Yellowstone is Buffalovely (post for Sept. 11th, 2008)

So after getting into Yellowstone around dusk last night, we went to sleep after hiding all of our stuff from the bears. We woke up this morning, and had not yet been eaten by them! Hoooray! We were, however, absolutely FREEZING. The inside of the rain fly of our tent had a thin coat of ice on it, and I had to scrape ice off of the car windows so we could see. Brrrrrrrrrr.

We also had to be up super early in order to drive back an hour towards the north entrance of the park for our interview of the day, superintendent of the park, Suzanne Lewis. We left some extra time in order to stop on the side of the road in order to take pictures of buffalo and elk. Arriving right on time to the Administration building in Mammoth Springs, we were greeted by Ms. Lewis herself, and started the interview.

And my goodness, what a great interview it was! I was filming this one so I didn't get to sit in on it, unfortunately, but Ms. Lewis was an amazing woman. She'd been working for the Parks Service for 30 years, and she had been doing it since she got out of college, working seasonally while going to Grad school. Although she is the first female superintendent for Yellowstone, she said that it had not phased her at all because she had pretty much been the first woman superintendent everywhere she had gone. She was a wealth of information and advice. I thought her best piece of advice in the whole interview was when she talked about how our generation would probably end up working a ton of different jobs, and that hers was the last generation of career, 30+ years in the same path. She said that we had to be unafraid of dealing with change, and that the energy expended in trying to stop change and keep things the same was often far too much energy for change that probably would have to happen.



At the end of the interview, we got to see Superintendent Lewis' ranger expertise. She gave us lots of advice on the route we should drive through the park, and she even gave Becca a sweet hat to keep her head warm.

It was only like 10 AM and we were already having a great day! We headed out in the car, and switched off driving every 45 minutes or so. We saw a millions-of-years old petrified tree, walked the trail and 300+ stairs to see Lower Yellowstone Falls up close. We drove past the gorgeous Yellowstone Lake, and after watching Old Faithful erupt, walked a trail of geysers and hot springs. We unfortunately didn't see any bears.



Still, by far the highlight of the day (after the interview) were our run-ins with buffalo herds.

It started in the car as we were driving in the middle of the day, Justin at the wheel. We were taking pictures of buffalo right at the side of the road, when we realized that the cars stopped up ahead in the road were stopped because there were buffalo standing in front of them. Justin inched the car forward when we thought the buffalo were past, when Becca shouted him to stop because a buffalo calf had started to cross right in front of our car!

I took this video of the calf stopping right in front of us, when my camera ran out of memory. What happened next was even more ridiculous. The ranger on the other side of the road pushed his car forward, using the loudspeaker to make some sound to push the buffalo out of the road. Except, instead of running off to the side, the ENTIRE HERD took off down the road toward our car. For a couple seconds, I think all four of us thought the car was going to be run over, but instead the buffalo just ran off to both sides. It was unbelievable. Justin got the whole thing on the video camera. We drove away, unscathed.

This wasn't our last run in with buffalo for the day, either. A herd crossed the geyser walkway while we were exploring the geysers, and we had to back off of the walkway onto a bridge to get out of the way. It was kind of funny to watch the buffalo cross this plastic walkway, because it's obvious they're so top heavy that falling down off of them back onto the ground is not something they're naturally designed to do. Then, a THIRD time, the buffalo blocked the exit out of the geyser area of the park.

It was a really full day, and we have finally arrived back to the campsite around 7. Just enough time to make a dinner of instant mashed potatoes and green beans, eat some s'mores around the fire, and crawl into sleeping bags before we get too cold! Tomorrow, Coeur D'Alene...if the grizzlies don't get us.