06 March 2005 - Sunday

Carlene and I were on the road at 3:22 PM into the park on a warm (63 degrees) sunny day. There was a nice little herd of antelope in the area that is called the triangle just before the North Entrance. We looked for the bighorn sheep without success in the cayon as we head up to Mammoth. The resident elk herd has staked out the Mammoth Campgrounds and they were doing their spring grass trimming and fertilizing. Joining the elk was one brave tent camper who had really lucked out as far as weather was concerned. And we had one lone bison laying in the grass in front of the Albright visitor center just waiting for photo ops.

The Wraith Falls bulls were out and man they really look good, the mild winter hasn't hurt them at all. The bison were also dotting the hillside and vales between the falls and and Blacktail Lakes.

We hit Roosevelt at 4:01 PM and we had elk and bison at Junction Butte but no wolves or bears. The temperature was 44 degrees at Roosevelt. We looked around for a while and then headed east towards Little America and Lamar.

At 4:20 PM in Little America we had two coyotes on the north side of the road working their way west along the hillside near the road. There was one large male with a radio collar and blue and red ear tags and a smaller female. We watched them for a while as they traveled west mousing along the way.

We turned around at this point as we heard that the Slough Creek Pack had been active just a little ways west of where we were. We came back to a pullout with a few folks perched up on a hill looking through scopes. We parked and joined in the fun.

We were told that the Slough's had made a kill north of us early this morning and they had left the kill earlier in the day and folks were hopeful that they would be returning. There were some wolf folks there with telemtry, but no signals were in the area. We stayed and scoped and chatted with the folks for a while. We had a nice time visiting but no signals or wolves, so we slowly headed back towards Gardiner.

There was a good size bison herd at Blacktail Lakes both down around the lakes and up on the mountainside to the north. They are doing well this winter and that is great to see. We spent some time looking for a bison carcus that was reported to have fallen through the ice near the inlet. We did not find it.

We next had a great thrill of seeing thirteen of the largest bull elk we had ever seen! The big boys were out in force at Wraith Falls and they have some massive racks. It was fun to see and watch them guietly grazing in this beautiful area of the park.

At about 5:30PM we were driving up the hill to Mammoth and there were 80 to 100 elk all along the roadside. These were mostly cows and yearlings feeding on the grasses.

We had a nice drive and trip into Parkadise. Spring wildlife is abundant and doing well and a pleasure to watch and enjoy.