Wyoming Blog 2019
1/1/2019: I had seen many online videos of people freezing soap bubbles in very cold conditions. Of course, I wanted to do it better. Photography by Joe Turner, bubble blowing and music selection by Katherine Crawford. Video is in real time.
One of our favorite winter spectacles is hoarfrost. Usually when it forms, it sublimates shortly after sunrise. The weekend of January 12/13 was particularly amazing in that the hoarfrost lasted over 2 days, building up to an amazing thickness on the second day.
Even though the sun came out later, the hoarfrost was so thick that it didn’t sublimate, leading up to a rare hoarfrost sunset.
Sunrise over the steaming, freezing Wind River looking towards Beaver Rim. Not a bad view from our master bedroom window!
01/20/2019 Total Lunar Eclipse
02/24/2019: Took a quick trip to check out Gooseberry Badlands after a recent light snow.
4/27/2019: Spent Candy’s birthday in the Tetons. Photographed this little guy at our hotel.
We were lucky to see 399 (the “name”/tag number of the mother Grizzly) with both of her 2 year old cubs. This is the year she will send them off on their own.
5/11/2019: Camping season is now open. Our first trip was to Yellowstone.
Not a bad view from the Madison Campground. Here the Firehole River and Gibbon River join to form the Madison River. The mountain is called National Park Mountain.
Saturday morning we started off at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
In birding we always want to check a new species off our list. I’m the same with geysers. I have been wanting to see Fountain Geyser erupt. This one is not predicted by the National Park Service, nor by GeyserTimes.org. However, people do post recent eruption times online. The problem is there is almost no cellphone reception in Yellowstone. Saturday we got a brief bit of reception at Canyon Village, and I attempted to predict Fountain may erupt in the early afternoon. By the time we reached the Lower Geyser Basin, we could see Fountain erupting from a mile away, but when we got there, it was over. Using that time, I predicted the next eruption may be around sunset. Again, on our way, we saw it erupting from a distance, but this time Candy suggested we stop to get some long telephoto shots in case we miss it again. This does a nice job of showing it with the people and boardwalk as a size reference.
The difference this time was that we got to the Geyser Basin in time to watch it erupt for 20 minutes more with nice low sunlight.
After the show, we stayed around for the rest of sunset. Clepsydra Geyser is essentially continuously erupting, so it was a good subject for sunset shots.
One of the ways to avoid the Yellowstone crowds is to go out from midnight till 2 am on a dark moonless night to enjoy the stars.
Here is a view of the Milky Way while looking down the steaming Firehole River at Midway Geyser Basin.
Then I raced down the road to catch Old Faithful erupting under the Milky Way.
5/18/2019: It’s nice to have friends in the Wyoming birding community. We’d been wanting to see a Northern Saw-whet Owl (I call it the Avian Ewok, can’t get any cuter). Bob told us a friend of his found one in Sinks Canyon State Park, so off we went.
Ewok, right?
While there, another birder told me he saw a Virginia’s Warbler. This has been another target of mine for the past 5 years. I saw one on Casper Mountain a few years ago, but no photo. Today was much better.
5/26/2019: Next camping trip was to Fontanelle Dan/Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge. We camped at Weeping Rock Campground. Weather was terrible for bird photography, but I can show you the campground’s namesake. Water from the reservoir is always seeping through the porous rock and “weeps” out creating wonderful lush grottos like this.
I don’t normally post bird photos that don’t meet my specification of being tack sharp, but as difficult as it is to get a swallow in flight, I had to include this one.
6/1/2019: Went back to Sinks Canyon State Park with the hopes that the Saw-whet owls would still be nesting. No such luck. However here are a couple other photos.
6/2/2019: Spent today just photographing backyard birds.
6/8/2019: Cancelled a Big Horn camping trip due to severe weather and delay getting the camper out of the repair shop. So we decided to stay close to home and camp at Boysen State Park/Wind River Canyon. Weather was a bit dreary here during the day. Here is a seasonal snow melt waterfall in the canyon…
However, after midnight the skies cleared and I was able to get a Milky Way shot I had planned for over a year. This is looking out of the mouth of Wind River Canyon.
06/15/2019: This weekend we were able to get to the BigHorn Mountains. We were a little early for the wildflowers, but we found these 2 new ones at our campsite.
Sunset view from our campsite.
Years of photographing Christmas Eve bonfires in Louisiana taught me how to use a long exposure to show off fire sparks as trails.
Got to see and hike another new Wyoming location, Tongue Canyon.
Not far from our campground was SteamBoat Point. It is possible to hike all the way to the top from the opposite side, so no rock climbing skills needed, but we’ll save that for another trip.
We saw about 15 moose this weekend. Here are a couple of bull moose growing this years antlers.
And here is a cow moose with her first year calf.
Back at the campsite, got a couple of shots of a female Yellow-rumped Warbler.
6/20/2019: We typically avoid the 2 National Parks in the summer due to crowds. The exception is our anniversary in June usually coincides with peak wildflower season in Grand Teton National Park (GTNP). This year was no exception.
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Also at Pilgrim Creek, Candy discovered a new wildflower for us. These blooms are incredibly tiny but beautiful. I couldn’t wait to get home to research its identity, expecting a glorious, elegant name. Alas, it’s called Spotted Stickseed!
We did discover another way to avoid the crowds. As many times as we have explored GTNP, we had never found a place called the Lucas-Fabian Homestead, until now. It is located in one of the busiest parts of the park, yet virtually no one knows it’s there. We went there 2 days in a row and were always the only people there. These 100+ year old cabins are located on Cottonwood Creek at the foot of the Tetons.
They are now only occupied by Yellow-bellied Marmots.
In June, the Teton valley floor is a blanket of yellow daisy-like flowers. When we first moved here, people told us they were called Mules Ears. I later discovered that was incorrect. Almost all of them are Arrowleaf Balsamroot. Here at this homestead is the first time I actually found Mule-Ears and now have learned to tell the difference.
One of our favorite hikes for wildflowers is Phelps Lake trail. Here we are always on the lookout for the very tiny, difficult to spot Calypso Orchid. This time we were lucky enough to find about 6 of them.
7/04/2019: 4th of July we took a 4 day weekend to head to another Wyoming site we hadn’t explored yet, Green River Lakes. This place is one of the most incredibly beautiful areas of Wyoming, just less well known because it is quite difficult to reach. We caused a lot of vibration damage to our camper getting here, but it was worth it.
We’ve seen this wildflower before, called Prairie Smoke. However we never manage to find them with the feathery seed pods that give it the “smoke” name. This is only partially open but the best we’ve seen yet. We’ll just have to keep on looking.
As tired as I was from the days hiking, the skies cleared that night and I wanted to try for the Milky Way rising over Squaretop and the lake.
Here’s some great trivia for you lifelong Wyomingites. Did you know Wyoming is home to one of the rarest species of fish in the world? The Kendall Dace is a VERY tiny fish that only exists in a 100 yard long stream called Kendall Warm Springs (water temp 85 degrees year round). Not a spectacular photo or beautiful fish, but I thought the story was so amazing, I just had to see it for myself.
7/13/2019
7/20/2019: Camping in the Beartooths: Jackson & Katherine came along, so this was the first time we tried squeezing 4 people into our tiny camper. It ended up working fairly well.
7/21/2019
9/7/2019: We camped again at Madison Campground in Yellowstone.
