Vacation 2011–Day 3

Perhaps we could have gotten out earlier today if we had enough left yesterday to prepare our backpacks. We still managed to leave our campsite earlier than your typical camping wussies. While in the car, we had to hold up for a bison that was hogging up the road. He was not alone.  Unfortunately, he was too close and I never took a good picture. There weren’t a whole lot of bison. There was a herd of elk. With the numbers of elk, I’m sure that I found a better target for my camera than I did with the bison. We also stopped to see what kinds of ducks were swimming in the water by the road. I know it’s not very exciting. We saw scaup, teals, shovelers, a goose, and a mallard. While taking inventory of bird species, we noted a larger more distant bird. We have identified it as a sandhill crane.



We beat the bulk of the crowds to the Mammoth Hot Springs area. We walked the trails of the lower terrace. I’m going to have to try to identify the springs when I go through my pictures later. Despite the unfriendly nature of these hot springs to humans, there was some wildlife in the area. These included violet-green swallows, sparrows, ravens, a chipmunk, and killdeer. I should be honest and admit that the chipmunk and ravens kept their distance from the springs.

We followed up one trail with another trail in the area. We visited some local beaver ponds. Not surprisingly, the local beavers were not cooperative. I never expected to see one and I didn’t. What we did see included robins, magpies, killdeer, yellow-rumped warblers, sparrows, tanagers, ground squirrels, chickadees, ravens, chipmunks, woodpeckers, juncos, coots, a yellow-headed blackbird, red-winged blackbirds, scaup, and a flicker. At one point, a couple hikers pointed out a snake for us. After relaying the information to a passing group of humans, one of them insisted that it was a bullsnake. At another point along the trail, we saw a herd of elk.


After this hike, we called it a day. The sun was on its usual warpath and we decided that we needed to work on our strategy to claim victory over the evil fireball. Or maybe we were just feeling lazy.

Edit: Although I did not get a picture, I failed to mention more red squirrels by our campground.