Surprise!
Today was a day of surprises. Most of them turned out to be good surprises.
I got up at 5:30 this morning to re-shoot Lower Yellowstone Falls from Artist Point with first light on the falls. I wanted the warm, sunrise light on the yellow cliffs of the canyon. When I got there, I joined about 5 other people waiting for the sunlight to hit the falls. I had timed it perfectly so I would only have about a ten minute wait. Surprise! Just as the sunlight touched the left side of the falls, a cloud moved across the sun and the show was over.
It was only a little after 6:00, so I figured I'd look for wildlife in Hayden Valley. Shortly after I'd dropped down into the valley, I came around a curve and looked up a stream valley and saw a black bear. It was an idyllic setting with a stream winding across a tiny meadow mirroring the trees in its surface. The bear had just crossed the stream and was in the meadow. I turned around at the first turnout, drove back to a turnout just beyond the meadow, and ran back to the bridge to shoot the bear. Just as I got there, he walked into the woods, and I wasn't going to walk into the woods looking for a bear, even with bear spray. I just needed to get there two minutes earlier.
After looking up into the trees from every possible angle and driving up and down the road trying to find the bear, I finally had to admit defeat and continued through Hayden Valley. With the cloud cover, the river didn't light well enough to photograph, so this had to be a wildlife excursion. I drove to the end of the best wildlife areas and stopped to shoot a group of bison on a knoll close to the road who had some interesting side lighting on them. Ordinarily I would have skipped the shot, but I had nothing better to do. I took a few shots and then looked around just in time to see a coyote about 15 yards from the bison. Surprise! And the best part was that he was lit perfectly and coming toward me. The coyote now got my full attention. He was trotting through sage brush broken up by small open areas of grass. He stopped a few times to quizzically look over at me to see what I was doing, but he never strayed from his destination. Eventually, he made a turn and paralleled the highway until he was too far away to photograph. A few other cars stopped to shoot the coyote, and we compared stories of what wildlife we'd seen and where. One lady said they saw a moose, a wolf, and a bear with cubs within a few minutes of each other the night before around Norris. That's pretty incredible.
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It was still early and I knew Carol would still be asleep, so I turned around and drove back up Hayden Valley. I stopped at my favorite area at Alum Creek and got out to look around. Surprise! Another coyote. He was still a ways away, but he was heading in my general direction. I quickly got ahead of him and positioned myself so I had the sun at my back. That was fine with the coyote. He continued toward me and passed within a few feet of me. I circled back behind him, crossed the road, and hustled to get ahead of him again. I got a few more shots, but he was soon running on the side of the road as it crossed between the river and Alum Creek. I decided to follow behind to see where he'd go on the other side. He dropped in the meadow next to the river which gave me a chance to get ahead of him again with the sun behind me. I climbed a low ridge where I could see him and waited for him to approach. He stayed closer to the river but I got another group of great shots. He briefly went behind a small knoll and disappeared! He just vanished. I was above him, the open meadow was behind him. The river was on his left. But somehow in 30 seconds, he vanished into thin air. I walked all around the area, but he was gone. Sneaky rascal. I walked back to the Explorer and was looking up Alum Creek when I noticed cars stopping along the road. And there was the coyote in the middle of the meadow again. I walked the 1/2 mile back up the road to the meadow and watched the coyote hunting ground squirrels. He definitely had the leap and pounce down pat, but he was very weak on the grab. He made two pounces, but came away with zero ground squirrels.
On the opposite side of the highway, a small herd of bison and two calves walked down a small ravine, past a snow bank, across the stream, and up into a meadow. Alum Creek created perfect reflections as the herd passed.
As I was hiking back to car, I noticed a larger bird being harassed by the resident swallows that live under the bridge. Surprise! It was an osprey out on a fishing expedition. I zoomed in on the osprey when it dived into the river. I missed the dive, but I quickly refocused on the osprey thrashing around in the water and started shooting. The osprey was awfully clumsy flapping around in the water, but it came up with a fish and was soon flying away with its prize. The osprey was a great surprise.
It was nearly 9:00, so it was time to head back to the motorhome. The decision to drive back up Hayden Valley resulted in over an hour shooting the tricky coyote and amazing shots of the osprey.
I joined Carol for breakfast and we planned out our day. We decided the geyser eruption predictions lined up pretty well for us to see Grand, Daisy, Old Faithful, and Castle Geysers. We quickly made lunches, packed up, and drove the 40 miles to Old Faithful.
Grand Geyser was our main target. We skipped Old Faithful to be sure we wouldn't miss Grand Geyser in case it went off early. We reached Grand Geyser over an hour early and joined the crowd already there. Twenty minutes before the "scheduled" eruption and without warning, Grand Geyser demonstrated how it earned its name. It exploded 150 feet into the air. It erupted for about 5 minutes and then died down to almost nothing. Surprise! It wasn't done. It erupted again and nearly as high as the first time. This provided a chance to shoot some video clips in addition to images. It slowly lost its steam and died down. Surprise! It went off a third time, a very rare occurrence for Grand Geyser. And it was spectacular all over again. A group a little ways away from us seemed to be very familiar with Grand Geyser. Each time it the geyser died back, they started chanting, "Come on Grand, you can do it." I guess they were right.
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We hiked own to Daisy Geyser, which was supposed to erupt about 15 minutes after Grand. Like the last time we tried to photograph Daisy, we sat there over 45 minutes without it erupting. We walked back up the hill to Castle and settled in to wait for its eruption. Castle has always been very predictable and spectacular when we've been in Yellowstone. It didn't disappoint us today. It gave us a little warning so we were ready for the first huge pulse and then erupted for about 10 minutes. Gradually, the eruption switched from super-heated water to almost all steam as it erupted for another 10 minutes. It definitely put on a show.
The clouds had filled most of the sky, so we decided to skip trying to shoot Old Faithful again. As we walked back to Ruby, we looked over and saw Beehive Geyser erupting. Beehive is relatively small and comes out of a small, beehive-like structure, but it more than made up for its unimpressive surroundings by its very impressive eruption. The "beehive" is only 3 1/2 feet tall and the vent is only 4 feet in diameter, but it shoots water 200 feet into the air. It goes off whenever it feels like it, so we were lucky to see it, even at a distance.
We put our gear in the Explorer and walked over to check out the Old Faithful Inn. It is a gorgeous old building that was originally nearly all wood. I'm assuming it's been reinforced through the years, but the casual observer sees only the wood. Most surprising to me were the stairs and landings all the way to the top of the building. It was gorgeous and worth every bit of money and effort it took to save the Old Faithful Inn from the terrible fires in 1988.
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We drove the long way back to camp through Gibbon Meadows, Norris, and Hayden Valley. As we approached Gibbon Meadow, we hit a coyotejam. We managed to get through all the people parking on the road and pulled into a turnout ahead. We knew this coyote, and we knew where he was headed. We got out our long lenses and waited. Surprise! A ranger in his car turned on his lights and used his loudspeaker to tell people not to park on the road and to keep going. That spooked the coyote, so he ran across the road, next to a swampy area, and finally into the trees. We got a few shots from a distance, but not nearly what we thought we would get.
As we continued back toward "home," we made one final stop to shoot a bull elk feeding in a meadow. Like the elk we saw yesterday, he was in velvet, which made his antlers look even larger. He was concentrating on eating, but he looked up at the growing crowd from time-to-time and allowed us to get some good shots of him. We appreciated his cooperation.
We finally got back to camp in time to download images and have our 9:00 dinner. This was my favorite wildlife day of the trip.
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