The best journey takes you home.

~Unknown

It has been a little over a week in this journey from our beloved woods in North Carolina to a small town at the edge of a place we love – Yellowstone. It has been a very busy several days with us driving two vehicles across country in 4 days and a tractor trailer with all our possessions arriving the next day. The team from TROSA in Durham did a great job loading and unloading our belongings. After they finished, they moved their truck back to the hotel here in Gardiner and we took them on a 6-hour tour of the northern range of Yellowstone. And the park did not disappoint. The guys wanted to see wildlife, and that we did. We saw moose, wolves, grizzly and black bears, coyote, red fox, elk, bison, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule deer and more. Beginning the next day, we started the arduous task of unpacking and trying to arrange all the stuff in our new world. A few days later, Melissa’s sister, Stephanie, arrived and the two of the have been on a tear getting things set up and now the house looks like we have been here for months instead of just a few days. Yesterday morning, we wanted to share some sights of the park with Stephanie so we got up at 5 a.m. and headed into the park for our second time since arriving. Once again, the park delivered in spite of the cloudy skies and occasional brief bouts of rain and even some frozen precipitation. In between those two trips into the park, we have even managed to connect with the wildlife of the region from our living room. So, here is a quick summary of our first several days in wonderland.

The Mollie’s typically spend their time in Pelican Valley, where they learned to hunt the primary prey available in the harsh winters there – bison. They have made occasional forays into Lamar Valley over the years, but locals think they now may have a den somewhere near Lamar Valley. They are noticeably large wolves and are known to be efficient hunters. We saw six of the Mollie’s walking on the far side of the river and suddenly start trotting towards a pair of bison. One wolf strayed from the group and five moved in and surrounded the behemoths.The bison responded with tails up and turned to face the wolves. The encounter lasted several minutes with most of the wolves soon realizing these two healthy bison would not be an easy target. The wolves finaly moved off and found their wandering pack mate who had discovered an apparently lifeless bison calf. The group quickly moved in and started feeding while we watched through a spotting scope.

We headed off and saw a lot more wildlife including bears and mountain goats, but no moose (the one big critter Stephanie had not yet seen). Back at home we continued setting up the house by hanging artwork and making everything look just right. As we were finishing dinner, our neighbor, Bob, texted that a grizzly sow with two cubs was seen near the park entrance gate and it might be the ones we had seen last week from our house. Though we were pretty tired, we drove to the entrance station (less than 5 minutes form the house!) and spotted the bear which was barely visible through the sagebrush. She was apparently napping and all you could see was a thin line of dark brown indicating her back. After several minutes standing out in the cold we saw heads up…

I’m typing this in the early hours as I look out at the park with the moon peeking through the breaking clouds. My thoughts are drifting between wondering where those bears are this morning and what’s for breakfast for us. I must admit, that is a nice way to start a day.