26th July 2016 - Grant Village Yellowstone NP, WY - Kms to date: 7165

Kms today: 0

Happy birthday Colin, 65 today!!!!

Early start 6am!!!
We moved to the southern part of Yellowstone and a new hotel in Grant Village. This meant we had to move the cars to Canyon Village via Tower Junction. We left the cars at Tower Junction and  rode the bus along the Lamar valley to Slough Creek to look for wolves that had a den on the opposite side of the valley. We hung around for about half an hour but the wolves would not come out to play. After this we drove along Lamar valley looking at Bison as it was the rutting season and the bull Bison were getting a bit frisky. We took mucho photos of big hairy Bison. There was quite a big herd spread all across the valley with the bulls prancing around the cows and fighting among themselves.

Herd of Bison "Rutting"???

After this we went back to our cars at Tower Junction and drove them to Canyon Village where we left them for the rest of the tour. After we dropped the cars off we went to Hayden valley and hiked along a ridge which had views over a lot of sulphur pools with steam emanating from them along the Yellowstone river in a deep gorge.

The mighty Yellowstone river.

Brothers Grimm posing with a view over the Yellowstone river gorge.

We were hoping to see some Big Horned sheep but they didn’t grace us with their presence. It was pretty hot, around 35C so we hunted for cover to have our lunch. After lunch we headed for Fishing Bridge on the way to Grant Village where we were staying. We did a short hike on the Indian Pond loop on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake but didn’t see any wildlife apart from the chipmunks and a large Marmot lazing around the rocks.

A cute little Chipmunk.

There were plenty of signs of Bison and Bears on the walk but we didn’t encounter any which is a good thing as I don’t think I could have outrun the rest of the people in our group. We carried pepper spray to ward off Bears and Bison and I was nominated to carry one of the cans. I’m not sure how I managed to get lumbered but I strapped it to my belt like a six gun with the safety catch (velcro) on.
We were all pretty knackered after a hard days hiking so we ate early at Grant Village. Colin ordered ravioli and when it came there were only about six pieces so he complained to the waitress and she organised another plateful, gratis.