Grizzly, Bison, Wolf, Coyote, Bison, Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn Deer, Elk, Bison, Mule Deer, Muskrat, Marmot, White Tailed Prairie Dog, Ground Squirrel, Bison, Golden Eagle, Bald Eagle, Red Hawk, other assorted raptors, Crane, Duck, Bison, Geese, Egret, assorted smaller birds. Oh! Did I mention Bison? Plus more geothermal doobries than you can shake a stick at. Yellowstone is a treasure. Came for 5 days and stayed 2 weeks (arrived 9 May). As Arnie says, "I'll be back".
If you're into wildlife photography bring all your cameras and lenses and gizmos; sell your children - and your mother in-law's jewellery - and buy the longest lens you can get. Don't forget bins and/or spotting scope.
Some piccies to whet your appetite...
Mind My Paintwork!
Grizzly up to her ???? in snow, hunting...
Yellowstone's "Grand Canyon"...
Thunder Mountain...
From my observations Bison have three principal activities:
- Grazing quietly in the middle/far distance;
- Standing in the middle of the road chatting with their buddies;
- Ambling down the road on one or both carriageways at speeds approaching 1 MPH.
Helps the traffic no end!
Groceries: Probably best to stock up before you enter the park. There are some General Stores in the Park but (the two I've checked out) are little better better than Ye Olde Gifte Shoppe with a few groceries. Certainly the General Store at Canyon seemed better than that at Mammoth. You can get gas (petrol) and diesel in the park at a few places (Mammoth, Tower, Canyon amongst others). Jackson ought to be a good place for groceries but I didn't check that out.
Camping: I've been staying at the campground at Madison, run by Xanterra, a Park franchisee. Nice sheltered treed site. $20 a night for up to six people. No showers or hot water. Clean washrooms. Tent pitches on soil. Tarmac pullins for RVs. Firewood available. Madison River with Bison and Geese grazing on banks adjacent to campground. There's been a Coyote round here a few evenings and nights. I checked out the National Park Service (NPS) Campground at Mammoth (the only other one open when I arrived). Slightly more exposed site in Sage Brush with some trees and great views. That campground seemed to be suffering an Elk infestation when I was there checking it out. A few dollars/night cheaper. Tents on tent pads (so you'll possibly need some beefy pegs if you're in a tent). Even though the only trails open at the moment are around Mammoth/Tower I stayed at Madison (an hour's drive from Mammoth) for the whole of my stay for i) the increased shelter, and ii) to rig a tarp over my cooking/eating/living area - can't cook/eat/whatever in the tent as it's bear country. Driving the roads from Madison to the trailheads is no problem - get to see more wildlife. Showers are available in the park at a couple of hotels and I think at an RV site at Canyon. I've been using my woodstove so I can easily heat my own water and therefore wash at my camp. (Too warm to use the stove in the tent and too cold to sit out in the evening without some heat. My fire ring was buried somewhere under 3 - 4 feet of snow when I arrived so I use the woodstove outdoors.) You can book pitches at Xanterra sites in the Park but the NPS sites are first come first served. There are campgrounds outside the Park but I've not investigated those.
Hiking: You can get free trail guides containing details of some of the trails in the park from the Ranger Stations/Visitor Info Centres. They get you to the trailhead OK and would possibly get you round the trail - the ones I've hiked seem generally well blazed - but I bought myself a couple of the National Geographic topo maps with all the trails marked. They're printed on a plasticised material so cope with repeated folding and a bit of abuse better than a paper map. Around $13 each. The scale is 1" to the mile but they're overprinted with the KM UTM grid making simple position fixing with your GPS. You can also buy trail guide books but best to do some research on Amazon/hiking sites first as they vary in quality. Some trails are closed at various times of the year for the purposes of Bear Management (or snow!).
Animal Watching: Bear in mind that large parts of the park were covered in snow and closed when I was there but the best animal sightings I had were north of Madison to Mammoth and from Mammoth out to the east. Some people I met watched a Wolf pack unsuccessfully hunt down an Elk. A guy camped next to me managed to film a Grizzly feeding on a Bison kill near Canyon. I've watched a Coyote hunt along a creek, also unsuccessfully. I've also watched a solitary Wolf hunting small critters through the snow. It would walk or trot on, stop and listen, them home in on the creature under the snow before leaping up and pounding in through the snow crust several times to get deep enough to get his meal. He seemed successful about 50% of the time, but they were small animals, maybe Pocket Gophers, as the Wolf just seemed to chew two or three times then swallow the catch whole. The Grizzlies I've seen were also hunting/feeding on grubs/worms/roots/and a small mammal through the snow. I watched an Osprey dive into the river and emerge with a fish. On one hike I had lunch with four male Mule Deer. They must have been lying up and quietly watched me leave the trail, walk towards them, traverse the slope in front of them as I found my spot for lunch. When I eventually noticed them they were around 30 metres from me. I continued to do my thing - removing/replacing clothes from my rucksack, have lunch, rustling plastic bags, crunching Pringles, moving about and watching them through the bins. They remained unconcerned although one of them (who I took to be the dominant male as his new growth antlers were the most developed, and he had a "bearing" with the way he carried his head) kept an eye on me. They were all quite alert as I noticed them listening to the noises of the forest and their heads moving about as they scented things on the wind. My moving about didn't seem to disturb them at all. It was quite a relaxing lunch for me in Bear country, having four alert prey animals keeping watch 30 metres from me. Made a great change from me looking in all directions at the same time! It was tempting to try and get closer to them to take a decent photo. I decided against it as I didn't really want to disturb them as they'd been good to me allowing me to share their company for half an hour or more. Eventually I packed up and shouldered my rucksack and set off, the Mule Deer watching me go but seeming quite unconcerned. A great lunch time. A special moment.
Might sometimes seem like Disneyland but it's real. If you can bear it, switch your clock time to the animals' clock time: dawn and dusk. I couldn't. At dawn my nose was stuck out of my sleeping bag wondering how long it would be before it was warm enough so I could get an arm out of the sleeping bag. Of course, if you're in an RV no problem! But the animals I saw were all during the main part of the day.
Watching Bear, Wolf, Coyote, Osprey, inter alia, hunt when you're actually out in the wild with the animal itself makes you realise how hard a life they have, getting enough to eat. As does watching the alertness in apparently resting prey animals such as Mule Deer. It brings it home a lot more vividly than "seeing it on the telly", not that the TV isn't good to educate and inform on occasion.
Species Identification: I have the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals and the same for North American Birds (Western Region). They're compact and backpackable and have a reasonable amount of detail (including occasional basic track info in the mammals one). I can generally work out what I've seen.
Tracks: I have two books for North America: The Tracker's Field Guide (James Lowery), and Mammal Tracks & Signs (Mark Elbroch). The latter is a lovely book. They complement each other but if going for one I'd go for the latter, although it is a weighty tome for your pack!
The above guides are worth it to me as I spend large parts of each year in Canada and the U.S. but you may not think they're worthwhile for a two or three week trip.
Comms: Patchy cellhone coverage in the park; seems good in West Yellowstone (one of the gateway towns - and a good place to stock up groceries). Internet from library (free), Chamber of Commerce (free), and a couple of other places in West Yellowstone, typically at $5/hour. Some diners (e.g. Ernie's Deli) provide it free with a meal. Couldn't find a payphone that takes credit cards in West Yellowstone so had to resort to cellphone for international calls. (Skype generally frowned upon in libraries! And anyway sometimes your call is confidential...)
Altitude: the road accessible Park is 6,200 feet+ and the air is thinner here. My campground is 6,806 feet. I'm reasonably hiking-fit for my age and have found occasional shortness of breath. Recovery rate is fast but my body was demanding more oxygen than available during hikes. If you're hiking you may need to take it easy for the first few days.
It was a great experience for me to visit the Park in a transition stage, from relatively deep snow through the thaw. What were snow flats when I arrived became, over the course of several days, bogs, pools, lakes, islands, creeks.
The Park is more crowded than I expected (early May), considering that many major roads and most minor roads were closed due to snow when I arrived. There are still two major roads and a lot of minor roads closed 20 May (and therefore a lot of trailheads inaccessible). The temperature at night is close to or below zero and I've had snow overnight twice. Daytime temps can be T-shirt weather by mid-morning (but not always!), despite freezing overnight. You may get similar temperatures in September; I certainly did in the Rockies in September. Also you're probably wise going in the shoulder season as, based on what I've seen so far, it must be gridlock in peak season.
I was talking to a guy from West Yellowstone and he was saying September and October are good times to visit the Park: Fall colours on the trees and Elk rut - so sounds like you made a good choice there.
One last thing - and I'm sure you know this but it may benefit others - when in a tent I always ensure my evening jobs are done before sundown: cook, eat, wash up, get everything squared away before dark. Time then for an hour or two by the fire with a glass of one's favourite malt, hop, or grape flavoured cordial before turning in for the night. Much easier than blundering around in the dark wondering if you're going to bump into a large grumpy creature. For the same reason Ephraim T. Peebottle always shares my tent.
I don't know if you're a hiker but hiking boots take up valuable space and precious pounds from your luggage allowance, so I always wear mine for the flight. It means I have to take them off to go through airport security (and that's getting more and more like a mixed changing room anyway) but that's no big deal. I then remove them on the plane for the flight to let my feet breathe.
Went to the Tetons after Yellowstone but largely closed due to snow so will pick it up on my way back from wherever I'm going. As everything (well, many things) seems closed - at my time of visit - from Yoho NP and Glacier NP in B.C. and Waterton Lakes in Alberta through Glacier NP in Montana and parts of Wyoming I've decided to head south until there's no snow then spend a few weeks there hiking and stuff and work my way back north hoping it will have all have melted by the time I get there. Various people/Park Rangers etc. have suggested Colorado (almost there), Utah (ditto), Oregon, Dakota so I'll see what I can fit in.
If you're going to camp in the backcountry then your bear caches might be useful. Check the interweb thingy for availability of National Park supplied caches in their backcountry campsites in Yellowstone as you may be able to do with those. Certainly the frontcountry campgounds I've seen have bear caches available.
Jackson's an "interesting" Wild West town. Keep tight hold of the credit card.
Have a great trip...post some of your piccies and let us know how you got on!
