6/28 There was a Glitch*

This was the day I picked for us to move to a different campground, just to see a different place, and to have electricity. We looked forward to the latter so that the space heater could be run in Rosie, it was in the low 40’s to the low ’30’s at night, pretty tough sleeping when you don’t have heat. But there was a glitch. I didn’t catch that Fishing Bridge RV campsite didn’t allow canvas RV’s, because of bears, only hard sided RV’s. After the breakfast buffet at Grant Village, we arrived at Fishing Bridge and were turned down. The park staff helped us to find two campsites together at Bridge Bay, just by the lake’s marina. These sites were even more primitive than Grant, but each had a bear box and there were more children. Noel and AK played soccer and some other games with kids nearby. The move and cooking occupied most of the day (Peggy made salmon patties with potato salad and heated up canned corn).

Thursday 6/29 we got up early and went to Lamar valley. I made fried egg sandwiches the night before and we all ate in the car as we drove. The 5:30 AM start paid off as we came upon a group with binocs and spotting scopes watching wolves eat a recently downed elk while they simultaneously fended off several bison who occasionally charged them. Yes, wolves prey on bison but the two species are mortal enemies and the nearby bison herd just couldn’t tolerate the presence of wolves, even at risk of their own lives. The wolf watchers were very generous with the spotting scopes and we all got to look through them although our binoculars gave adequate views. I saw three grays and two black wolves but others saw seven. Will saw one wolf run up the hill out of sight carrying a chunck of elk meat. The Lamar valley is wider than Hayden and has many more bison. We also saw antelope and another mother grizzly with two cubs, again at quite a distance. A slow moving sort of disheveled, skinny coyote meandered across the road at one point. After lunch we went to the falls of Yellowstone river and Tower falls. Here are some pictures …..

At this point we had seen all the major sites and checked off most of the wildlife we wanted to see. Peggy nor I had seen a black bear and Colleen hadn’t seen a moose.

*When several foreign countries had created reliable covid test kits and a lab at U of Washington in Seattle had created a reliable in house kit for their own use, CDC insisted we should only use a kit they would soon issue, and FDA agreed. After a week or so it was obvious the CDC kits they had distributed didn’t work, every result was negative. Fauci explained it away by saying “there was a glitch”. The usually rabid wolfpack-like media just accepted that explanation and moved on, so I thought why not use it to explain how I messed up the campsite reservation.