Montana Vacation - Day 8 - Junior Yellowstone Rangers

While I had my classes this morning, Alex took a course designed for his age group called Wilderness Survival for Kids. They learned how to wait for help to arrive, how to improvise a shelter using a tree, scattered logs, and/or a plastic trash bag.  He also learned a few easy food souces, including the tender bases of long stalks of wild grass.  After my lectures were over, we had the afternoon free, so we jumped into the rental car and headed back to Yellowstone to see some of the sites we didn't see the first day.  First we stopped at a ranger station and attended an outdoor lecture on the difference between gray wolves, coyotes, and foxes using pictures and pelts. We turned north then and headed toward Gibbon Falls.  We had sneaked by it on our way out on Saturday, but this time we stopped to check it out.  On the middle right of the picture, you can see where the lodgepole pines that fall into the Gibbon River make what appears to be a sloppy beaver lodge.

A little farther north we found Roaring Mountain.  The mountainside is dotted with fumaroles that make a roaring sound as they expel their volcanic gasses.  These places remind us that most of Yellowstone sits atop an enormous volcano that in theory could go off any day, but for now just lets of steam in the fumarole, geysers and other thermal features.

As we drove north again, we hit a patch of drizzle by the time we hit Mammoth Springs.  Usually that rocky plateau over their shoulder has cascading water, but it has been running a little dry.  We'll have to try this area again when we come back.  Even though is was drizzling at this point, I got the gang out to pose.

At the next ranger station, the boys turned in the Junior Yellowstone Ranger workbooks they had been working on since the first ranger station.  The workboooks contained age appropriate activities that they could do to learn more about Yellowstone.  When they turned them in, the ranger quizzed them on what they had learned, including details from the earlier "Dogs of Yellowstone" lecture.  They each earned a Junior Yellowstone Ranger patch for completing the program.  The patches are shaped like the actual ones the rangers wear, but Alex's has a bear print on it and Aaron's has a wolf print on it. 


As the drizzle let up, we realized we were running out of daylilght for what we'd planned yet to see.  A little further down the road we made it to one of the largest waterfalls in the park, Tower Falls, which was amazing to behold.  We drove up over a mountain and got above the cloud line. OK, actually we drove through the cloud line most of the time, which is like driving through a really thick fog, except the mists were more heterogeneous and swirling all around us.  As cool as the moment was, we were eager to get back below the cloud line before it got dark

As we cleared the cloud line, amongst the burnt remnants of the 1988 fire, we found an elk family picking their way through the woods.  As we got a little further down the road, we tried to stop near a line of parked cars, but there was nowhere close to park.  The people there said they were watching grizzly way down the hill.  Instead of trying to walk back to that spot on a narrow mountain road from a parking spot further down the road to try to see a distant bear in the fading light, we pressed on to Artist Point.   We missed this spot the other day, though we were close.  This waterfall, near the beginning of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, is the most painted feature in the park.  It was just past dusk when we got there, but we got to see the falls there by moonlight.  It was a nice topper to our second Yellowstone day.