On a day when the sky came down to the ground, I watched bison crossing the Lamar River on their autumn migration, day four of the trip.

There, in the Lamar River valley, I watched great herds of animals migrating from the highlands down to their winter ranges. It had seemed primeval, giving a hint of what the continent might have been like a thousand years ago.

But one animal was missing in '79 that has since been reintroduced to Yellowstone country, and that is the wolf. Years earlier I had read Farley Mowat's popular Never Cry Wolf and Adoph Murie's dry monograph The Wolves of Mount McKinley. Ever since I've been enamored with the idea of wolves and hoped to go to Alaska to see and hear them. That trip never happened, but I didn't have to go that far anymore -- now wolves were only a long day's drive from home in Seattle.

So I developed a fantasy of lounging in a hot spring in Yellowstone country, the night-time clouds scudding across the full moon, as I listened to the howls of wolves echoing off the valley walls....

Potholes to Yellowstone River camp

I was off work by 9 o'clock on a Friday night and drove out of Seattle at midnight. It seemed that my little Toyota van was loaded with enough food and fuel, down and dacron, and books and tapes to comfortably weather that trip to Alaska. I was only going car-camping, but Wyoming in late October is a bit chilly over six thousand feet -- I felt justified in overpreparing.

The Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington's Columbia Plateau — coulee country.

Later that morning I eased on in to Moses Lake for breakfast. Then it was back on I-90 -- pour another cup of coffee, pop in a tape, set the cruise control at 75 mph, and put your feet up. All you gotta do is steer and watch the scenery roll by.

A muskrat in a Coeur d'Alene backwater submarines just below the surface.

By evening I was into Flathead country, cruising for burgers in Missoula.

It was dark and I could see the country only by moonlight, but I was on a roll. Another two hours put Butte behind me and I was crossing the Continental Divide at 6400-foot Homestake Pass. I wouldn't get much below 6000 feet for the next eight days.

Loch Leven camp under the cottonwoods.

Out there in the moonlight passed the Tobacco Root Mountains, the Madison Range, then the Gallatins and I was into Bozeman. Half an hour later at Livingston I finally left the interstate to turn south onto US 89.

I was on the Yellowstone River, in a broad valley between the Gallatin and Absaroka Ranges. South a few miles I looked at the Montana Fish and Wildlife campground of Mallard's Rest, but despite the allure of its name I crossed over to the East River Road and drove on down to the Loch Leven campground.

With a small stock of wood supplied by a previous tenant I warmed myself by a fire in the chilly light of the full moon.

I was on the banks of the Yellowstone River, just an hour from Yellowstone Park. It was Saturday night, twenty-four hours after leaving work, and it couldn't have been better.

Mammoth camp

On the Yellowstone River below Gardiner.

Mammoth, the lowest (at 6300 feet) and only year-round entrance to Yellowstone National Park, has a number of things going for it. But the thing that makes Mammoth isn't its stunning travertine terraces, or the elk mowing the lawns of its classic buildings, or being the western portal to the Lamar River valleys, and certainly not its campground squeezed between the legs of a tight hairpin turn in US 89. No, the thing that makes Mammoth is the jacuzzi.

A couple of miles into the Park I stopped at the 45th Parallel sign and walked the path for a few hundred yards. There the aptly named Boiling River, which runs underground out of Mammoth Terraces, surfaces before spilling over the bank into the Gardner River.

Through the steam, you can see the narrow Boiling River meandering down to spill into the Gardner River. The pools are visible at the far left.

Now, it's forbidden to disturb in any way the fragile thermal features of the Park, which include the Boiling River itself. All are strictly out of bounds. But once the Boiling River enters the frigid waters of Gardner River, its waters become in bounds.

So it is there that people have built rock walls in the river, forming half a dozen pools, from small enough for a couple to stew in their own juices to large enough for laps, from an 85 degree recreation room to a 120 degree shower massage. There I soaked till the ranger came by to throw us out at dark. I moseyed a mile or so up to the campground for dinner and drinks around a fire.

During my usual nighttime stroll, I watched two bull elk battle in the moonlight. The sound of their clashing antlers rang through the valley. One of them, the loser I thought, moaned every time they locked antlers. I could sympathize.

Young elk (or wapiti) in the Mammoth campground.

Later as I prepared for bed, a pack of coyotes across the valley entertained us with a group sing. And one short lone howl seemed to answer from up the hill.

The next morning, another bluebird day, I leisurely packed up camp, then headed east on US 212 over Blacktail Deer Plateau to Tower Junction and the Lamar River.

Slough Creek camp

Coyote, the Trickster, blending in with the grass and sage.

Since the start of their reintroduction in 1995, wolves have so expanded their territory that today you might see or hear them anywhere in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem -- north into the Gallatin and Beartooth Ranges, east into the Absaroka Range, and south through Teton country into the Gros Ventre Range. But some places in the Park have a reputation -- notably the Lamar River valley.

In less than an hour on US 212 you cross the territories of five or six wolf packs. You can check places the Geode pack hangs out on autumn afternoons or where they might spend a night, or where the Druid pack is known to den up in the spring. You'll see other hopeful wolf-watchers, and maybe wolves, too.

So, the Lamar River valley was the main reason I was in Yellowstone. As I slowly cruised its roads and explored a few of its easy paths, I stopped when there was something to see, or where I hoped something to see might show up, or where someone else was stopped, to see what they were looking at -- as did a lot other people.

This social behavior can be amusing -- if a person stops for any reason at all, someone else is sure stop too, to see what's being looked at. The first person moves on, but before the next one takes off, a third stops. Now the second thinks maybe there is something there. Before you know it you have a crowd, and not a thing interesting to be seen.

I learned to use the lens-length test at pullouts -- more and bigger lenses on cameras and spotting scopes meant it was more likely to actually see something.

Slough Creek, in a gentle snowfall.

I worked my way up the lower Lamar River valley, then a couple miles of washboard road up Slough Creek to the campground. I set up a fine little camp with the van parked just so, put a tarp over the table since the weather looked a little threatening, and stocked up on firewood. I was central to the Lamar and expected to be there for a couple of days.

The Slough Creek area is interesting. Most of the Yellowstone geology is volcanic. But near where Slough Creek joins the Lamar River, the river is forced into Lamar Canyon, formed by a large intrusive of granitic rock which separates its upper and lower valleys. A little way above the campground Slough Creek opens up for a few miles, with braided channels and broad meadows, much like most of the Lamar. It then narrows on its way to its headwaters high in the Absaroka Range.

Tempting short pitches (if you climb rocks) on apparently anomalous Slough Creek granite.

I wasn't there for a couple of days. I woke up the next morning to three inches of snow. The tarp over the table was seriously sagging, the temperature was freezing, my water jugs were solid ice, and in ten minutes my feet were, too. I managed to get water from the hand pump for coffee and some breakfast, but by the time that was done I said to hell with it. I loaded up the van and headed out.

Before I had even left the campground the van's heater had thawed my feet, the weather was looking less ominous, and I figured I didn't want to miss the opportunity -- new snow is great for animal tracks. So I parked and headed on foot up Slough Creek. But before I got out of the campground (in fact, at Walk-in Site #2), a big brownish lump twenty feet away raised its head and looked at me.

No, he's just scratching his back.

Holy smoke, it was a grizzly bear. First, I backed rather quickly away to what seemed a safe distance, then I started watching and taking pictures.

He was rooting around below the creek bank (which was why I didn't see him at first), then he climbed up and walked a log over to where he snuffled around in the dirt, then he sat down for a minute or so and just looked around. Then he went to a well-used tree and scratched his back for a while.

It started to look like he was going to cross the creek. That would make a great shot. I moved into position, threw my camera up, and "Card full!" it said. Card full? Why don't I have the other one with me? I'm carrying back-up batteries, but I'm out of film! Maybe the bear will wait. I scooted back to the van and slapped in another card. But of course by the time I got back he was across the river and settling in to his day bed. Oh, well, it was a great encounter with what seemed to me to be a rather relaxed grizzly.

Bison and a lone fisherman on the Lamar River, seen through the falling snow.

I left him to his snooze and walked on up Slough Creek a ways, but my heart wasn't in it. So it was back to the van, the heater, and a second cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the day in the comfort of the car exploring the Lamar valley and Soda Butte Creek on up to the northeast park entrance and Cooke City.

Soda Butte Creek and the Absarokas.

In the evening I worked my way back down to Mammoth, then the few miles to Gardiner. A burger and a room with a hot shower were looking pretty good, and the Town Cafe and Motel was just the place -- one of the knotty-pine paneled rooms out back was only twenty-five bucks a night (off-season rate, of course).

The Town Cafe and Motel

A bunny keeping warm as he lunches at Mammoth Terraces.

After a leisurely breakfast at the Town Cafe, I got some exercise on the boardwalks of Mammoth Terraces under clearing skies. Then it was back to exploring, working south this time on US 89 toward Norris Geyser Basin, on the way passing Bunsen Peak, Sheepeater Cliffs, Willow Park, and a series of little lakes. (The area, famous for moose, showed no moose to me this time of day.)

Okay, so here's some geysers.

For the first time I went through some of the areas burned by the 1988 fires and was impressed by the extent of the new growth, mostly lodgepole pine. South of Bunsen Peak I stopped and watched my second grizzly -- safely this time -- as he rooted and dug around in a meadow, a couple hundred feet off the road.

(The Web site for Yellowstone Park stated that the seed crop of the high mountain whitebark pine, which the grizzlies usually depend on to fatten up for winter, had largely failed this year. As a result the bears were down at lower elevations foraging for whatever they could find. Yes, indeed!)

I looked around the Norris Geyser Basin, but for me there was a certain ho-hum aspect to all that steam. It was getting late and the snow had closed the road further south to Old Faithful. So I started back the way I'd come, toward Gardiner, looking forward to dinner, a hot shower, and a warm bed.

But a half hour up the road, movement just ahead caught my eye. Was that a wolf about to cross the road!? I slammed on the brakes, and as he cut back into the woods I fumbled my camera out and took a shot through the closed window of the van. Too late.

He had been about to cross ahead of me, so I jumped out and looked behind. Man, he moved fast. Maybe a hundred feet behind, crossing the road already, no time to zoom the lens, hardly any time to look, just point, shoot, and hope.

My lone wolf, severely lightened and enlarged ...

... and his tracks. They're huge. The paper is exactly 3 inches (7.6 cm) on a side.

He was much bigger than any coyote I'd ever seen and very dark, almost black. And I had him on film -- more or less. I explored the area on foot for awhile, but except for his tracks in the snow on the side of the road, I saw no more sign of him, or of his passage.

But I had seen a wolf. Not in the Lamar valleys where I had thought that my chances were best, but in the headwaters of the Gardner River. Back in the car I had the feeling that I myself hadn't had much to do with that brief sighting. It felt, like some old native Indian might put it, as if the wolf had chosen to reveal himself to me.

The next morning, six days into my trip, I headed south for the Tetons.

Gros Ventre camp

Hayden Valley and the Yellowstone River.

Because of roads closed by snow, the only way down to the south entrance of the Park was back to Norris, then over to Canyon Village and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. But rather than take the time to explore that rather touristy area, from Canyon I continued south up the Yellowstone River through Hayden Valley, then on to the west shore of Yellowstone Lake.

A few miles south of West Thumb (back on US 89) the hiway crosses to the west side of the Continental Divide, continues past Lewis Lake (and the last of the three campgrounds still open), and out the south entrance.

A telephoto view of the Tetons from Gros Ventre River country.

Even though people were still traveling in late October there were absolutely no campgrounds open in Grand Teton National Park, which meant no legal car-camping anywhere in the Park. Plus, I needed the warmth of an evening's fire.

So I continued on down past the mountains shining in the moonlight to the southern part of the Park, then up the Gros Ventre River and out of the Park into the Teton National Forest and ten miles of bad road to Crystal Creek campground.

In the morning I drove back down the Gros Ventre into the Park where I looked around the village of Kelly and picked up a map. (In spite of all my preparations I'd managed get there with no map of the Tetons!) Then I eased over to Kelly Warm Spring for a swim. Then I continued hunting.

A telephoto shot of Teewinot Mountain. Climbed in '79, but that's another story.

I hadn't yet seen moose or pronghorn antelope. And although my animal sightings had been pretty lucky so far, I still hoped for these two.

I worked my way back to the main hiway near Moose Junction, dodging bison as I drove. Then I did a big loop, always with that astonishing range of mountains as a backdrop to my explorations -- up the Snake River, stopping at the various turnouts and overlooks, to Moran Junction, over to Jackson Lake Junction, then down the Teton Park Road past Jackson Lake and Jenny Lake to Moose Junction again.

Mount Moran and the Snake River from Oxbow Bend.

(At the Snake River Overlook I had the idea of trying to duplicate Ansel Adams' famous photograph of the Tetons and the river, but you won't see my attempt here -- I don't think he just jumped out of the car, snapped the picture, and then took off again, like I did.)

After the loop, a run down to the tourist town of Jackson got me gas, groceries, and a burger.

In '79 I'd had a grand view of the Tetons at dawn from a stolen quiet camp on top of Signal Mountain. This time snow closed that road, but I still wanted a similar view. So I headed back up the Gros Ventre River, then worked my way north and out of the Park to the Forest Service road up Shadow Mountain.

Deer hunting season was starting soon and I mean with rifles, not cameras. The boys with their trucks and campers were gathering, but I managed to find a private spot up the road with the view I wanted. I went to bed -- no fire this night, just the moonlight with Jackson Hole below me.

Shadow Mountain bivouac

Dawn from Shadow Mtn — twenty degrees below.

Man, it was cold in the morning. But I had two reasons to get up before the sun warmed things up too much -- to take that lovely picture, and to look for moose. For most animal watching, the best times are evening before full dark and early morning before the sun gets too high. I hadn't had any luck finding moose in the evenings, so I braved the morning cold for a few minutes until the van's heater did its trick.

The day before I had spotted some bottomland that to my eye looked like a place I'd want to be if I were a moose. As I approached the dry stream bed I slowed the van, and I'll be damned if there weren't my moose, four of them.

Two of my mooses, at last.

I had seen every animal I could hope to see except pronghorn antelope. But I had lots of ground to cover before I was out of pronghorn country, so I still expected to spot them, too. (As it turned out, I never did, on this trip at least.)

And I had lots of ground to cover to get back home, too. It was Saturday and I wanted to be home by Monday evening. My intended route back wasn't going to be as fast as the drive out, either. Time to go.

The Oregon Trail back to the Potholes

Looking back from Teton Pass to Jackson Hole and the Gros Ventre Range.

Back in Jackson I regrouped and gassed up. Then I headed out of Jackson Hole on Hiway 22, up and over 8400 foot Teton Pass and down into Pierre's Hole, out of Wyoming and into Idaho, then over 6800 foot Pine Creek Pass and down into Snake River country once again at Swan Valley. From there it was a short hop on US 26 along the Snake River to Idaho Falls.

Although interstate hiways more or less follow the Snake River all the way across southern Idaho, I wanted to avoid them for the time being and take a slower road.

I followed US 20 for some two hundred miles across the Snake River Plain, finally catching I-84 at Mountain Home. The route had taken me past the Lost River Range, through Craters of the Moon National Monument, then skirting the White Cloud and Sawtooth Ranges, to Wild Rose Hot Spring, a few miles from the village of Carey.

The sere foothills of the Pioneer Mountains, near Wild Rose Hot Spring.

"Beautiful, remote, peaceful soaking pool of crystal clear water" is how the book describes it. Shortly after I settled in to soak and watch the sunset, a beat-up pick-up joined my van up on the road, and I was joined by a fellow who stayed dressed only in his cowboy hat and bottle of beer. We had a rambling conversation for the next hour or so as the sun set and the sky darkened and I learned a bit about his life. Then it was time to go.

In twenty-some miles I passed the turn-off to Sun Valley and the Sawtooth Range, an area I had explored in '79, but there was no time this year. I pressed on to Interstate 84, passed Boise and Caldwell in the darkness, to the Snake River and the Oregon border.

Here I made a misjudgment -- I should have got off the interstate at Caldwell and backroaded over to the Owyhee River and another hot spring, an area I'd never explored and not much off the direct route. Oh well, next time. (I did, the next year. It was well worth it.) Instead, I pressed on a ways further to spend the night at Farewell Bend State Park.

Mule deer somewhere in northeast Oregon.

The next morning I continued up I-84 to Baker City, where I stopped for a sumptuous Sunday breakfast at the historic Geyser Hotel. Civilization! Then back to driving, up the valley between the Elkhorn Range and the Wallowa Mountains, stopping to explore here and there, to a snooze at a Grande Ronde River overlook just beyond La Grande.

In late afternoon light I turned off onto I-82, crossed the Columbia River into Washington, and cut through Richland. But it seemed that the closer I got to home, the less my little van wanted to go there.

So I gave in and turned up Hiway 240 through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, then worked my way up and over to Potholes State Park, very near where I spent the first night of this odyssey. That night's final campfire felt like the final fire for all time.

Lower Crab Creek meanders through pastureland below the scarp of the Saddle Mountains.

Monday morning I renewed my acquaintance with Lower Crab Creek, an area I used to enjoy before the Washington State Department of Wildlife saw fit to turn its lovely sand dunes over to ORV's and dune buggies. Finally I headed on across the Columbia River, where I diverted onto US 10, parallel to the interstate but much more scenic, to Cle Elum.

Then it was back on I-90 and over the Cascade Range at Snoqualmie Pass to Puget Sound traffic, and noise, and home.

My next trip was Buying Sandals in Cody, Wyoming.

Here's a short list of useful references, some info on the pictures, an area map, and a copyright notice.