion in the campground. The next picture shows what our campsite looked like a few days later... after we got about 5 inches of snow in just a couple hours. Apparently snow during summer really isn't that uncommon though. To round it all off the next picture shows some of the hail we got. It might be hard to see, but I assure you that is indeed hail.

The last two pictures are from when I was driving around with the Fam. There is a scenic picture from a pullout in Hayden Valley and a picture of some bison, including a calf, that almost trapped us on a boardwalk at some thermal features. Most of this stuff is a little old, I have been getting behind on my postings and uploading pictures. But the good news is we have internet in our trailer now, so I should be able to make some posts more often if the connection is fast enough. I should have a few more updates for here sometime today as well.