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I visited the park principally to see the Lamar Valley, a place about which fur trapper Osborne Russell wrote extensively in his memoirs, Journal of a Trapper.
Soda Butte and my truck are in the bottom-right of the picture.
What a beautiful damned park.
Buffalo are built to excavate snow. They use their massive heads to sweep the snow aside, and the bone structure of their humps functions as a place to attach the muscles and tendons that support the head. (Additionally, according to the reports of the fur trappers, the "hump ribs" made damn good eating.)
From a signboard in the Park.
Because the Lamar Valley attracts buffalo, elk, and deer in winter, it also attracts predators. Coyotes have long been common. Wolves were common in the trappers' days, were shot out as white people moved west, and then were reintroduced in the Park in 1995. They have since flourished. I saw a wolf in the valley, but he was too far away for a picture.
However, I did get close to a coyote. Real close. Close enough to allow Duke to talk some trash from the cab of the truck, where I'd left the window down.
Some people hunt coyotes. I've never done it, but I'd like to, so toward that end I invested $14.99 in a set of dying-rabbit coyote calls. The idea is that you blow into the calls in such a way as to mimic a dying rodent, hoping to lure a coyote into rifle range. I figured that Yellowstone would be a good place to test them, so I tucked the calls into my jacket pocket.
The decision to introduce wolves to Yellowstone in 1995 was controversial. Environmentalists, of course, loved it. But nearby ranchers protested, fearing that wolves would spread outside of the Park and kill their cattle. Because sometimes, animals introduced the Park don't stay there.
As I described in yesterday's post, the drive home was not uneventful. After sundown, I slipped off the road and crashed into some trees.
That's not where the truck should be.
The damage by daylight. Fortunately, the camper took most of the pounding.
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