Heading out

It rained yesterday, and today’s parting clouds reveal that snow has reached the tree line of the lower peaks. Our neighbor Bob came over in the morning drizzle to say goodbye before heading home to Utah. He’d seen the otters that have eluded us on this trip, while not even looking for them. That seems to be the way it is with wildlife spotting.
Our two weeks in the Grand Tetons have encompassed the beginnings, full-blown splendor and now, seemingly, the closing days of autumn. We arrived to the first touch of color in the trees and within a week brilliant yellow cottonwoods competed with orange-gold aspens and scarlet chokecherries in eye-popping brilliance. Now, already, some trees are bare and the increasingly chill wind brings a swirling shower of golden leaves fluttering to the ground.
Buffalo and serviceberries along trails have been browsed clean by bears, and we’ve noticed the tips of all the bull elks’ antlers are white, their surface probably worn down by constant sparring.
We shared a campfire the other night with Bob, who was here for a photography workshop at Yellowstone. While a coyote yipped nearby, he spoke of his frustration at not capturing what he wanted in his photographs, the clear skies depriving him of the Ansel Adams-style clouds he craves. Still, he was putting in long days, in search of that elusive Kodak moment everyone seeks in these parts. We wanted animals, he wanted clouds. We preferred the Tetons’ jagged peaks and sage meadows to Yellowstone’s fire-scarred forests and geothermal wonders.
We all agreed we were in a magical place.
We chatted about the high-altitude prices of real estate in the area, making those in Napa Valley pale in comparison. Even Dick Cheney is reportedly building in Idaho. “All the millionaires are leaving Jackson,” Bob said. “Only the billionaires can afford it.”
Snow is predicted Thursday. Most campgrounds in the park are closed, and ours will shut down in another week. Animals seem scarcer.
We took a last drive on Antelope Flats, then looped around the park. As we passed the Jackson Lake dam, Terry spotted it: a young grizzly heading our way. He crossed the road in front of us -- our grizzly moment. We saw him first. Within seconds, there was a mini bear jam, and within a minute he was gone. Such is the sheer improbability of being in the right place at the right second in time.
The elk are on the move, and so are we. Tomorrow we’re off to Montana and Idaho.

Finally, a grizzly

Each day has been a new discovery. We drove to Kelly warm springs, caused by the massive Gros Ventre landslide in the ‘20s. The water remains unfrozen during the bitter winters, once a welcome resource for the settlers on Mormon Row and still visited by local bison herds, who wallow in its steaming mud on frosty mornings. Farther up, we saw the slide itself – the largest movement of land ever in the U.S., now covered by a patchwork quilt of blue-green spruce and lemon yellow aspen. The lake formed by the slide has a beautiful campground, where we could stay for only $6.
One day we found a series of badger holes at historic Mormon Row, where early settlers homesteaded, leaving behind picturesque barns, houses and buck-rail fences now part of the park. Strong diggers, the badgers had flung out rocks the size of grapefruits during their excavations -- in search of. hibernating ground squirrels, we later learned from naturalists. Some small animals were already hibernating in September and one, the marmot, goes into such a deep “sleep” its body temperature drops by half and it wouldn’t rouse even if dragged from its hole.
A coyote raised a litter of pups here at the campground this spring, and we often hear the yip-howls in early morning or night. I found her den, surprisingly close to the road. Sometimes coyotes hunt cooperatively with badgers, one unearthing and the other snatching prey. As I write this at our campsite, we can see a coyote off in the sage, throwing back its head to howl in the classic pose captured in Southwestern tourist knickknacks. Our neighborhood bull moose just wandered through, prompting a frenzied chase by those big-lens photographers.
I completed the test and got my Junior Ranger badge the other day, holding up my right hand and promising to “respect, appreciate and preserve the natural world,” while an impatient tourist rolled his eyes, waiting behind me to talk to the ranger at the visitor center. I absolutely was not the oldest Junior Ranger on record, the kindly ranger told me, saying he’d sworn in a 91-year-old the other day.
Our friendly campground neighbors, Norma and Gary, have been coming here for decades and they’ve seen it all: a young bald eagle accidentally bumped from the nest by a sibling to crash to the ground (he survived) and a mother grizzly grabbing a minutes-old elk calf, growling a warning to her two hungry cubs to remain in the protective cover of the trees. It was Gary who came over with news of the black bear the other night, prompting us to abandon dinner plans and dash off to Jenny Lake.
There, I overheard talk of “another carcass … grizzly at the dam” so we headed there the next evening, noted the “bear jam” of cars and parked. Nearly a mile out on the dam was a group of spotters, including two rangers with scopes. As the light quickly faded, we saw the grizzly working the carcass of an elk, which by now resembled an elk rug. She was the two-year-old offspring of #399, and another ranger had seen her drag the dead elk from the water several days ago. She’d been guarding it night and day, driving off even the opportunistic ravens who crept up in her shadow. A mass of coots darkened the shallows of the lake, Canada geese honked in the distance and other elk bugled in the willows across the road while we watched the grizzly. Her silver-gray body appeared massive even at this distance, and we observed the powerful hump of muscle at her shoulders. She was gorgeous.
The bear’s mother, Grizzly #399, had achieved a degree of fame two years ago because she raised three cubs often in view of humans, delighting spotters and rangers alike. A male cub was frequently spotted in Willow Flats; the whereabouts and gender of the third was unknown.
We returned at first light the next morning and the grizzly was still there, now with a coyote skirting her warily. He came close once but never risked the bear’s wrath, and finally seemed to abandon hope, crossing the dam and trotting off in the meadow.
A return to the scene of the black bear was less pleasant. The stench of the rotting elk was overpowering, and a mob of photographers – including a tourist bus – had driven the bear into the shadows of the trees.
“Send a tourist in there,” bellowed a Scot in shorts and an open vest that displayed a bear-size belly, fiddling with the long-lens camera atop a tripod. “Maybe that’ll drive the bear out.”
We left.
Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/ADayInTeton02#5253034245516140114

Shooting wildlife

I stood brushing shoulders with the man in the baseball cap as we stared at the elk carcass through binoculars, maybe 60 feet away at the edge of the woods. Terry had set up the spotting scope in the only other vantage point, just behind us, but most of the others were 30 feet away, some sporting telephoto lenses the length of baseball bats. The black bear had left an hour and a half ago, the crowd told us, but one woman who’d been there all day had some prize shots.
We’ve learned the protocol of wildlife viewing. Everyone’s here to view it and shoot it, if only with a point-and-shoot, like me. Tips on finding wildlife are shared generously, and it’s bad form to be blasé about someone’s first moose, even though they frequently wander through your campground practically within reach.
Volunteers with the park service set up spotting scopes for all to use, and dispense a wealth of information, along with herding viewers off the highway as 18-wheelers fly by. But the photographers with the big expensive telephoto lenses rule the roost. They plant their tripods in the prime spots, taking up a big chunk of real estate for the duration, and even if they’re chatting several feet away from their cameras, one clearly must ask their permission to step into their viewing spot.
So the guy we were with had found the only other vantage point, and being late arrivals we joined him.
Huge flies buzzed over the carcass and a raven landed in a nearby tree.
“So the bear’s gone?”
“Oh no, the bear’s there. She’s just moved and is lying down behind the elk.”
“But they said…” I realized the crowd’s prime viewing spot was prime no longer. Then something moved. A round black ear. The bear.
Of course we didn’t tell the smug ones, but spoke sotto voce among the three of us.
“Is that…?”
“Yes, a foot.”
Then the head appeared. The bear was tagged, and wore a collar. She scratched behind her left ear like a dog. We were enthralled.
A young blond woman joined us, but the bear was out of view. She and her husband had viewed sunrise at the Oxbow, then headed up Two Ocean Road, a prime bear spot. We’d been up there several days ago, realized that was the place where we’d ridden our bikes and seen bear tracks the last time we visited years ago, but saw nothing. They’d arrived at the lake at the end of the road soon after first light, heard a loud roar very nearby, and as they headed for their car, the bloodcurdling screams of “something being torn apart.”
“And I thought I’d wanted to see a bear,” she said as she walked away.
In front of us the bear rolled over. Four paws in the air.
The bull elk had been there two days, probably killed during the rut by a rival, a ranger said. The area was closed off with plastic tape like a crime scene.
Another woman arrived and we all squeezed together so she could get a look. An RV passed slowly and we all smelled it at once: “They’re leaking propane.”
But within minutes we realized there’d been an imperceptible shift in the unfelt breeze and we were smelling the elk. There was a crashing through the underbrush so close we jumped. Then the eerie bugle of an elk – very close. The bear was up instantly, sniffing the wind, big black nose twitching. Then she was on point, staring into the clearing beyond the trees. Within seconds, an enormous bull elk trotted through the clearing, impressive rack held high. Could it have been the victor, checking to see whether his rival had been permanently vanquished?
We all thought it may have been.
…………………

We returned to Gros Ventre campground in the darkness, exhilarated. Driving along the river where we see bison each day, we dimmed our lights at the approach of an oncoming car, lessening our field of vision. Just then, from the corner of my eye, I caught a moving shadow, Terry slammed on the brakes and the herd was upon us, crossing the road within feet of the front bumper, the big bulls, as always, stopping dead in the center of the road and giving you the stink eye.
Now when we come home after dark we drive extra slowly. We’ve decided to call this busy road Gros Gauntlet.
Over 100 large animals are killed yearly by cars in the park, and hitting a 2,000 pound bison would probably kill your car.
Next installment: we see our grizzly.
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TetonScenics#5252205664191238610 and http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/Yellowstone#5252212187166229682

Notes on camping

We opened the shades at first light this morning after turning on the heater and were startled to see movement on the ground – not the now-familiar moose moving through the campground, but a young man stirring in his sleeping bag out in the sage meadow. No tent, although nights drop to the 30s. We're amazed at the number of tents at this place in this season – more than we see at a typical California campground. People are tougher here.
Doing our laundry at Colter Bay campground, we met a pleasant gray-haired woman in an Obama T-shirt who spoke with a Texas twang as she unloaded clothes from a bicycle pannier. From Ft. Worth, she and her husband were recreating their honeymoon trip of 25 years ago, riding their bikes across the country. She’d just completed the 1,200 miles from Portland and had to get back to work, while her husband was going on to Virginia.
“You rode over Teton Pass? Over the mountains?”
“Oh sure, it’s not bad. We only go about 50 miles a day. If I can do it anyone can.”
“I don’t think so. And you carry your tent? Cooking utensils? Stove?”
“Yep – everything fits in the bags. It’s really not bad at all. The only bad day we had was trying to outrun a storm in Idaho, and we were bucking a head wind of about 30 miles an hour. Then the storm hit, with lightening and buckets of rain, and I got a flat tire and we were trying to change it in the rain. But a local came by and loaded us into his pickup and took us back to town.”
She was going to deliver clean clothes and the tent to her husband, who was going over a 9,000’ pass that day and they’d planned to meet up at the post office in Dubois (pronounced du boys). On a political note, she said she’d had positive response to her T-shirt, even from overall-clad farmers in Montana.
On a ranger-led hike yesterday we met a retired couple from Missouri who were tent camping (sleeping on the ground) in our campground, one of only two still open this late in the season.
“Staying warm at night?” we asked, and they replied that they do this every year. In another day, they would meet up with their ranger son for a five-day backpacking/canoe trip.
Many of the hikers we encounter on "moderate" (i.e., huff and puff) trails appear to be in their 80s, and they often pass us up. We are getting used to the 6,400' altitude.
Like the tourists from the east coast who came here in the 1880s and dressed up in silly cowboy gear at the dude ranches, we feel like softies. Our new solar panels keep the battery charged to power lights at night, the fan for the heater and recharge my laptop. (Although I still have to seek wifi outside the campground, favoring the Jackson Lake Lodge, where I'm currently sipping a beer and looking out over the mountains.) At night we listen to NPR out of Laramie and dine on roasted fig and Gorgonzola pizza made with pizza dough brought from home.
While bathrooms at California campgrounds are often steamy from showers and filled with women using hair dryers, hair gel and applying makeup, most campgrounds here (including ours) don’t even have showers, the bathroom’s a long hike away and you can’t even keep a water bucket outside because of the bears.
Still, it appears many have found how beautiful it is this time of year, and we're surprised at the number of campers -- Swiss and Brits in tents, Germans in rent-a-campers. We're happy in Happy. More pictures on another day.

More Wildlife

Why did the moose cross the road? Same reason as the bison, the elk, the wolf … and although we missed it by two minutes, the grizzly: because it was there. Unfenced, unafraid and completely oblivious to traffic, the four-legged mountain wanderers meander at will. It’s absolutely glorious.
The day after waiting over an hour for a moose pair to stand for a photo opp, we spied a lone bull (the prized photo subject because of the iconic antlers) in a meadow as we drove down the road. By the time we found a spot to turn around and head in his direction, he’d covered two-three miles at a good clip and crossed the road in front of us.
We retraced our steps and soon saw a traffic jam ahead that meant only one thing: animals. A sizeable bison herd had decided to stroll across the road, led by a couple of one-ton bulls, ignoring vehicles and sometimes stopping in the middle or returning to the side they started out on. We rescued two bicyclists who wisely decided not to proceed, carrying them and their bikes in the back of the pickup as we slowly picked our way through the herd.
We’re told the Teton bison herd has increased from 23 animals in 1980 to 650 today, and they’re a fairly common sight. Unpredictable, bison can charge at speeds of 30 miles an hour and have gored visitors dumb enough to get out of their cars.
At dusk that evening, a wolf crossed the road as we returned to camp, confirming our earlier scat ID, and we were to see another the following day at Yellowstone. Only a bear sighting would make me happier.
Moose wander through the campground, and the wildlife expedition vans bring their customers here for sightings. The elk are still in the higher elevations of Yellowstone, and we had a large bull approach our stopped truck before crossing right in front of us yesterday. Several of the animals we’ve seen are wearing tracking collars, and one bull moose was wearing a large wad of bird netting in his antlers, a result, no doubt, of a garden raid.
Sightings are sheer luck and mere seconds can make a difference. We all cruise slowly, hoping we’ll be the lucky ones. And a grizzly is most prized of all.
A trip to Yellowstone brought sightings of black-tailed deer, more moose and bison, our first elk and almost a grizzly. Terry actually caught a glimpse of its hind end disappearing into the trees, as we jockeyed for a parking place in a line of cars that had rangers directing traffic, as people thronged the road.
The big bear had crossed the road in front of a lucky few, and the telephoto lenses were plentiful.
I asked one woman with two impressive cameras whether she’d managed to get pictures of the grizzly and she said yes, “good ones.” Any chance we could see them?
“Sure,” she said, opening the tripod of one camera and turning it on.
“I’m a professional writer and photographer and I’m doing a book on Yellowstone,” she said.
“Great!”
“You’re going to see some good work,” she continued and I called Terry over.
Camera on, message on screen: No memory card.
Chagrined, she grabbed her second camera: “That’s OK, I’ve got it on this one.”
Second camera: No memory card.
Trying to stay cool: “I’ve got plenty of pictures of this bear.”
Ouch.
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/WildlifeBlog2#5250050878454602002

The Wild Life

The Tetons are drop-dead gorgeous. Seduced for many years by California’s spectacular coast, I’d nearly forgotten how beautiful this part of the world is -- and that mountains were my first love. We’re in the Gros Ventre campground where, for the princely sum of $9 a night we look out on a sage-dotted meadow where moose and bison and antelope roam, backed by the jagged peaks of the snow-dusted mountains. The leaves are just beginning to turn gold.
This is the best park for wildlife viewing in the U.S. The first night after setting up camp we joined a dozen other campers in a meadow, where a moose pair taunted photographers with tripods and expensive telephoto lenses, the bull showing only his impressive antlers and the cow flicking her ears, barely visible above the meadow where they lay contentedly chewing their cuds. One photographer told a new arrival he’d been there for most of the day and that the pair had stood for about three minutes an hour ago. The female finally got up and began browsing on the sage, under the watchful eye of her mate, but the trophy bull eluded the lenses. We left after sunset, a line of hopeful photographers still silhouetted against the darkening sky.
As we drank coffee the next morning, a cow moose and her calf ambled right through the campground, browsing on the bright red hips of wild roses. Later in the day we saw herds of bison in the meadow near the campground, and a fast-moving herd of antelope in the distance. Assorted hoofprints and bison “cowpies” told us the herds had only recently crossed the road. We moved to a campsite that would afford full sun for our solar panels and Terry spotted a great horned owl, obviously well-fed, who took a perch in a nearby tree, watching us. Of course I’m snapping away with my little point-and-shoot Canon with no telephoto lens, thrilled nonetheless to be in the midst of such critter abundance.
We love observing animal tracks and scat, and the campground has deposits from both moose (ovals the size of songbird eggs, which can be burned as incense when dried – we’ve tried it) and elk droppings, which look and smell like Hershey’s chocolate kisses. At a closed-for-the-season camp bathroom I found some very fresh scat that included an undigested rodent head.. Our new scat and track ID chart, along with a naturalist at the visitor center, both indicate gray wolf and I’m hoping it was, thrilled to think of a wolf sidling through the campground in the dark of a drizzly night. They’ve been moving into this area from Yellowstone to the north.
This is bear country and tent campers must keep all food and toiletries in heavy metal containers shared among campsites. Each year on average 14 black or grizzly bears are destroyed because they’ve become habituated to people food., and even dishwater must be taken to a special sink for draining. It’s definitely a disincentive to tenting! Signs everywhere warn “A Fed Bear Is a Dead Bear,” and who’d want that terrible responsibility? Right now bears are packing on four pounds a day in preparation for mid-November hibernation. We’re heading to an area where old 399 and her now-emancipated cubs have been hanging out, on a slim chance of a sighting.
Everyone’s here for the wildlife, along in some cases it’s preferred on a plate.The Tetons are drop-dead gorgeous. Seduced for many years by California’s spectacular coast, I’d nearly forgotten how beautiful this part of the world is -- and that mountains were my first love. We’re in the Gros Ventre campground where, for the princely sum of $9 a night we look out on a sage-dotted meadow where moose and bison and antelope roam, backed by the jagged peaks of the snow-dusted mountains. The leaves are just beginning to turn gold.
This is the best park for wildlife viewing in the U.S. The first night after setting up camp we joined a dozen other campers in a meadow, where a moose pair taunted photographers with tripods and expensive telephoto lenses, the bull showing only his impressive antlers and the cow flicking her ears, barely visible above the meadow where they lay contentedly chewing their cuds. One photographer told a new arrival he’d been there for most of the day and that the pair had stood for about three minutes an hour ago. The female finally got up and began browsing on the sage, under the watchful eye of her mate, but the trophy bull eluded the lenses. We left after sunset, a line of hopeful photographers still silhouetted against the darkening sky.
As we drank coffee the next morning, a cow moose and her calf ambled right through the campground, browsing on the bright red hips of wild roses. Later in the day we saw herds of bison in the meadow near the campground, and a fast-moving herd of antelope in the distance. Assorted hoofprints and bison “cowpies” told us the herds had only recently crossed the road. We moved to a campsite that would afford full sun for our solar panels and Terry spotted a great horned owl, obviously well-fed, who took a perch in a nearby tree, watching us. Of course I’m snapping away with my little point-and-shoot Canon with no telephoto lens, thrilled nonetheless to be in the midst of such critter abundance.
We love observing animal tracks and scat, and the campground has deposits from both moose (ovals the size of songbird eggs, which can be burned as incense when dried – we’ve tried it) and elk droppings, which look and smell like Hershey’s chocolate kisses. At a closed-for-the-season camp bathroom I found some very fresh scat that included an undigested rodent head.. Our new scat and track ID chart, along with a naturalist at the visitor center, both indicate gray wolf and I’m hoping it was, thrilled to think of a wolf sidling through the campground in the dark of a drizzly night. They’ve been moving into this area from Yellowstone to the north.
This is bear country and tent campers must keep all food and toiletries in heavy metal containers shared among campsites. Each year on average 14 black or grizzly bears are destroyed because they’ve become habituated to people food., and even dishwater must be taken to a special sink for draining. It’s definitely a disincentive to tenting! Signs everywhere warn “A Fed Bear Is a Dead Bear,” and who’d want that terrible responsibility? Right now bears are packing on four pounds a day in preparation for mid-November hibernation. We’re heading to an area where old 399 and her now-emancipated cubs have been hanging out, on a slim chance of a sighting.
Everyone’s here for the wildlife, along in some cases it’s preferred on a plate. Photos at:http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/GrandTetons1#

Unplugging and heading to the woods

Day two in the Tetons brings more of those Georgia O'Keefe clouds and new snow on the highest peaks. Our campground (photo attached) pool has long been covered for the winter and a mix of late season campers, like us, will soon move on: RVs from Florida and Washington, a euro-style camper with plates from the UK, those ubiquitous Quebecois (they seem to be everywhere!) and a hardy young couple from Salt Lake who were spending the night in a tent until the kindly proprietors offered them a cabin for the night.
Have no idea, as we unplug and head into the woods, how I'll keep this going, but we'll see. Keep checking in.

Travels with Happy

On the road again…
Loaded with a week's worth of unread newspapers and two dozen books, plenty of wine, the last of the garden's tomatoes and a big bag of grapes from our bountiful arbor, Happy took to the road again with us as happy passengers. This time we're heading east to see the west before the snow flies.
The first day proved to be record mileage for us: over 500 miles through the seemingly endless landscape of Nevada. Mile after mile of high desert scrub, punctuated by subdivisions that have sprouted like mushrooms after rain – a real estate boom that's led to staggering foreclosures in today's market.
Still the traditional opportunities for sin abound, from gambling in gas stations to the siren calls of the Mustang and Pussycat Ranches, where truckers are always welcome.
We bunked down in Elko, once not more than a wide spot in the road, now fitted out with an impressive number of sprawling malls and drive-through Starbucks. A remnant of the area's Basque sheep herding community remains in the Nevada Dinner House, a nearly century-old establishment that began as a hotel on the other side of the tracks. Purchased in later years by Italians, it still serves hearty Basque family-style dinners. Next door to Elko's rowdy bowling alley and around the corner from the Stumble Inn bar, it draws a full house of locals and passers-through: beefy guys in muscle shirts, ranchers who remove their cowboy hats at the door, truckers who don't, couples trying to converse above the din of the dining hall. Seventeen bucks will get you lamb shanks, along with the family-style sides that accompany each dinner: a huge tureen of vegetable soup, salad, a bowl of spaghetti, a platter of french fries and a fresh vegetable side, along with house-made bread. That's what you'd get if you got there early, or knew enough to reserve the shanks with the chatty hostess multitasking in the bar. The popular lamb was gone by the time we ordered, so Terry contented himself with all the sides. I was delighted with the filet mignon "small plate" – a full serving by Napa Valley standards and, at $8, easily the best beef I've had in years. We washed it all down with a full-to-the-rim glass of (chilled) no-name Cabernet for $4.
Moving into Idaho the following day, we drove through a series of incredibly scenic tableaux – the dramatic canyon and rushing waterfall of Twin Falls, rolling farm land of endless corn, golden wheat stubble and sod-roofed potato storage barns. One moment the sun was blinding, the next lightening would split a leaden sky in the distance. We saw prong-horned antelope, red barns that reminded me of the Midwest and huge machines harvesting potatoes under whipped-cream clouds in a pewter sky.
Skirting the rushing Snake River we climbed over Teton Pass to descend into a panoramic valley framed by a double rainbow, whose arch led us to Victor and the scenic campground where we are tonight. Hot showers, a good dinner with a nice bottle of Petite Sirah and rain pattering on the roof will induce blissful sleep. Click for pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/1WestTripNevadaIdaho#