What could this grizzly be thinking?

For these trips two books were very useful --

Montana, Wyoming & Idaho camping: the complete guide to more than 1200 campgrounds by Judy Kinnaman (Avalon Travel, 2001) in the Foghorn outdoor series, I found to be comprehensive and accurate, although prices will have changed by now, of course.

Hot Springs & Hot Pools of the Northwest by Marjorie Gersh-Young (Aqua Thermal Access, 1999), subtitled Jason Loam's Original Guide also looked complete and accurate, although I think its maps could be better.

There are plenty of guide books to the areas I traveled. For trips by road, I suggest the Falcon Guide series, notably Scenic Driving Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks by Susan Springer Butler (Falcon Publishing, 1999). For hiking guides, I'm partial to The Mountaineers' 100 Hikes series, now that they're expanding outside their home range of the Cascades. Again, however, the Falcon Guide series of hiking guides covers just about everywhere, is available just about everywhere, and has some nice features.

For links to current hiway conditions in the various states, go to Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

The National Park Service sites for Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park are obvious. You might also look at the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) site on the Yellowstone caldera with its great links list, and the site from the ecologically concerned folks at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. More tourist-oriented info on Yellowstone is available from the Wyoming State Travel website, yellowstoneparknet.com, and yellowstone-park.net.

For more on the channeled scablands of eastern Washington, read a very thorough description from the USGS.

And for the few Web sites having to do with NW hot springs take a look at my hot springs listing.

There are lottsa books out there on the wolf. But two still stand out in my mind -- Farley Mowat's ever-popular Never Cry Wolf, available in a number of editions since the movie; and Adoph Murie's seminal study The Wolves of Mount McKinley, still in libraries as a U.S. Government Printing Office book (Fauna of the national parks of the U.S.: Fauna Series no.5; 1944), available as a (used) reprint from Amazon.com, and now even online from the National Park Service.

You should look for anything from the pre-eminent wolf researcher L. David Mech. For starters, try his very readable The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (in paperback from the University of Minnesota Press, 1981). The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone by Thomas McNamee (Henry Holt, 1997) vividly details many of the problems, both social and legal, associated with the re-introduction project. And Barry Lopez's Of Wolves and Men (Scribner reprint, 1979) is as eloquent now as when it was first published.

The quote heading "A road trip to Wyoming" is from Restoring the Pacific Northwest: The Art and Science of Ecological Restoration in Cascadia, edited by Dean Apostol and Marcia Sinclair, Island Press 2006. Although a fifty-seven author technical tome, it is very readable throughout, written with passion for its practical goals. If you have any interest in this subject at all, I recommend the book to you.

A number of Web sites deal with wolves in North America's Rocky Mountains, but none is completely satisfying. In addition to the couple noted just above, here's what I've found so far:--

For link sites, you might try Wolf Sites or Yellowstone Wolf Tracker.

For info on packs, maps, sightings, news, etc.: