Girl, this doesn’t happen!
Now that things have finally slowed down a little, it's story time! As most of you know two weeks ago I hosted my first Ladies Retreat of the year. This trip couldn’t have gone any better than expected. Michaela came from Indiana and had no expectations other than she wanted to see bison. She quickly found that we are not short on bison in Yellowstone National Park. I had explained to her that each day that we set out to explore the park would be different than the day before. That we may see elk one day and not see a single bull the next. One thing I was bound to get her on was a wolf. They had been pretty active the past few weeks with the colder temps and mating season approaching, so I had high hopes.
Saturday morning we got up early, reloaded the car, fueled up on snacks and set out for the day. It was partly cloudy and it was in the single digits. We stopped at the nature trail, set up the spotting scope and started glassing. As I glassed to the SW I spotted a small black wolf moving across the snow. It was alone and quickly disappeared out of sight. I spent a few more minutes glassing to see if it would pop back out of the trees with no prevail. We got back in the car and headed back down the road to a different pull off to see if we could have a different view in the same direction. At this time we were no longer the only ones looking for wolves and I had shared my sighting with the others. We had heard howling in the distance but couldn’t see them from where we were. It wasn't long before the valley was filled with cars and tour buses looking for the wolves.
It was our time to move along and see if we could find anything else moving in the area. We had heard from our new found friend Chris that there were two good sized bull elk hanging out in that area the day before. We decided to park at one of the pull offs and walk down the trail, at this point Chris was waving us down to hurry up. We quickly gathered out things and headed out to where he was on the trail. He had the wolves on his camera! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, all the howling was coming from them. I had to run back to the car to get my tripod so I could at least video them. I was winded from running to the car and back but it was the Rescue Creek pack on the ridge across from us. They must have been 1500+ yards away but we could see them with the binos and cameras. We watched them wrestle, play and move south across the ridge. We decided to move to a different location to see if we could get a better view. We walked down the road and it wasn’t long before we found them again. At this point the cars and people were lined up along the road, blocking traffic and the pack from crossing. With the amount of people watching them, it was time to move on for the day.
Around 3pm, we returned to see if the pack was visible again. As we traveled through this area, I spotted 2 gray wolves moving along the hillside. From what I could see one was collared and one was not but they were moving at a steady pace. I pulled the car over to watch the uncollared wolf cross the road and start trotting towards us. We quickly got out of the car cameras in hand to capture this beautiful female parallelling us. She stopped midway, looking behind her as if she was waiting for the other gray wolf. She slowly traveled away from us to the top of the ridge, gave out a short low sounding howl and disappeared over the ridgetop. I kept telling her all day “This doesn’t happen!” It was an incredible experience that I wouldn’t have wanted to share with anyone else. For it to happen on the first Ladies Retreat of the year made it even more special. Here are some images from that special day. Please enjoy and Happy Friday!!
Love Shanelle
