We left Livingston Montana early in the morning, headed for Yellowstone National Park. I was so excited, this was going to be my first visit to a National Park! I was envisioning all the bears I would see, and hoping to get a few good shots of one of my favorite animals.
I am not sure where my fascination comes from for bears. Perhaps they are a symbol in my mind for all wildlife. Growing up in the city my whole life, I never had the opportunity to see a real animal actually living in the wild. Sometimes I wondered if there really were any left.
The other aspect of the bear that draws my respect is how a mother bear is with her cubs. I can relate to that feeling, often felt those strong urges to protect my own cubs when raising them.
We reached Yellowstone in the early afternoon. Frank always liked to plan on getting to our site in daylight hours, made it so much easier to set up. Then we could relax for the evening, maybe go out and do a little exploring of our new environment.
Although this day we never made it to our campsite. Climbing the grade in Yellowstone, our transmission blew. Now this was the very same transmission we had rebuilt a little over a month ago in Medford, Oregon. Just before leaving on our trip.
We spent the afternoon parked along a huge meadow at the peak of the grade. We watched for wildlife, and watched people as they stopped to also scan the meadows for any wildlife.
There was a small herd of buffalo across the way further down the road, but not much else. But the view was spectacular. If we were to be broken down, could not have picked a better spot.
By dusk the tow trucks had arrived. One for the truck, the other for the RV. We could not stay in the park with our rig, because of the time limit on campsite availability. We had no idea when we would have the truck back and be able to move the RV. We settled on an RV Park outside of Yellowstone in Gardiner.
Frank went with the tow driver and the truck back to Livingston, and I went with the RV to the park and set up our rig.
By now it was dark. Right before we pulled away from the meadow, a mother bear and two cubs appeared. I tried to get photos, but it was too dark, and both vehicles were hooked up and ready to go. I snapped off a few shots, and with a big sigh, we left.
We ended up spending a month in Yellowstone. Our transmission was shipped back to Medford for warranty coverage, and we rented a small car for the duration. Worked out great! It was so much easier scooting around Yellowstone in a small car, easier to pull off the road with when we saw wildlife, or a view I wanted to stop and take a picture of. And we really got to know Yellowstone.
When I uploaded my bear photos from that very first dark evening, to my delight I had actually captured something! The shapes were dark, hard to make out, but there was one picture with one of the cubs standing on his hind legs looking our way, his eyes glowed and you could see the outline of his body, with his mother ahead of him, and another cub outline walking behind him. Unfortunately somewhere along the way that photo was inadvertently deleted from my computer, but the image remains in my mind.
Fortunately, I had more opportunities to see bears. But that is a whole other post.
