The Beauty of Yellow Stone in Winter
We took off in Yellow Stone and again, I was a bit timid about the whole thing. I told the guide that I probably wanted to just go in and ride around a half hour and come back. I couldn’t imagine riding around the park for 6-8 hours. The idea made me nervous and made me feel like we’re going to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
Once I took off from the snow mobile and started to get the hang of it, my bravery shot up higher and higher. The amazing thing was we were blessed with the best weather our entire trip. One of the worst snow storms in the area in years had just passed through leaving a beautiful blanket of snow on everything. In fact, a week before, the entire park hadn’t even opened to snow mobiles yet because there was no snow. The only way to get into the park was on a snow mobile or on these funny snow coaches. Snow mobiling was definitely the way to go.
As we entered the park, you go along this straight street toward the central loop. There’s a big loop that runs around the middle of the park. We quickly found ourselves riding along the edge of a river, looking for eagles that sit on the trees and hunt in the water. We never saw an eagle, but we did see a huge nest that looks like it must be an eagle’s nest.
I was shocked looking in the water to see these white objects that first, I thought were snow and then, we realized they were actually swans. Most of the rivers of Yellow Stone are heated by the geothermal features from the hot lava deep down under the ground that comes up a little closer to the surface in Yellow Stone. In fact, all of Yellow Stone Park is actually in the mouth of a volcano. So, the rivers are able to stay warm enough that the swans can spend their winters there without having to migrate anywhere else.
As we drove along the river at one point, we noticed a herd of elk that was across the river, and we stopped and watched them for awhile. And as we continued on the road, we saw a bison here and a bison there. In fact, if we’ve gone to where I was originally going to go to turn around and head back, I wouldn’t have seen anything but a couple of elk. As we headed on, we saw more and more bison, and then we started to get to, what they call the geothermal features. These are places where the hot rocks heated by the lava interact with the water and cause things, like hot bubbling boiling water, hot pots of boiling colored mud, or places where gases come from deep within the earth and come out. All of it against the snowy white background was absolutely breathtaking.
We made it to (???) and the funny thing was the first time we saw an old (???) it really didn’t show much than a lot of speed. We stopped and had lunch at Old Faithful Inn(?) and then, when we came back out, we just happened to turn and look back at the right moment to see a beautiful display of water shooting up from underneath the earth.
On the way back, when I realized that the adventure was ending, I really wanted to stop and take in everything we saw. And then, we started to see more bison up on the road ahead. So, I signaled to our guy, and we slowed down and stopped on the side of the road to admire this bison standing on the road. As soon as we did, another bison jumped up very close in front of us. I started to approach the bison so I could get a good picture standing next to it, but the guide saw that the bison actually had a baby bison with it and quickly motioned me away before I got rammed by it. Luckily, the guide was more worried about the whole event than the bison was. We did manage to stop and get a great photo of me and my wife with a couple of the bison very close behind us. The only problem was this single pole that was sticking up on the side of the road that got in the way of a perfect picture, but in the end it’s the Photoshop that helped. As soon as the first and second bison jumped up on the road, there had been another and another, until in the end, there were probably 20-30 bison completely blocking the road.
Now, we were stuck. We were on our snow mobiles, and there were other people with snow coaches and snow mobiles coming up on the road, and they were stuck too. We all just sat there in the snow in Yellow Stone Park in the middle of traffic in the winter time where we’re all in our snow mobiles and snow coaches being blocked by a herd of bison blocking the road. Once they were on the road, there was really nothing we can do about it, so we just simply rode by and stayed behind the bison going at a slow pace while they took their own leisurely route. The guide said that in the summer time the bison tend to stay off the roads than in the winter time because the snow is more compact and bison found the road a much easier way to move from one park to another. So, don’t be surprised to see a bison or two actually on the road.
It was an incredible experience to see a wild animal, especially a wild animal that so symbolizes America, roaming free and roaming free just a few feet ahead of your hundred horse power snow mobile. An amazing thing was the bison were not even the slightest bit afraid of the people or the snow mobiles, and had absolutely no fear of being hunted, which I’m sure is due to the fact that hunting is completely prohibited in the park. In a park like this, there are other great wild animals, like wolves and grizzly bears, which is my favorite. We didn’t run into any of the wolves, and the grizzly bears are all hibernating so you don’t see them in the winter time.
The next day, New Year’s Day, though, we went to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center, which is right near the entrance of the park. We imagined the entrance to be something a little Disney-like, but what happened is when you walk in the front door and through a small area, you’d find that most of the display is outside. We walked out the back door and found ourselves in a snow-covered area.
The next thing I saw were wolves that were looking right at us with nothing between us and the wolves but snow. It was pretty frightening. As we got closer we realized that there was actually a trough that the wolves couldn’t get across to get to us, but they still looked awfully strong and awfully agile that we wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them could’ve leapt over the ditch and had gotten to the snow where we were.
What was really funny was there’s a warming hut in between the two packs of wolves that are at the discovery center. Each pack has quite a bit of land to itself. They brought each of the packs of wolves into its own area, then, built the discovery and the warming hut in between the two areas. The guy talked about the first day they opened it up and the two packs of wolves walked into the windows and stared into each other for hours barking and looking and staring and barking and looking. This is because as far as each pack of wolves knew, they were the only pack of wolves in the world. And now here they were, 20 ft away from another pack of wolves with nothing between the two but a few panes of glass and some tourists.
After looking at the wolves for awhile, I turned around to realize that 30 ft away, with nothing between me and it, was a 12-14 ft high grizzly bear. This was the terrifying moment of the entire trip. I actually thought there was a grizzly bear that was going to strike us that I felt my heart stop. As we walked closer to the grizzly bears, it still wasn’t completely apparent what separated the grizzly bears from us and them. In fact, as you got closer you realize that there was a 3 ft tall fence between us and the 14 ft high grizzly bear. There must have been, on the other side of the fence, a large ditch that was filled with snow that the bears knew about and couldn’t walk across, because as far as I could tell, there was nothing preventing the bears from coming and devouring us and the rest of the tourists there.
We were able to get lots of great photos with the bears standing and playing behind us while other tourists took our pictures. Again, it was an amazing experience to have that instead of being in a nice cozy museum, we’re standing outside where it’s slightly below to slightly above 0 and it’s actually a situation that can be potentially dangerous because you could freeze to death while you’re looking at the animals.
It was beautiful and wonderful, and the bears were absolutely magnificent-looking. It really made me want to go back to Montana again in the spring time. In fact, I’m still bugging my wife to see if she’s willing to go with me so we could take a trip up there this spring to do a little fly fishing as well as to watch the bears as they’re coming out of hibernation.
The funny thing about the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center, if I understood it properly, is that it’s actually a bit of a bear jail. My wife informed me that the bears that were there have been abandoned as cubs, because the parents have been killed by hunters or from some other means. My theory was that a lot of the bears there were troublemakers who got too accustomed to grab a picnic basket Yogi-Bear-style, and wandering into town. We still don’t know why those wolves happen to be there but the bears were there either because they were homeless orphans or because they were troublemakers that had to go to bear jail.
