Foxes and Bison and Bears, Oh My!

Yellowstone, home sweet home. If it were not for having to work for such a large corporation as Xanterra; I would seriously consider working in Yellowstone. I know it is by far Angie and my favorite place that we have ever been. We could spend years backpacking through the park and still not grow weary of the sights nor possibly see them all. The day before we had decided that we would do a backcountry trip the following night. My backpack had been begging me to get it out and Angie's new pack could certainly used broken in.

As I woke with the sun, as it seems I am doing everyday now, I found that I was not the only person stirring about at 6am. Across the road from our campsite I discovered an older gentlemen wandering about his very interesting camp set-up. His tent set perched high above the ground laid out across a a trailer the likes of which I had never seen. Of course, not willing to pass up an opportunity to meet someone interesting I made my way across the road to introduce myself.

I was greeted with a friendly smile, a warm handshake, and a hot cup of coffee all three very welcome this early in the morning. My neighbor Dave, it turns out, was a retired Doctor from Southern California. Dave was on his way back to Cali from a trip to Maine that he had embarked on almost a month before. We swapped stories of our previous travels and our plans for the coming days. It seemed that we were following similar paths and had only missed each other by hours in a few of our stops. It was Dave's trailer connected to his all black FJ Cruiser that kept intriguing me however. "Custom built by a guy in Cailfornia" he tells me. "It will go anywhere the truck goes and I don't have to worry about getting it stuck" he adds. That it seems is just the tip of the iceberg. it is loaded with a built-in propane stove a refrigerator and a solar system to power it all. Dave certainly knew how to rough it! We continued to shoot it for a bit while I continued to let Angie sleep. This time allowed me to meet some of our other neighbors that Dave had met the night before. These poor souls I would talk into accompanying Angie and I on our back country trip that afternoon.
Andy and Karen we met at Madison and talked them into some BackCountry camping. They were from Texas and it was their first time in Yellowstone so we thought that they should see it right. We made a plan to meet-up with each other at Mammoth Hot Springs later that afternoon after we were both able to get some sightseeing in. This being early in the season I knew we would be able to see a lot of the park that we neglected during the summer last year. The summer season fills the park with thousands of visitors during the day making it near impossible to fully enjoy all that the park has to offer. This trip, however, would be different. Being on no certain time schedule gave us the opportunity to meander through the park and pull off whenever we felt inclined too.

It seemed like we felt inclined to.

Since our journey's into Yellowstone and Angie's into the west one animal has continuously managed to evade her. She would always here the stories of the close encounters and the sightings. But she never managed to be in the right place at the proverbial right time. I was bound and determined to find a bear that day. That morning at the campground I had spoken with a group of guys while I was checking out. They said there was a lot of activity on the road between Mammoth and Tower the day before. With that in mind I headed north. After a short stop in the Back Country office for our permit we were off on the road to Tower. Oh My what a trip it was! The General Rule in Yellowstone is if you see a group of people on the side of the road. There is most certainly something there worth looking at. In our case that day the main attraction was Black Bears. How lucky for us! Angie finally got her bear and we were lucky enough to be privileged to a rare fox sighting. Unfortunately, the bad thing about the general rule is that lots of people on the side of the road also creates traffic jams. This we soon encountered on our way back to Mammoth. We sat on a two lane road jutting off the side of a mountain, cars stopped one by one in front curving off to the right before disappearing behind the rock. What was the hold-up? We crept along slowly until the source of our problem was discovered as we rounded the bend. The lead car it seems was not a car at all but rather a one ton Bison and her calf slowly making their way across the pass to the prairie on the other side. Seems to me if I am a bison I would much rather take the road then climbing over a mountain. These ladies were holding us up and we had to make it back to Mammoth to meet our new hiking partners. Thankfully we caught the tail end of their stroll and we on our way with just a ten minute delay.

We met Andy and Karen in Mammoth and it seemed they had registered for a Back Country site too. Being that we now had two sites we picked the best one which had us headed back up the Tower Road. We were headed for Blacktail which was only a few miles down the road.

It was only a few miles on foot before we descended onto our campsite. A small clearing led to a grove of lodgepole pines towering high into the sky leaving a soft sheltered bed down below. A stone fire ring overlooking Blacktail Creek rushing by off the edge of a stone cliff. All of this beauty conveniently located in a boneyard. The site looked like it was smack in the middle of a wolf kill zone.


We had all just started dinner preparations when something caught Andy's eye. A group of people had just appeared over the hill and had stopped to examine a map. I had never seen another soul in the back country before. Also, this part of the trail only led to our campsite. Which led me to believe only one possibility. These people have got to be lost. As I approached their party and got a better look at them I now knew they must be terribly lost. I stood before a man of what I assumed was italian descent and three Asian women. Now the man was by far the most prepared appearing of the group. A couple of the young Asian women appeared as if they were on the way to the mall to peruse the latest fashion. Turns out they had eleven miles under their belts already that day and had two more to go before they reached their campsite. After looking at the setting sun I simply said "you're not going to make it." "I know" he said. "We were praying that this site was open." There was no need for praying though. If there is anything better than four people camping together it was most certainly eight. I invited them to join our camp and reassured his worry that they were not imposing and that we had plenty of room. I mean we did just meet our other campmates just that morning.

As everybody got settled in we found out that our new friends John and Angie were on a spur of the moment Yellowstone trip from California with to of the bridesmaids from their wedding. We shared stories around our roaring fire and settled in for a quiet night's rest in our forest of solitude.