Day 7 - 9 June 2009

Bozeman, Montana, is situated in a broad valley ringed with mountains. My eyes could not take in enough to satisfy me. I love the wide expanse and then not just a flat horizon line, but one lined with mountain peaks, some snow covered even now in June.

We left the campground and inadvertently toured downtown Bozeman and found it a nice, clean town. The style is "Western," with the streets wide and the downtown buildings made of brick. We toured Bozeman inadvertently because we intended to go east some way and then south to the north entrance of Yellowstone Park. However, after going for about half an hour on Interstate 90 I got nervous and thought I had missed the exit we wanted. So I turned back. But the road I wanted to take never came up so we opted to go to the west entrance of Yellowstone for which I saw signs. That road took us through downtown Bozeman - thus the inadvertent visit.

The scenery in this part of Montana changes constantly from open valleys to narrow valleys with swiftly running mountain streams and back again. We entered the park at the town of West Yellowstone, a touristy, but clean and interesting town. My friend found a store that sells buffalo and cow hides and I found myself evaluating pros and cons of both of them - in the end we did not buy either one. Luckily the people in this region and all along our trip were very friendly and accommodating so that I was relieved that we could leave the store without any recriminations, in fact, the nice man even told us where we could get either of the types of hides for less money.

After we entered the park we informed ourselves at the Information Center and proceeded to travel the upper part of the park. The main roads in the park form a "figure eight" and we did the upper loop of the "eight." We saw geysers, deer, bison, deer, a bighorn sheep, deer, bison, a wolf that may have been a coyote, an elk, geese, deer, bison, a black bear very far away and I alone saw the rear end of a grizzle far (not very, just far) away. We gave up stopping to view deer and bison, there were so many. We saw a petrified tree that lived 50 million years ago.

Backing up to the black bear far away: We saw a gaggle of cars parked at the side of the road, a sure sign that someone had seen a wild animal. When we stopped, my friend in her usual manner asked what everyone was looking at and was told that a black bear had just walked past this spot and was on a hillside about a quarter of a mile away. She looked through our binoculars and sure enough she saw the bear. She handed the binoculars to me, but all I could see was something black disappearing behind a tree. Disappointed I started to give the binoculars back when she said that there was another black bear about the same distance away lying on a rock. I looked and could not find the bear only a black lump on a rock which I interpreted as a shadow or a tree stump. She insisted that it was a bear and that it had moved. And, by gosh, I too saw it move, or so I thought. The more I looked through our amateur binoculars called "Funglasses" the more I believed that I saw a bear. Some more people arrived asking what we were looking at and I gleefully informed them that one black bear had disappeared out of sight, but that there was another one lying on that rock a quarter of a mile away. Awestruck, several people pulled out their high powered binoculars and started searching for the bear on the rock. Much to my consternation, none could find the bear. I gave explicit instructions on where to look, but all they could see was a tree stump. I suspected that they were looking in the wrong place when my friend confided in me that maybe it really was a tree stump she had seen and not a bear! I looked again through our binoculars and now that the power of suggestion had been lifted, I saw the tree stump which I had originally seen. Needless to say, I was extremely embarrassed and stayed in the cab of our RV, pretending to be preoccupied with the road map, until everyone else had left.

We then proceeded to the next campground vowing that we would only stop for animals that were crossing the road or were immediately next to it, not a quarter of a mile away, but that is when I saw the grizzly far away. When we reached our chosen campground, it was full. So we ended up driving to the next one where we got a space (without any frills) and settled in for the night at 9:10 pm. Thus ended day seven - I believe.