02.16.09
Posted in photo, travel, vacation, yellowstone at 11:52 pm by heidihoho7
The next morning we decided to get a nice big breakfast. We’d been getting breakfast there most mornings with the group but had some issues a few days with bad pancakes and oatmeal. I should say Dale had issues, we mostly had issues with getting butter with our pancakes – is that weird – does no one else use butter??? Anyways so we got our waiter Cody yet again – by that point he thought we were employees haha! But this time the breakfast was one of the best we’d had ever! Dale wouldn’t have believed it, but the pancakes were fabulous. Thanks again to the VE crew as we used our gift card for that AND to help pay for the room.
We headed north to Chico Hot Springs for our next night’s stay and day’s activities. We opted for a 2 hour dog sledding trip which was really great fun. Bela got the uphill portion and did have to help out a bit. We ended up going along a closed road along Mill Creek near Chico – it was quite pretty. We shared our sled with the Musher Brent (or Brett?) for our first time out, which we were just fine with. We had 10 dogs pulling our sled and many of them cracked us up. They were a bit crazy and howled a lot once they were out of the truck and our group just wanted to play. There were 2 other folks going out with us and their group of dogs just wanted to run and run (video of us mushing). I got to mush on the way back with no major incidents – they loved the downhill and so did I – we got going pretty quick 
! Bela was a bit jealous that i got the easy end of the trip – maybe next time I’ll take the uphill.
We returned to the resort and ended up enjoying the hot springs – which they pipe into a swimming pool. It was nice but we both agreed that the boiling river was a bit more fun – less kids and more natural feeling. After a nice nap, we then went off to our mud wraps and massages followed by another yummy dinner to make a nice end to our vacation. On a side note to any of our doggie friends, this place was super dog friendly and it has little cabins and such and we’d recommend it if you are traveling with your furry companions.
We woke up early and got on our way. We drove and drove and eventually arrived home early on Tuesday. We had a really great trip, but as always its always nice to get home. We enjoyed a nice quiet couple of hours of sleep before the cats woke us up. Aghh it’s good to be home!
Permalink
02.15.09
Posted in photo, travel, vacation, yellowstone at 10:58 pm by heidihoho7
So Saturday morning we went out for 1 last round of looking for wolves and photo ops. We did see a group of at least 5 (i thought i saw a 6th) chasing bison for a little bit at Tower junction. They moved on fairly quickly and we didn’t really get any super photo ops of the wolves, but you can at least see them behind the bison.
We also have been noticing some issues with mange in the park. This set had at least 2 wolves that clearly had mange and i guess its pretty easy to spread along to other animals. It is also the mating season which means a lot of the males are out wandering looking for females. One in particular that morning looked an awful lot like a poodle, poor thing! We heard that the rangers actually introduced mange into the coyote population years and years ago in hopes that it would kill them off back when the wild dogs were considering a bad thing in the park. It seems that the coyote population is smaller now but all that we saw seemed very healthy so maybe it just needs to run its course and it will help produce healthier animals down the road.
After the wolves ran off we did a bit more trolling but had to head back to town since we had to check out late morning. We lucked out yet again and saw a “Sun Dog” – another phenomena with the snow crystals. We also saw the 3 bull elk we’d seen another morning back in the lakes area. They did some cool sparring and eventually crossed the road giving us some great photo ops to end our tour.
We checked out, and the rest of the group went on their way – either back to home in WY or on to the aiport to fly east. We wanted to say a big Thanks! to Dale and Mike as well as Rich and Art. Our week of photos with the group was an amazing one. It was a bit quieter without my photo gals, but super productive with what i’d consider to be some great photos and some fun video to boot.
On to the rest of the weekend! We headed back into the park to go snowshoeing. We stopped to check out Wraith Falls which was just a short trail. We also decided to try just hiking a bit near Tower to get a bit more trail under our boots. Most of the trails were well groomed and we really didn’t need our snowshoes so we left them on the 2nd outing. We were a bit tired and turned around at a little lake that had some bison at it. As we turned around we took a close look at one of the skiers and we recognized our snowcoach driver from thursday, Zach an IL transport. We found it kind of funny that will all the visitors to the park and with so many trails that we ran into him – a small world, small park!
Around 2pm we decided to see if we could check into the Mammoth Hotel we were staying in on Sat night. On our way to the hotel i noticed a lone black wolf watching us as we drove over the bridge just out side of mammoth. We pulled over to see if we could still see him just a bit past the bridge but we didn’t find him again. We just found it a bit funny that we’d be looking for wolves all morning and then midday we see 1 fairly close, not a 1/2 mile outside of mammoth where we’d be staying for the night!
We were able to check in and thought we’d check out the “boiling river” – an area where the spring from mammoth hot springs flows into the Gardiner River. It’s a really cool spot and has a bunch of terraces where the toasty water cascades over into the cold river. They have part of the river sectioned off and once you get into the warm cascading water its really quite nice, you can sit right at the base of a cascade and it flows right over you. You just have to be careful not to get too far into the cold water, in Feb it’s quite cold! The only downside to our little outing was 1. that there were 2 buses so it was a bit crowded and 2. that in my rush to get dressed and get out of there i accidentally lost one of my most favorite hats. Still a but bummed about that but Bela was nice enough to buy me a very cute one from the gift shop.
We ended up enjoying Valentine’s Day Night with a few drinks from the bar and ordering our dinner to go (too late for reservations) which we enjoyed back in our room. We have to thank Beth, Oliver and Ty at VE for our yummy dinner, they gave us a gift card to use in the park and we used it well – Bison meatloaf and idaho trout. It was REALLY good. We were also were celebrating our 10th year of being together so it really made for a great gift. We had no tv in our room (its a very old building) so we ended up playing cards out in the main hall which also made for a nice change as well. Though if you are a light sleeper you might want to think about staying somewhere else – i slept ok but i guess the pipes were noisy and the walls are super thin- those old building designers knew nothing of sound suppression!
Permalink
02.14.09
Posted in photo, travel, vacation, yellowstone at 10:58 pm by heidihoho7
So friday was the last full day of the tour with Dale and after 5 full days of “photo-ing” bela decided that he’d like a day off, not that i blame him he was quite the trooper! Occasionally i’d pull the “give me that lens right off your camera” in the chaos of seeing cool animals so I commend him for lasting that long So he enjoyed a down day of working on his book and i imagine a lot of vegging and tv time. He was also quite smart as it was one of the coldest days we had in the park.
As we left Gardiner it was around 5 degrees dropping a few degrees as we drove through the park. Now the one good thing about the freezing cold in a wintry place is that there is some cool snow crystals that float around in the air and sometimes create cool phenomena – this morning it was a sun beam. So we made a stop as we saw some elk in a valley and thought it might make a cool elkscape.
Our first stop wasn’t our coldest either- that was probably only -5 or so, not so bad actually! We continued our way through Little America and saw some cool frosty bison. We’d been hoping for wolves but they seemed pretty quiet.
We continued on to Lamar Valley and with no wolves coming out to play we decided to take advantage of some really cool frosty trees along a little creek. This ended up being one of my favorite spots for landscapes for the day and I just kept shooting the steamy creek. Unfortunately it was also the coldest spot we hit getting down to -17. I ended up having to break out foot and hand warmers which helped immensely.
We eventually moved on doing a couple of trips up and down the main road in hopes of more fun animals, we had a few sheep spottings far up a hill but nothing that called us so we decided to just do landscapes until something caught our eyes. And honestly after the previous day’s “catches” it’d be hard to follow so it was kind of fitting. So we made a few more stops along the way to Cooke City – after which the road is closed – and took advantage of the blue skies and pretty vistas.
We had our lunch in Cooke City where it actually warmed up to 17 degrees- a 34 degree jump – heat wave! We saw a moose on the way off in the willows – not a photo op but cool to see yet another animal. On our way back the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep finally had worked their way down the hill so we were able to get a few shots of them eating their grass.
We again trolled for action, I think we may have heard some rumorings of wolves but no major sightings but i wasn’t complaining – i was looking forward to getting back at a decent time and getting some sleep
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »