Friends
The world is full of wonderful people. When Tyler and I embark to a national park, we go with the intention of enjoying the scenery. More often than not, however, we leave with full hearts and new friends. For me, it’s always a reminder that the world isn’t all bad. In fact, I’d wager that the world is mostly good! Maybe this story will help convince you of that too!
Featured photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/V7utFzUDGcZ5y1Hu7
September 5th, 2023 - Yellowstone Day 4
This story begins with a preface. If you haven’t yet read the two-part “Tom” series, I’d suggest you go back to those. You may be confused otherwise!
The night before our story begins, we had been chatting with Tom and Lorie. Lorie had been talking to Tom about her plans to go wildlife watching with a local wildlife group the next morning. I listened with interest. There are quite a few people who visit Yellowstone just to watch wildlife. These folks can identify the wolf packs by name, and many of the grizzly bears too. They know the habits of these animals, congregate to the watering holes, and share a friendly sense of community that’s hard to find elsewhere. We had seen many of these groups as we drove through the park. Their big spotting scopes scattered across the hillsides intrigued me. So I listened intently to Lorie, daydreaming about spotting elk and wolves with the rest of them.
On the morning of our adventure, we woke up in a lodge shrouded in mist. It was spitting rain, but this didn’t stop us from embarking on a safari adventure in Lamar Valley. Fondly known as the “Serengeti of America,” Lamar Valley is the wildlife hotspot of Yellowstone. We drove slowly, passing countless clusters of wildlife watchers on the hills. One large group of people caught our attention. At least a dozen cars perched sideways on the edge of the road. Tripods and spotting scopes lined the hill, surrounded by raincoat-clad watchers. I pointed one out to Tyler.
“That looks like Lorie up there. I wonder if that’s her?” A thought occurred to me. “Do you think she’d let us stand with her?” It was worth a shot. We parked the car and wandered into the crowd. I made a beeline for Lorie’s purple coat.
“Hi Lorie!” I waved, maybe a little awkwardly. “What are you guys looking at?”
She looked at us for a moment before recognition flickered across her face. “You guys are staying at the lodge, right?” We nodded. “There’s a pack of wolves down there. Do you guys want to take a look?”
Elation shot through me. No way! Yellowstone wolves? Of course we’d love to look through the scope! Thanks to Lorie’s generosity, we stood at the scope for at least a half hour. We oohed and ahed over a beautiful pack of wolves and gaped at a massive grizzly. We watched the wolves cautiously circle a bison, who shook its head menacingly at them. We even got a few video clips of the wolves. It was an incredible experience. We never would have seen the wolves or grizzly if Lorie hadn’t been so kind to us. Even as I write this now, I’m still in awe that we got to see them. We are so grateful for kind people like her!
After our safari adventure, we did some more driving. Our hope was to find the Blacktail Plateau road, a one-way dirt road that winds through the backcountry of the park. According to the pictures I’d seen online, it boasted stunning scenery and striking isolation. Having only some sketchy coordinates I’d gotten off a blog, we decided to swing by a ranger station to ask for better directions. For the record, park rangers are the kindest people I’ve ever met, and she was no exception. We ended up chatting with the ranger for several minutes. Her specialty seemed to be the Yellowstone bison, and it was clear she was passionate about them. She spoke sadly about how so many tourists spook the herds with inconsiderate, reckless driving. The sympathy in her eyes was unmistakable. She informed us that the Blacktail Plateau drive was closed, but gave us some excellent pointers about a scenic drive we were planning on doing later that day. As you’ll see later in the story, reader, her advice was priceless!
With our backroad adventure cancelled, we decided to get an early start on the rest of our itinerary. To Cody we went! After eating lunch at a properly western Dairy Queen (complete with cowboy paintings on the walls), we began our museum adventure. The Buffalo Bill Center of the West is a massive museum brimming with Western memorabilia and neat things. One wing is full of an incredible array of preserved guns from all periods in history. Tyler especially liked the machine gun that had been rigged so you could blast loud bangs through the museum. I think he scared a few people! My favorite wing of the museum had hundreds of taxidermied animals. They weren’t just heads on walls; these were full, life-size bison, moose, and bears! They were incredible to see up close. I especially enjoyed the stuffed moose scratching his head with his hoof, and the bison going for a nice roll in the mud!
We had a particularly entertaining encounter in the art wing of the museum. As we strolled amongst paintings of cowboys, we were greeted by two friendly ladies who appeared to be museum volunteers. With true Wyoming cordiality, they treated us like old friends. In fact, they treated us like such old friends that they seamlessly incorporated us into the conversation they had been having. One woman, struck by a thought, turned to her friend. “Oh my goodness, Debra, did I tell you about my parents’ neighbor who had his head bit off by a bear?”
Debra (and us as well) were shocked by this question. “No!” Debra gasped. We waited with bated breath. We were invested in this story!
“I haven’t told you about that?” The other woman (let’s call her Amy) leaned in close. “Well, my parents -you know my parents, Debra- they live up near Sheridan. That’s where the park service likes to relocate the “bad bears,” you know, when they get into some trouble down here.” Amy looked at us and explained. “When there’s bears that start acting naughty, the park doesn’t really like to put them down. So sometimes, they’ll pack them up and relocate them up north. The hope is that if they’re outside of their comfort zone, they’ll behave. Sometimes it works and, well…” she shrugged.
“Anyways, my parents live in a nice little community tucked away in the national forest. They’ve never really had many problems. One day the park service gets a hold of them to let them know that they’ve got to stay inside for a day. Park service was going to be collaring a bear and I guess they can be aggressive when they wake up? Anyways, they advise everyone that they need to stay indoors. My parents’ neighbor wasn’t having that. He had this nice little routine of taking a morning walk with his coffee and he didn’t want that interrupted. So he goes out for his walk and just so happens to come across this bear. And, well… the bear bit his head off. Clean off. His family tried to file a lawsuit against the park service and everything but we’re like,” she threw her hands up in the air, “They did warn you! It’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting into!”
We were gobsmacked. I found my fingers absently creeping towards my neck, unwillingly imagining what it would be like to have a bear bite your head off. Yikes!
We probably could have stood there and chatted all day. I have no doubt that Debra and Amy had stories for days that they would have been glad to share. But, per our park ranger friend’s advice, we had to get on the road. We were going to try to catch sunset on the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. I am so glad we took her advice! To date, that drive was the most incredible I’ve ever witnessed. We caught it right at golden hour, and the glowing sunlight on the mountains was nothing short of divine. Massive red rocks piled up into mountains, caged in weakly by the thin wires of a cattle pasture. One cow stood on the edge of a red cliff, majestic against the burgeoning sunset. Our car groaned as it climbed the mountain, twisting around curves that grew increasingly more beautiful. At the very top, we stopped to soak it in. A breeze brushed around our ears, the only sound in the vast emptiness of a Wyoming mountain range. Sunlight pushed in blades through clouds, slipping over mountain peaks to stream into the valley below. Every second grew more and more resplendent. I just kept the camera shutter going.
The soothing silence was disrupted by the arrival of a pair of tourists. The couple disembarked from their car, and immediately, the woman swore. “Sh--, this is gorgeous!” She walked the edge of the overlook, declaring her sunset excitement loudly, and profanely. She sat on the edge of the wall and was delighted when a chipmunk ran up to her. The small animal was very tame, likely accustomed to receiving handouts from tourists. It crawled into her lap, sniffing around for food. She giggled and swore. I turned back to the scenery, not wanting to miss a moment of the peaking sunset. Click, click, click, I kept taking pictures. A minute later, I heard an animal squeal, coupled with a brisk statement from the woman, “Come on, let’s go.” Car doors slammed, then their engine rumbled away. When the silence descended again, Tyler spoke up from beside me.
“I think that lady just abducted that poor chipmunk.”
Wait, what???
Turns out while I was watching the sunset, Tyler was watching chipmunk lady. Apparently, she had pulled out a granola bar to coax in several chipmunks. She had even scattered crumbs on herself, hoping to get them close. When one brave chipmunk finally did crawl up on her, she abruptly left. Neither one of us entirely saw her take a chipmunk, but let’s lay out the evidence.
She was coaxing chipmunks in close. When one did get close, we heard an animal shriek. Then, they quickly got up and left. After they left, we didn’t see any chipmunks anymore.
Clearly, something sketchy had happened and we were the only witnesses.
To this day, we still wonder… what exactly was she going to do with the chipmunk?
And why on earth would you put a chipmunk in your car?
I suppose we’ll never know.
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