By the Way...

On our way up to Bozeman the other day, I forgot to mention several interesting encounters. First, we saw a skunk, dead on the road, just south of Yankee Jim Canyon. While there are plenty up in Tom Miner Basin, they are very rarely seen in the Park, so seeing one dead so close is always noteworthy. Also, we helped to rescue three very lost and very stupid dogs coming through that same canyon. They were hanging out on the road, a steep incline up the canyon on one side and a quick and unsteady descent to the river on the other, with no escape. They were trying to greet every car that came by, and the women in front of us stopped to collect them. She got the first one, a well taken care of golden retriever, with ease, but the other two ran scared for a good 15 minutes before chunks of cheese provided by another stopped good Samaritan lured them in. We stopped traffic in all directions, and finally a US Marshall driving by stopped to call in the strays. Someone mentioned that earlier in the day he had seen them up in Tom Miner, which means that these idiot dogs were not only lost, but that they also probably swam across the river, which is no easy feet through Yankee Jim (several canoeists and kayakers have died in the rapids through there).

There was also a bald eagle hanging out in Paradise Valley, taking advantage of the exceptionally wet weather in the area by hunting with ease. I will never get tired of seeing these guys; they’re so big and beautiful, it makes perfect sense that we’ve chosen this animals as the sign of our country. And all the water here is amazing. The waterfalls are full and flowing, the ponds are still squishy with mud that, under recent normal conditions, would have been dry and empty by July. There is even more green in the hills, where last summer than burnt tan and dusty yellows had taken over early in the summer, paving the way for several fires that season. No fires of note this season, an amazing feat in itself. The Yellowstone we returned to is more of an early summer, late spring Yellowstone than an early September Yellowstone. It’s amazing what a good winter can do, and I hope there is at least one more that will help to balance some of the problems we’ve been having here. On the way up, we noticed how devastating the pine beetle kill has become, especially in the older growth where fires and cold winters have not yet killed off the annoying killer bug.