My general approach for dealing with Yellowstone’s overwhelming summer crowds is to increase my time on the trails and minimize my time on the roads.  In July, this meant that I spent most mornings hiking to Trout Lake, walking along the Lamar River Trail, and checking on the fox family I’d been watching since spring.  I think I went the entire month without driving beyond the Footbridge pullout, which is only 15 miles from our house.

The fox kits were still around at the very start of July, and on many mornings I watched them play, take naps, and burst with joy whenever their mom arrived with a food delivery.

 

 

 

 

My first order of business every morning, even before looking for the foxes, was to make the short hike to Trout Lake.  The lake’s cutthroat trout spent the second half of June swimming up the inlet creek to spawn, but now all that activity was finally winding down.  I’d almost lost hope that otters would show up for an easy breakfast, when, on July 3rd, I heard a couple of goldeneye ducks quacking in sudden alarm.  Turning my binoculars towards the noise, I spotted two brown heads making V-shaped wakes on the lake.  Otters!

 

 

 

For over an hour I had the two otters to myself.  They put on a phenomenal show in the early morning light.  After suffering from otter withdrawal all spring and summer, it felt amazing to finally get a solid dose.

 

 

 

After the otters disappeared into a burrow to rest, I noticed two goldeneye ducks chasing and harassing a muskrat from one end of the lake to the other.  Given that they’d been frightened by the otters, were these ducks exacting their revenge on something that looked like an otter but was smaller and far less threatening?  I guess there’s truth to the old saying, “Hurt ducks hurt muskrats.”

 

 

The next morning I found an otter at the lake again, just one this time.  He was swimming all around, seemingly agitated, while making birdlike chirping noises I’d never heard from an otter before.  My best guess is that he’d lost track of his companion and was calling out the equivalent of, “Yo man where’d you go?!”

 

 

 

 

 

At Trout Lake that same morning I was thrilled to get a (terrible) shot of a water shrew, a tiny, elusive rodent I’d only encountered once before, when I spotted one swimming underwater in basically the same place.  Prior to that first sighting I hadn’t even known this species existed, let alone that they could be found in Yellowstone.

 

 

 

For a week in early July we had a great visit from Kassie, Marie’s niece, who lives in Michigan.  She went kayaking with Marie on a lake in the Beartooth Mountains, hiked with us along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and joined us for a Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry V in Silver Gate.  Soon after Kassie left, Marie flew to Ohio for a couple of relaxing weeks with her family.

 

 

 

 

The otters didn’t reappear after those two days in early July, but thankfully the fox kits were willing to pose for photos until the middle of the month.  After that they abruptly vanished again.

 

 

 

 

Hoping to fill the fox and otter void by finding weasels or badgers, I started hiking out on the Lamar River Trail each morning.  I didn’t locate any sign of the weasel family I’d watched last year, but pretty quickly I began what was – for me, at least – an unprecedented streak of badger sightings.  Over the final 11 days of the month I found at least one badger every single morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer in Yellowstone tends to be both a miserable time to be on the road and a relatively slow time for wildlife sightings, so I was particularly grateful to the foxes, otters, and badgers for making memorable appearances so close to home.