Mid-May through early June.

That’s my answer whenever anyone asks, “What’s the best time to visit Yellowstone?”  The weather is usually mild, there’s a spike in wildlife activity (including lots of baby animals), and the crowds haven’t grown quite as ridiculous as they can be in mid-summer.  Happily, some of our family and friends took my advice this year and came for what turned out to be a string of great visits.

My mom led the way, arriving in mid-May.  She’d already made the rounds of Yellowstone’s most popular attractions on previous visits, so this time we focused on wildlife.  On my mom’s first afternoon we drove into the park and quickly came across a scene she’d recently seen in a Yellowstone documentary – a herd of bison crossing a fast-moving river.

 

 

Bison moms were coaxing their wary newborns into the Lamar River and trying to shepherd them across, but the current was so strong that several calves were swept downstream.  More than 50 anxious tourists gathered by the road to watch the drama as the poor baby bison struggled to keep their heads above water.

The current delivered one calf to our side of the river, where it managed to get a foothold (hoofhold?) on the steep rocky slope leading up to the road.  Seconds later one of the tourists – a bald man wearing sunglasses – dashed down, grabbed the little bison, and helped it up the rocks.  In hindsight I feel terrible for not trying to prevent him from interfering, but it happened so quickly that I failed to act.  The calf’s mom watched helplessly from the other side of the river as her newborn stumbled around the road, confused, surrounded by people.

“I think the best thing we can do is get out of here,” I said to my mom.  We drove off, worried about the calf on the road as well as the ones that had been dragged downstream and out of sight.  A few days later Yellowstone issued a press release asking for help identifying the tourist who’d grabbed the baby bison.  The story even appeared on the home page of news sites like CNN.  Apparently park rangers were forced to euthanize the calf after attempting unsuccessfully to reunite it with the herd.

Eventually the tourist, a 78-year-old man from Hawaii, turned himself in and pleaded guilty.  He was charged a little over $1,000 in fines.  Part of me hoped for a more severe penalty, but clearly the guy’s motivation was to help an animal in distress.  He was guilty of reckless ignorance, not malicious intent.  I hope all the attention generated by his story will help dissuade other people from making a similar mistake.  The park posted a thoughtful explanation of their actions on Facebook.

Thankfully the rest of my mom’s visit was less nerve-racking.  We saw wolves, black bears, grizzly bears, moose, coyotes, and foxes.  One of the highlights came as we were driving near Roaring Mountain and saw my favorite Yellowstone bear, grizzly 815 (aka the Obsidian Sow, aka Mini-Mom) making one of her first appearances with three new cubs-of-the-year.  At one point she stopped to nurse her tiny cubs not far from the road.

 

 

 

 

 

We owed another highlight to Jort, a local photographer friend who texted me that a fox mom with six kits had a den under an abandoned cabin just a few miles up the road from our place (“What I don’t understand is how you didn’t already know about this,” Jort scolded me later, followed by a half-joking, half-serious list of steps I should take to expand my network).  The fox family wasn’t out when we first looked, but we kept trying until we found them the next day.  There were eight kits, not six, and watching all those baby foxes playing outside their den ranks as one of the cutest things I’ve seen in a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next visitors were Kevin and Kelly, two friends from all the way back in high school.  Neither of them had ever been to Yellowstone before, so I was particularly looking forward to showing them around.  Kelly’s top priority was to see a bear in the wild, something they took care of themselves (many times over) on their drive from Bozeman to our place.  The next morning we headed back into the park and found a wolf and more bears, and that afternoon we drove up the Beartooth Highway.

 

 

 

 

Kelly and Kevin had already stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs on their way in, so the next day we visited the three other places on my list of “Greatest Hits” for first-time visitors:  Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful, and Grand Prismatic.  Along the way we made a detour towards the east entrance to look for Raspberry and Jam, two of the park’s most well-known grizzlies, and we were lucky enough to find them roaming the slope below Lake Butte.  They were too far away for good photos, but it was fun to watch them frolic on a patch of snow.

 

 

 

 

On our way home that evening we were greeted by the first full rainbow I’d ever seen in Lamar Valley.

 

 

 

Kevin and Kelly spent the next day exploring Grand Teton National Park, and the following day – after seeing a bull moose cross Soda Butte Creek and run through our yard – they flew back to Kansas City.  It sounds like Marie and I failed in our mission to convince K&K to buy a summer cabin in Silver Gate, but we had a great time hanging out with them.

 

Bull Moose Running into Our Yard (video by Kevin)

 

The next day we got a message from our neighbors, Jill and Greg, saying there was a moose mom with a newborn calf near their place.  By the time we arrived the calf was out of sight, but eventually it appeared again with the mom and walked over to Jill and Greg’s fire pit.  It was the smallest moose calf I’d ever seen, no more than a few days old, and its back legs were so wobbly that we worried it might be injured.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the newborn moose calf I had a chance to meet Max Waugh, a professional photographer who owns property in Silver Gate and happened to be in town leading a Yellowstone photo tour.  Jill and Greg are friends with Max, and they invited him and his clients to get a look at the calf too.  Even before meeting Max I’d been reading his trip reports and blog posts – in part for the photos, which are excellent, but also for his thoughts on the ethics of wildlife photography.  More and more I struggle with the reality that exposure to humans is bad for wild animals, so I especially appreciate hearing how other photographers think about minimizing their impact.

Our final May/June visitors were my niece Elizabeth and her 20-month old daughter Addie.  Their visit was overdue – Elizabeth’s parents helped us move to Silver Gate back in August of 2021 and her sister Kate came up in March of 2022, so Elizabeth was the final holdout in her immediate family.

Elizabeth was mostly interested in seeing animals.  Twice she joined my early morning wildlife drives, and our bear luck was good enough that her sightings hit double-digits, including lots of black bears by Calcite Springs and a grizzly chasing off a coyote near Junction Butte.  We weren’t able to find grizzly 815, but we did get a nice view of the Great Horned Owl family that’s been nesting at Mammoth Hot Springs.  We also spent some time at the nearby fox den, where the kits seemed to be getting bigger each day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marie and I had a lot of fun getting to know Addie better, but our little white Maltese didn’t like having so much competition for attention.

 

 

We really appreciated my mom, Kevin and Kelly, and Elizabeth and Addie making the effort to come visit.  It was awesome to see everyone and share this amazing place, and we’re grateful to the local wildlife for entertaining our guests with such memorable shows.