Day 16 - (Music) The Bear Went Over The Mountain!

It was warmer this morning!  In the 40's!  It's supposed to rain/snow today, so we headed out early hoping to get some great sites in before the rain/snow moved in.

Today our route takes us on the Madison to Norris, Norris to Canyon, Canyon to Tower, Tower to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt to out of the Park.  Long drive!

The Madison road is currently undergoing major renovation, so we had some time to spend in traffic and stopped.  Not a problem as we stopped alongside a creek and just listened to it.

We stopped at the Canyon Road store.  While David was inside, I got to see this fancy car:

It was also a big day for seeing animals:

Deer

Moose

Coyote

Antelope:  To see what he was chasing, look at my video on YouTube at
http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=3ansxX1AP1E

 Looks like he was posing!

What we didn't see led to the title of today's blog.  We stopped where everyone else was stopped and pointing uphill.  Seems like a grizzly bear...welll.......

The bear went over the mountain.
The bear went over the mountain.
The bear went over the mountain
To get away from me.

Didn't get any wolf pictures, either.

Now we move to the landscape portion of our blog:

Lamar Valley

Hoodoos along Tower Road

Got snow?

Geysers in the distance.

Now for the best part of the day!  Thanks to Gina I have the answer to the question of the doors in the Roosevelt Arch.  She emailed the Yellowstone Historian and he provided the answer in an email:

Gina---The doors on the arch were built by Hiram Chittenden at the time that the arch was built. It was his small tribute to the few people who entered the park ON FOOT. In those days they were called "tramps," and the negativity of that term had not yet crept into the language.  The word HIKE was not yet in the vernacular. Instead anyone who walked was called a "tramp" and when they were out on the walk, it was called "going out for a tramp."    So one would say that "a tramp went for a tramp."

C. Hanford Henderson was such a man. He walked around the park completely in 1890 and wrote an article about it.

Eventually the NPS sealed up these small tunnels. There was a pretty bad crime committed in one of them (I don't remember the year), so they closed them for security.

I hope this helps.

Lee Whittlesey
Park Historian

It's great when you get a quick response!  Thanks again to Gina for being so willing to help us!

OH, we did have lunch outside the park in Cooke City, MT.  Had a BBQ sandwich that was so hot I cried!  It was great, but just couldn't handle the whole thing.  We did run into a couple from Georgia and another from Tennessee in the restaurant!

Old Faithful and Canyon area tomorrow!

See ya down the road!

Jenny :)