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Posted by GA Tim (66.168.208.179) on 16:20:27 06/29/12
Day 10 June 17, 2012 Sunday:
We actually slept in today, if you call waking up at 6AM sleeping in. We drove up north over Dunraven Pass. This time I did not have any issues with my fear of heights. We stopped at Tower Fall and were pretty much the only ones there early in the morning. We spotted some colorful birds in the trees while watching the waterfall. Back on the road we stopped next at Calcite Springs. We spent a long time with our tripods setup waiting for the sapsuckers to switch places in their nest (in a dead tree just about 10 feet off the steps up to the overlook). When we had enough photos we got back on the road but immediately ran into a small bear jam just past the parking lot. The whole time we were there watching sapsuckers there was a black bear and two cubs just down the hill! We stopped quickly to get some photos but the ranger sternly told us to get moving. We tried parking down by Rainy Lake and walking back up but another ranger driving by told us not to waste our time since we would be turned back anyway. We drove back to Calcite Springs parking lot and ran down the hill to get set up for photos. The rangers already had us quite a ways back so it was difficult to get good photos. The mother bear meandered around the dead trees while the two cubs slept at the base of a tree. Eventually the cubs started stirring and getting more active. They were still too far away for good photos but we tried anyway. It was just fun being there watching them. After an hour or more had passed, the bears moved farther away and out of our sight. Again we had spent nearly 3 hours total watching things we never planned on. That s the nice thing about having nine days to spend in the park we really don t have to rush anything.
We drove out through Lamar Valley but absolutely nothing was happening. Not a wolf watcher in sight. But then it was late in the morning due to all our bird watching and bear watching. We got to the Trout Lake trailhead and waited a bit for a proper parking space (definitely a popular place). It s a very steep hike at first but fortunately very short. We hiked around to the back of the lake to watch the trout swimming up the shallow stream. It was hard to get photos of them. We never saw an otter while we were there. We hiked back to the parking lot and made our way back into Lamar Valley. On the way we saw a car sitting far off the road and stopped to see what was going on. A family in a Toyota Camry had gone off the road and ended up in the sagebrush and rocks. It was a very steep drop off where they left the road and they were lucky there wasn t a rollover. It could have been much worse. It turns out they were Taiwanese so my wife struck up a conversation with them in Mandarin. We offered to give them a ride to somewhere but the rangers were going to take care of them. A flatbed tow truck showed up and used the winch to drag the car out of the brush. It was painful watching the car lurch up over some large rocks as it was being dragged up the hill. I hope the underside of the car wasn t damaged too much. The front end looked a little loose but otherwise there was not much visible damage. The family was all OK and that is what really mattered. Their young son was more worried about his Coke in the back.
After that brief excitement we drove to Hellroaring Trailhead to look for the elusive pikas. We looked and looked in the rocks but didn t see a thing moving. We got to Elk Creek and there was a large bear jam but we had just missed the bear. We looked for a while but couldn t spot him. On the way back to Calcite Springs we saw the same black bear and two cubs from the morning coming down the hill towards Rainy Lake. The ranger was keeping everyone moving but I pulled over just past him to get some photos. I was legally off the road and well over 100 yards from the bears but he yelled at me to move on. We obliged and slowly moved on getting a few last photos from the car.
Back at Calcite Spring we watched the sapsuckers for a little while. We drove up Chittenden Road on the way back to Canyon and it was incredibly windy up there. Some rain pelted the car and we could see sheets of rain coming down in the distance on all sides. By the time we got down into Hayden Valley the sun was shining again but the wind was too much for us. We decided to go back to the cabin early and relax while enjoying some drinks.
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