One day we left early to drive down to Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton park to meet up for some fishing.
On the way we were attacked by a CRAZY ELK! It was about 6:30 am, we saw him on the side of the road and turned around to get a picture… Apparently he doesn’t dig on paparazzi!
The picture didn’t come out great, but if you watch closely you can see him lower his horns and rush our car (Step on it Tina!). Why does wildlife keep trying to kill us? What did we ever do to it?
We went on to Jenny Lake, rented some fishing poles and got our fishing license. Tina didn’t want to fish so she went for a run around the lake. She ran into a traffic jam of MOOSE on the trail.
Several people on the trail who were making fun of us for not catching any fish (whatever!) also mentioned seeing a bear on the path. Alright! Now we’re talking. Unfortunately we never saw the bear, however we did see some very fresh signs of his presence, right on the trail! We had been very close. We did see the moose that Tina told us about, later along the lake’s edge.
After catching no fish and seeing no bears we caught the shuttle boat back across the lake and went for lunch! There I am with my fishing pole on the dock 🙂
On another day Tina and I took a short hike along the Elephant Back Mountain trail. This is the trail where 2 weeks earlier a photographer was attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. If you followed the story in the news you know the grizzly was put down and her cubs sent to a zoo in Ohio (I think it was Ohio).
I spoke with the backcountry ranger before we took this hike and asked about the incident. The ranger noted that the man who was attacked probably did at least 4 things that they strongly discourage:
He went hiking alone.
He went hiking without bear spray.
He went off trail (about ½ a mile).
Being a photographer he “probably” was trying to be very quiet to get a good picture of this grizzly (you should be noisy!).
They suspect he was trying to get a picture of the grizzly, somehow startled the grizzly and/or accidentally got in between the grizzly and her cubs.
The trail is not very long, but is fairly steep. It took about 40 minutes to the top. At the top, Nikko was sitting in his hammock with his guitar playing old Cat Stevens songs (Nikko could use a little more practice. I would rather have been listening to the birds chirp). Once you get to the top of the Elephant Back Mountain you get a great view of Lake Yellowstone.
There it is…
Besides crazy squirrels and a few birds (and Nikko) the only wildlife we saw was a deer on the path. He was on a collision course with us at the next switchback. Surprisingly, a wildlife creature that did not try to kill us. Once he hit the switch back he bounded off into the forest and did not collide with us (yes, he really bounded, very bambi like).
Go Visit Yellowstone… 🙂