Bison and wolves and elk, OH MY

We left Cody Wyoming, driving through gorgeous valleys toward Yellowstone National Park. Upon arrival, we paid our $25 entrance fee and spent the majority of the afternoon driving through this fine specimen of nature, keeping our eyes peeled for exotic animals.

We watched Old Faithful do its thing - spouting hot water into the air and evaporating before coming back down. It’s getting more difficult these days to put faith in this natural wonder because the times in which it erupts are more spread apart than they were in the past. This is due to the rapid movement of the earth’s crust around these parts, and the occassional earthquakes that occur in the park. We were careful not to wonder into the area near the geyser because of a sign that warned us of the lethal effects of doing so. The sign read: This sign was dedicated by the family of a child that died at age 9 due to accidentally falling into the geyser. Because of the incident the park has increased safety measures to prevent this travesty from happening again. The sign was accompanied by a cartoon drawing of a small boy stepping onto the geyser and his mother freaking out nearby (while his father walked away uninterested?). Rather disturbing, really.

Much to our dismay, we encountered no pandas or giraffe heads which we hoped so desperately to find, but we did find a moose and fields of bison. Do not be fooled - they may look cuddly and cute on the outside, but we hear they can charge at up to 30 miles per hour. We even ran into a bison traffic jam – they think they own the road. At one point, one was basically touching our car. We couldn’t get through the traffic and some of us were sure they were going to charge our car (Caroline). YIKES!

At another point we came upon a large gathering of people consisting of rangers and Yellowstone regulars who had set up high-tech telescope cameras pointed toward some distant object in the middle of a small lake. We managed to squeeze our car somewhere amidst the chaos (a ranger asked firmly, WHO PARKED THIS CAR? Greer tentatively raised her hand, and was pleasantly surprised when the ranger replied, very fine parking job, miss.) We bonded with these nature-lovers and soon learned that an elk had been standing in the exact same position on a tiny (probably 4 ft by 4 ft) piece of land in the middle of the lake for at least 9 hours. The telescopes were pointed toward the wolves (two grey and one black) that slept on the shore across from the elk. Even through these telescopes, the wolves appeared as tiny specs. We learned that when wolves first find their prey they injure it slightly and then let the blood drain out and the animal weaken before going in for the kill. Otherwise, the prey could kill the wolves. So the elk could stand there, completely motionless, for up to a day or two before finally tiring and forfeiting itself to the wolves. One of the ladies explaining this to us kept assuring us that this is all ok because it’s nature. This kind of stuff is supposed to happen. As much as we wanted to see some action, we found it crazy that these people were willing to spend an entire day or two watching nothing for the off chance that they MIGHT be able to see a wolf tear an elk to shreds. But it was totally worth it because according to these folks, a black wolf is a "diamond find."

We spent the rest of the day driving through tiny towns in Montana, all surrounded by the splendor of the ENORMOUS rockies. We stopped for dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where none of the waitresses seemed to know anything about the food they served. We asked them what their broasted chicken was. They didn’t really know. We asked them if they had honey mustard. Honey WHAT? We asked them what was in the salad. Uh… lettuce? Cucumbers? We asked them if they had Caesar salad. They'd never heard of that. We left that place (Casey had to get her money back because she’d already ordered, AWKWARD) and went to a nearby restaurant that looked more promising. They seemed a little confused there too. It was almost as if they’d set up this town the day before, just in anticipation of us coming through and were planning on being done with it as soon as we left. Truman show anyone? But the food here was good, and no one died of food poisoning (yet). One man told us about the college night life in Missoula, but "you girls probably aren't into that kind of thing." We were honored to be seen as such fine upstanding women! The waitress even filled us in on her life story (which was actually pretty sad) and commented on our plans to spend the night in Helena as follows: “Well, I mean, there’s not much to do. I guess the town’s fine, just don’t go to the mall, it really doesn’t have a great mall.” We found it humorous that she thought we’d taken a cross-country road trip just to hit up the mall in Helena, Montana (which, as we found the next day, was in fact the size of a large gas station).

The Super 8 in Helena was not top-notch, and their plumbing wasn’t up to par (hehe) but we all slept so soundly that in the morning no one was blamed for being a bed hog.

There are some pretty spectacular videos below- check them out.