The Final Chapter and an Apology

First, I apologize to those of you who may have expected more from this blog.  We have been out and about when we weren’t working this summer.  The logistics involved in doing anything online have been more than I have had the patience to deal with.  Getting some kind of connection for next year is our top priority.  Yes, we are coming back again barring serious budget cuts which might eliminate our small ranger station.

Our last working day is September 3, and we plan to leave for home on September 5.  We have thoroughly enjoyed this volunteer gig.  We have just participated in the annual August Thanksgiving meal with the traditional turkey and trimmings with about thirty of the local NPS folks and will be hosting our own end-of-summer party this week.  As I have said before, these people are  the best!

This summer has been drier than usual with overnight lows in the high 30s and daytime highs in the 70s or low 80s.  We have had a few hefty thunderstorms, one of which destroyed our canopy over the picnic table.  The fire danger has been moderated by the occasional rainfalls.  The air for the last two weeks has been quite smoky, not from fires in the park but from fires west of us.

The bison have pretty much wrapped up their noisy rut and will soon be moving back through our area to their winter range west of here.  The animals are not very visible in the heat of August, and a chipmunk can cause a major traffic jam.  We do have our local elk herd whose appearances are welcome.  The elk rut will happen after we are gone.  There have been no bear-visitor mishaps this season so far although two men were gored by bison in separate incidents.  They were not maintaining their distance from the animals in both cases.

The visitors have been a pleasure to work with on the job.  They are excited to tell what animals they have seen even though they aren’t always correct about which animal is which.  Some do substantial research before visiting the park while others do not seem to know much.  No, we do not “raise” the bison.  No, bear spray is not like insect repellent.  It is kicked up capsaicin, 30 times more powerful than pepper spray canisters and is used to lay down a defensive cloud between you and an attacking grizzly.  No, grizzlies are NOT like the black bears you have at home.  No, you may not scoop water from the geysers to bless.  Actually, it is bison who rub the bark off the trees and not porcupines.  You get the idea.

No review of the summer is complete without covering the excess of bad driving.  We just had the third fatality in our section of the park.  One afternoon we had so many minor traffic accidents that the law enforcement rangers referred to it as a demolition derby.  Yellowstone is on the route to Sturgis for many motor cyclists and that is a bloody shame!  The lack of mufflers and the compulsive revving of accelerators guarantee that no animals will be seen near the roadways.  And the biker look—OMG!  

For Barry and me, the summer has been one of discovery of new places even though we have been coming here for so many years.  We have hiked to hidden geysers and waterfalls in the backcountry and have re-visited some trails from the past.  We drove the Beartooth Highway for the first time without snow piled high and to Cody as well as our monthly trips to Bozeman where we found a doggy daycare for Carly.  We even learned of a West Yellowstone hair salon that is as good as one at home.  We now know that Old Faithful has less crowded facilities for having a bite and adult beverage while listening to a piano player.  We even got a trip upstairs at one of the general stores there to see a room papered with over a million dollars in checks left by the original store operator.  Our NPS ID cards have been quite useful, never more so than when we use them to whip right through the entrance gate instead of getting in line behind dozens of visitors asking dozens of questions.

I will close out One Summer in Yellowstone with a few photos.

This is one of our local girls hanging out for the afternoon across the street.

I do believe this moose (August 1 at Big Springs, ID) is urinating in the river!

Lone Star Geyser in the backcountry has just erupted.  Of course!

And finally, Old Faithful herself.

The Halfway Point

We arrived here in early May with snow on the ground and a chill in the air, not to mention the sub-freezing temperatures at night.  Now we have had perfect summer weather with blazing blue skies and highs in the low 80s or mid 70s.  The breeze generally keeps most of the mosquitoes at bay.

We have by now helped hundreds of visitors make their plans.  Some have a week here while others want to squeeze the whole park in on their way out to Cody or Jackson Hole.  The park is almost 3500 square miles which presents a challenge for the short-timers.  One lady from New York was not happy that there is no hot spring that she could sit in like a hot tub.  She had driven across the country to do just that and now saw no point in doing anything else, like enjoying the mountain scenery, looking at wildlife and wild flowers, exploring the geyser basins.  In contrast, one family was here with their 93-year-old grandmother who had Yellowstone in the number one spot on her bucket list.  The whole family was thrilled to be here.  They were also lucky to be at Madison on the day more than 100 bison settled in for the day.

The bison were very accessible to visitors on foot, some of them not very bright.  It was difficult to be civil when shouting at families with young children approaching these large and dangerous animals.  One man learned how dangerous bison are last week at another location in the park when he was tossed ten feet into the air and suffered numerous broken bones and abrasions.

I had a Christmas Vacation moment at the station the same day all the crowds were there for the bison.  We had been watching a baby squirrel all morning as it ran back and forth on the window ledge, eyeing the open screenless window.  Shrieking and scrambling for safety erupted when the little guy darted inside.  The ranger hurried the visitors outside, and we tried to get the squirrel to exit the open door.  Poor thing was terrified and ran up my pants leg.  I was laughing like a mad woman!  We did get him out and closed the window.  It didn’t take him long to appear again outside looking in.

 We have learned about some not-so-public sights to see in the park.  This geyser, the Chocolate Pots, is on one of the main roads but it has no sign.  You just have to know about it since it is also not marked on most maps.

The following are some of the sights we have seen recently.

The Community and the Job

If you look at Google Earth and locate Madison Junction Road, zip code 82190, you can see the aerial view of our home for the summer.  There is a pretty much hidden community across the road from the large Madison campground which includes a small RV loop, a ranger office, and a number of apartments.  That’s where we live.

This photo was taken on May 26, the opening day for the Madison Information Station where we work.

And this was the view from our “office” on that day.

And here I am headed for work.

We work three days on, three days off, and then four days on and four days off.  On our work days, one of us works the morning which is from 9:00 until 1:00 and the other works the afternoon which is from 2:00 until 5:15.  We both go over to the ranger office at 8:15 and print out various items to post over at the Information Station.  Now that the weather is getting more decent, we can walk to the station.

On duty, we work with two rangers who present programs throughout the day.  We answer questions, give directions, identify animals visitors show us on their digital cameras, and in general listen to and chat with visitors who are so thrilled to be here.  Another big part of our day is working with the Junior Ranger program which involves handing out the newspapers and explaining the work involved to earn a patch for children from age 5 and up.  When children bring in the completed papers, we get to swear them in and present them with a patch and be photographed with them.  They don’t know that we are not “real” rangers!

The workers here are a diversified group, all very bright and quite dedicated to their jobs.  Our immediate co-workers include a civil engineer, an orthopedic surgeon and a PhD in Celtic literature.  They are from Connecticut, Kentucky, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio among others.  There is plenty of social interaction which will increase with the coming of evenings warm enough to be outside.  Sunset here is well after 9:00pm even at this early not-quite-summer part of the season.

We are almost used to being in a communication black hole.  We are seven miles from cell phone reception which we have used in the past to supply Wifi for our laptops.  We do have government e-mail in the office and can look at and send e-mails from there.  Both of us did pass the Homeland Security clearance and online test on proper computer use.

We are now seven weeks into our four-month season here.  It is becoming busier in the park and in the MIS (one of many acronyms we have learned to use) which is our little building.  The bison have for the most part moved east into the Hayden Valley for the summer although we still have the free spirits who can see that the grass is plenty green around here.  There are at least three elk cows and their frisky calves still hanging out at the Seven Mile Bridge which is one of our cell phone spots when we don’t want to drive the fourteen miles into West Yellowstone.  Although they did not nest in their usual location near the road, the eagles still hunt for fish along the Madison River which the road follows for quite a way, and we frequently see them on our way to town.  Blondie, the beautiful light cinnamon black bear, is usually seen about once a week nearby.  She was very close when Barry was walking Carly early in the morning off leash.  Fortunately, a neighbor called out a warning, and no harm was done.


Future posts will be about whatever happens to be going on.  We hope to tackle our list of hikes soon since it is dry now and most of the bear management restrictions have been removed.

The training

The Training

We arrived in West Yellowstone to stay at our favorite campground Bakers Hole until we could move into our new summer residence in the complex at Madison Junction.  Our training began on a Monday, May 7 and will conclude on Monday, May 21.  We were part of a group of about 30 very bright and young people who had been selected from more than 800 applicants to be seasonal interpretive rangers.

On our first commute, we saw this handsome animal about a quarter- mile from home.

We later realized that it was not a grizzly as we first thought, although any commute that begins with a bear is all right with me.

We were taken around in government cars in a caravan to see some of the major attractions since some of the trainees were new to Yellowstone.  We learned that all NPS vehicles must be backed in when feasible, by the way, and that rangers must always wear their Smokey Bear hats when outdoors.  They must also have a “condom” for the straw hats in case of rain.  No kidding!

Here is part of the group at West Thumb looking out over Yellowstone Lake.

We listened to biologists and other scientists on the NPS staff about so many topics that our heads were spinning.  We now know that of the 10 wolf packs today, the real bitches are the Mollies, led by an alpha female whose pack is very aggressive about attacking and killing other pack wolves.  Wolf/wolf kills are the leading cause of wolf mortality. We now know that 50% of the elk calves are killed by bears and that it takes 4 wolves to bring down an elk. Most bear attacks are defensive rather than aggressive, and bear spray is 92% effective.  Think about that for a moment.  We both carry bear spray when we are away from civilization.

This grizzly was about a mile from where we trained at Lake.

The botanist said it has been a tough million years for the plants.  She showed a slide of an insect-eating plant that thrives in the wet areas but declined to give its location.  The fire expert said that the old growth forests which escaped the 1988 and subsequent fires burn more often than the younger trees but do not burn as long or as vigorously.

There were 3.5 million visitors to YNP last year, most of them in family groups and most of them well-educated.  Thirty-eight thousand children became Junior Rangers last year.  Our assignment is at a very busy location for that activity.  And the stories!  When one ranger took a call from a lady asking if there were bars along a certain trail, he told her that the closest bar would be in Gardiner.  She meant handrails.  An arguing couple came into one visitor center demanding that the ranger tell them whether they had just seen an emu or a moose. After tactful questioning, it was determined that the animal was probably an elk.

I have shared a tiny fragment of what our brains absorbed these last two weeks.  The younger set would race out of there ready to hike.  We could hardly wait to drive to the motorhome for an hour and a half and have a serious cocktail.  Most mornings we set the alarm for 5:30.  A few of those mornings it was 20 degrees!

The next entry will be about our community and about how the job works.  We get one day of shadowing and are then thrown into the fire by working for the Memorial Day weekend.

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Have you ever heard of a bear spray kozee?  Neither had we.  This keeps the spray from exploding in a hot car.

So here's the deal

After many years of coming to West Yellowstone in the late spring, we decided to apply to be volunteers in the park.  We are one week from leaving home to return in four months after serving as assistants to rangers at the Madison Information Station at the Madison Junction.


We will live comfortably in our motorhome at a site hidden away in the trees at the Madison Junction and will be able, we think, to walk to our station to work.  We are sharing a position which means that we will each work a half-day, three days one week and four days the next week.


As far as this blogging thing goes, I will give it a shot.  I always keep a journal, and we always take and share photos.  We expect to meet people from all over the world and are very excited about getting to be an insider in the park.  I am thinking that a weekly post with highlights from the week will be about right.

Here is Barry last year after taking one of his many wildlife shots.

Also last year, Carly and I have a good Memorial Day snow romp.

And finally, here is our summer home at Bakers Hole last Memorial Day.


We will report to our ranger at Madison on May 4.  I will do my next blog from there.  Since we won't have cell phone service there, we will probably drive into West Yellowstone which is fourteen miles from the junction.