Day 5 - part 2....there's a bear over there!

As we are taking our time through Lamar Valley, we spotted our second coyote of the trip. We stop at a viewpoint and mention it to the couple that had also stopped. In return they tell us that they just saw a Grizzly in Hayden Valley.

I know this pic was used before, but the bear aware signs were a staple in our adventure.

WE'VE GOTTA GO!

Lamar Valley is in the Northeast area of the park....Hayden Valley is the South Central area. We had about 40 miles to travel at 35mph. Oh I hope we don't miss it.

We get to the valley and the central viewpoint is packed with cars. This is a great sign! There's still something here to look at!

We park at the first open viewpoint we come to, which is only a couple hundred feet from the central location. We walk down and sure enough, we can see the grizzly through our binoculars! Praise the almighty binoculars!

See that brown dot in the center of the picture? That's our bear. If you had some binoculars you could see it too.

But wait...he's making a turn towards the road. He's heading towards our car! We better go back to our car in case we have to leave.

The park rangers arrive and park near us. They march in the direction of the bear. As the bear moseys towards the ranger, the ranger repeatedly lifts his arms up and down as if he's "shooing" the bear away. The ranger yells at everyone "get in your cars NOW." 

We were already in our car. Taking pictures of course!

The bear looks irritated, he just wants to cross the road to get to the river.  A siren begins to alarm and the bear is hazed with bear spray! It was comforting to see that bear spray actually works, the bear turned and ran the other way, we could see his belly jiggling he was so close!

After checking into the Canyon Lodge, which is next door to Hayden Valley, we decided to find a hiking trail, for it was a couple hours before dusk and critters should be coming out to feed...like coyotes, this was number three for the journey.

We stopped at the Mount Mary trail. We got our waters, camera and jackets and started on our way. Once we got to a few feet off the road, we noticed that across the field, many cars are parked at the viewpoint and their spotting scopes are pointed in our direction. 

Should we REALLY push our luck with a bear encounter? We decided to play it safe and find a different trail, on the other side of the Valley.

"Ribbon Lake" Trail it is! My favorite thing about hiking in Yellowstone is the need to always be aware of your surroundings. You might startle a bison, bear or coyote if you walk to quickly over that hill. 

Yep, another Bison.

We stayed our distance and continued on our path. After passing through the valley we enter a small patch of trees. It felt as though I was entering somethings house. The bark was stripped, there was fur stuck on the tree limbs and  there were bison beds all around us. Let's hope it's still vacant on our return trip.

Further into the trip our noses began to burn and steam was coming up from the ground. Did we stray from the hiking trail? Is this ground stable?

It was the first time of the trip that I thought about how idiotic it was for us to be hiking around on top of a super-volcano.

Three groups of stinky, steaming woods later and we enter another field. Something fat and fluffy caught my eye as a Great Gray Owl flew from the ground up to a tree limb.

Even though he spotted us, he did not let that deter him from the task at hand....dinner.

While watching the owl, we had to keep an eye on the tree line. We heard some very loud cracks of tree limbs breaking. 

 

The sun was getting pretty low, and we still needed to hike back to the car.  Even though I could have watched that owl hunt for hours, the tree limbs were still cracking and we didn't want to get stuck out in the field in the dark.

We called it a night for day 5, and no, we never got to see what was making all the racket in the trees.