Last night we arrived in Gardiner at around 8 after a long 14 hour drive. Once we got moved into the motel we decided to go out to eat at the Cowboy bar and grill. We got up early and started our adventure at 7:00 am. We started the day by seeing multiple herds of elk and a few different antelope. As we got closer to the Lamar Valley we started to see more wildlife. As we came around the corner we noticed a bunch of vehicles and recognized a couple of the wolf watchers and decided to set up the scopes. We lucked out and were able to locate almost all of the Junction butte pack. We counted 9 wolves total and 8 of them were black and one gray wolf. After the wolves we went back to Mammoth hot springs to listen to Travis Wyman talk about bear management in the park.

Travis mentioned many interesting facts about the bears and how they survived the mass massacre that happened to all ungulates and predators inside the park. At one point there was only a 136 grizzlies bears left inside the park after there used to be around 700. The bears died fastily due to being very reliant on human garbage and then many of the dump sites for shut down and then the bears didn’t know how to find food on their own anymore. After learning about these feeding sites, Tour Guide Mike drove us out Mt. Washburn and showed us the White Bark Pine and the importance they have for the bears now in the fall before hibernation. We ended the day by doing a short one mile hike to the lunch tables that the staff would feed the grizzlies at back in the day. We finally arrived back at the motel around 4:00 pm.