The first day in Yellowstone was a day to remember. It started at 7 and when we entered the park the first wildlife that we spotted were the elk, they were everywhere. Then the real fun began, we were in the search for bears but within that search as we were going through the Lamar valley in north eastern Yellowstone National Park. The first carnivores that we spotted was a family pack of four coyotes playing next to the Yellowstone River bank about 200 yards away from a bison carcass that had been previously hit by a car. Then we saw the Junction Butte wolf pack, there were nine individual wolves that we could see, eight black wolves and one gray wolf. They were bedded down at the time that we saw them in the morning and while we watched them they slowly moved into the woods on the edge of the valley.

After going through the valley we went back to mammoth hot springs and listened to Travis Wyman give a presentation on elk management and on bear management. Once that presentation was finished we traveled to Mount Washburn and checked out the whitebark pine that the bears usually feed on before going into hibernation for the winter. While we were up at the peak we overlooked the Yellowstone caldera before heading back down to otter creek. After about a quarter mile hike we reached the area we were looking for, which was a “lunch table” for bears back when they used to feed the bears garbage from the park for visitors to see and watch them feed.