Vacation Journal

We walked to the hardware store to buy a bird feeder and some bird seed.  It wasn’t long before we had a female Cassin’s Finch feeding regularly.  We continue to have Mountain Bluebirds all over the place.  The hardware store did not have any feed for bluebirds.  They are meat eaters.  Several times we saw one of them going into the hitch on the front of our trailer.  They were carrying bits of grass and stuff in their mouths.  They are also doing the same on the fifth wheel trailer next door.  We’re curious to see if they actually build a nest and raise some young.  We’ll be here long enough.

We walked to town to have lunch and took the long way home by way of the visitor center in town.  I’m confident we got our minimum two miles of walking today.  We saw a male Cassin’s Finch on our walk.  We were basically just relaxing today but at 5:00 we decided to drive seven miles into Yellowstone to a bridge over the Madison River called Seven Mile Bridge.  This is where the Trumpeter Swans were last year and where we saw one swan while we were driving through with the trailer on Sunday.  On the way, we stopped at the area where we almost always saw bald eagles last year.  There was one adult bald eagle at the nest and I could see a young eagle’s head sticking up.  After a short while, we saw the second adult fly in with some food.  The second eagle stayed on a branch near the nest for a few minutes and then flew off to a perch above the Madison River, probably to watch for fish.

We got to Seven Mile Bridge just before a herd of buffalo decided to cross the bridge.  We were parked in a viewing area watching a swan and some ducks feeding in the river.  The buffalo created a huge traffic jam for about 30 minutes.  We also got to see a coyote in the grass across the river trying to find some prey.  When he got close to the swan, the swan went downstream.  The coyote kept stalking like he was about to catch something, but I don’t think he ever did.  He wandered all over the place trying.

We saw several other small herds of buffalo and some elk as we drove back.  We were in this area many times last year and were always enjoyed watching the abundant wildlife here.  In less than two hours to/from town, we saw buffalo, elk, coyote, bald eagles, a trumpeter swan, a red-winged blackbird, some unidentified ducks, violet-green swallows, and a possible Osprey flying over.  I love this place.  I often wonder if this is how it was before the Europeans got here.

I tried to fill up my two tanks when I got back to town.  I stopped at a Conoco station.  You can only get $75 worth of fuel on each authorization of your credit card.  I bought two rounds of $75 and decided not to bother getting another authorization for the last three or four gallons I needed to fill the tanks.  You would think that there would be someone at ConocoPhillips bright enough to figure out that if you raise the price per gallon by 33%, you should raise the amount you authorize at a fill up.  Incidentally, diesel costs $2.499 here in West Yellowstone.

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"You can't get lost if you don't care where you are."  (Retirement motto)

"Not all those who wander are lost."  J.R.R. Tolkein