Lewis and Clark Caverns feature exciting stalagmite action!

I just got back from over a week in the park. This time, I had the opportunity to go with a few friends, taking some on their first trip to the park. I always get excited to share the Yellowstone experience with first-timers, while feeling a bit of the pressure that comes with wanting to find some great photo ops.

*A note about pictures* I suffered a hard drive crash about a month ago that not only put many of my archived photos in jeopardy (ironically, the crash occured while I was backing up my files), but put my main image-processing computer out of commission. As a result, I basically can't work all the RAW images I shot. All I can do is take a screen capture and edit that... so the quality of the images posted in these reports won't be all that great.

On to the trip!
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Four of us piled into a car on Friday morning (6/23) and headed east. Two others would follow later that afternoon, with the idea that we'd meet up in the park on Saturday. Our goal was to get as close to Lewis and Clark Caverns as possible, in order to tour them Saturday morning before heading to Yellowstone. On the way, we saw a ton of wildlife along I-90... ospreys, deer, bald eagles, pelicans and even a lone pronghorn. I wasn't sure whether this was a sign that we'd see a lot of animals in the park, or that we were using up all of our good critter karma.

Rosie the bear is a familiar face to many of Yellowstone's visitors.

A morning tour of the caverns is always a good way to kick off a Yellowstone trip. No claustrophobes or bat-fearing people in our group, so we all enjoyed checking out the stalactites, stalagmites, cave popcorn, cave "bacon," and eerie phosphorescent glow... oh, and sliding down the natural slide that's become so smooth from tourists passing through, it's formed its own butt crack ridge.

While we were in the caverns, our second carload had made good time, and we actually convened in Bozeman before proceeding to the park. The scenic drive down highway 89 from Livingston provided the usual beautiful scenery, along with our only glimpse of trumpeter swans on the trip. Entering the park, I opted to head east from Mammoth. We were staying in Canyon, and while our second carload seemed more interested in getting to camp and setting up, I figured the wildlife-rich Mammoth-Tower-Canyon route might be a better introduction for the park newbies.

It was better than expected. We spotted our first bear at Elk Creek, a cinnamon black snoozing under a tree. No good photos, but seeing a bear 30 minutes into the park isn't bad!

We reached Roosevelt and ran into another small jam. Peeking out the window, we spotted deer up in the trees (with a cute fawn), and over to the right... a fox! Surely, this was the same scrawny fox Bart and others had posted pictures of. Alas, by the time I parked the car safely, the fox was off over the hill toward the horse corral. My first (and only) Yellowstone fox sighting would produce no photos... I'd have to stick to mental pictures.

Further up the road was surely a bear jam. There was zero parking left in the curving road above Tower. We spotted a black bear near the road and turned around in order to find a spot. Luckily, one opened up for us, but our second car decided getting to camp was more important than battling bear traffic, and they moved on.

As I set up my gear, I learned the story of what had transpired. Apparently this black bear had two cubs up a tree. The tags in her ears confirmed that this was indeed Rosie, whom I could recognize from all the photos Ynet forum users had taken in recent months.

A member of the Agate wolf pack had chased Rosie's cubs up a tree.

Alas, her cubs were still hiding. Someone said they had been chased up the tree by two coyotes. I switched positions as Rosie moved further down the road, and a girl next to me was insisting that wolves had chased the cubs, not coyotes. I thought this a bit unlikely, but as she pointed excitedly, I looked through my view finder to see that there indeed was a wolf waiting and watching in the grass!

Wow! This was a pretty amazing start to the trip, even for a grizzled YNP vet. The wolf soon lost interest, and Rosie was out of sight beneath us, so it was time to move on. Already, we had a story to relate to the rest of our party that had decided to move on. It wouldn't be the first such incident...