Author: Chris

Yellowstone Safari

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Darlene and I enjoyed an extended road trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks this summer.  While in Yellowstone, we spent most of our time in safari mode, scouting the prime bear and wolf habitats (Lamar and Hayden Valleys) in the mornings and evenings.  Our perseverance paid off with many sightings: black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes, fox, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, beavers, marmots, rabbits, geese, cranes, storks and various other birds and rodents.

   

We did some day hiking but only on busy, populated trails (like the Canyon trail) since there was only the two of us (a minimum of three are recommended for backcountry trails to avoid bear encounters) and we rode our mountain bikes up the north side of Mount Washburn.  After enjoying many days in the north half of the park (Canyon, Hayden Valley, Tower-Roosevelt, Lamar Valley, Norris and Mammoth), I was pretty shocked when we approached the Old Faithful area.  It’s so busy and built-up with parking lots and lodges that it felt like going to a theme park, not a national park.  The geysers and geothermal pools were wonderful and beautiful to see but we were both anxious to escape back to the quieter areas.  If you’re not going to be camping or backpacking, I strongly recommend staying in the Canyon lodge area instead!

A video montage of our time in Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

Click through for the full gallery of pictures and video:

   

Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center

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This is a fantastic place to visit!  The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is in West Yellowstone, Montana, near the border of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.  It’s a non-profit, wildlife rehabilitation and education center specializing in grizzly bears and gray wolves.  All the animals at the center were rescued: nuisance bears that would have been killed or wolves born in captivity at other facilities that could not care for them.

  

The animals are rotated through large enclosures where they can be seen by the public and are given frequent stimulation by hiding food or bones, rearranging habitat features, planting unusual scents for them to discover, stocking trout in the ponds and streams, etc.

Short video of some of the animals at the Discovery Center.

Road Trip: Through Idaho

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Highlights from the Idaho portion of our summer road trip to Yellowstone:

   

We stayed several days in Boise: biking through town and up on some of the trails above the city, floated the Boise River through town, successfully solved (and escaped) the house in Boise Escape and made a side trip to historic Idaho City. After Boise, we visited the World Center for Birds of Prey, stopped off at Three Island Crossing (Oregon Trail crossing of the Snake River) and camped overnight at Craters of the Moon National Monument.  After exploring the lava formations we continued on to Idaho Falls, stopping off for a tour of the world’s first nuclear power plant, Experimental Breeder Reactor #1.  Our final leg included the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway and camping near West Yellowstone.

Pan Meets the Guardian Owl

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Pan had developed a habit of lying in wait on the upstairs deck early every morning, in a perfect spot for an unsuspecting bird to alight nearby on the wall.  It was unfortunately a reasonably successful strategy, so I decided to try one of those plastic owls to ward off the birds.  Pan and Hera’s different reactions to first seeing it was amusing:

Pan and Hera meet the Guardian Owl (60 seconds, 20 MB)

  

And yes, the guardian owl has been effective.  It’s been well over a year (I’m backdating this post) and almost every bird has stayed away from the deck but Pan continued to go out before dawn every morning for most of a year, oblivious to why the birds stopped coming.  All except this one little guy who came along many months later.  He was apparently too smart for his own good and not fooled by the plastic owl.  He even seemed to taunt Pan through the window over the course of a week or two.  However, I’m guessing this is also that same bird that Pan eventually caught a little later.

National Automobile Museum

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Darlene and I visited the fantastic National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada (“The Harrah Collection”) recently.  This is a cool place and definitely worth a trip to visit, even for non-car aficionados.  It’s super-easy to get caught up and lose several hours in this place checking out the hundreds of vintage vehicles.  It’s fun to see and learn how things evolved so haphazardly from the original notions of the “horseless carriage”.  It’s quite an amazing collection and full of surprises.

  

Atlas Obscura: A Dentist’s Creations

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I recently discovered this online, collaborative catalog of “wondrous and curious places”, The Atlas Obscura.  It’s a great source to find odd things to see and explore both near home and afar.  Browsing the listings, I found plenty of little local surprises in addition to the places I had already seen or been.  Check it out in your own area or the next time you’re traveling somewhere!

The first one Darlene and I ended up checking out was The Statues of Ken Fox in Auburn. I’d seen the giant sculpture of a gold-panning prospector along Interstate 80 in Auburn, but I wasn’t aware of the artist/dentist’s other, similarly massive creations in town.  Here’s a more complete backstory on Ken Fox and his creations.

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We also went hiking around the intersection of several historic routes (wagon, train and automobile) in the Sierra Nevada, at Donner Summit: the first wagon trail to California, first transcontinental railroad, first transcontinental highway.

Click through for more pictures.