West Yellowstone – The First Days

May 23, 2026

We are settling in to our new life in West Yellowstone, after three long days of driving through Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Idaho.  The drive from Moab to Provo was amazing.  I’ve seen photos of Moab and TV documentaries, but the beauty and enchantment can only be grasped by presence.  Being there.  Rock formations woven in shades of red, orange, gold.  The temperature dipped as we traveled through the canyons, and past mountains dusted with snow.  I wish we had time to stop to absorb the magic, but even driving through made an impression that remains with me.

Daisy was a champ traveling.  She laid down in the back seat most days for about four hours until she became restless and squirmed into the front seat to sit on my lap or Tim’s.  It was uncomfortable, but she was stressed out or confused by the long trip, and she was very well behaved at hotels,

The weather has been cold, dipping to 20s at night and warming to 52 or so during the day.  Today it’s warming up, reaching 66 degrees.  The first day at the cabin was spent the day cleaning, setting up and getting the keys to our post office box.  We have been ordering supplies online right and left; it won’t take long before we are on a first name basis with the nice lady at the post office.  I feel a little guilty ordering everything online – I never thought I’d be ordering coffee and dog biscuits from Amazon, but everything here is more expensive, or you can’t get it.  Gas averages $4.99 per gallon and in the Park it’s almost a dollar more.

Wednesday we drove into the Park to Hayden Valley and Sedge Bay.  The Wapiti Lake Pack is spending time near their usual den site, so we stopped and scanned the area near the island of trees, but didn’t see any wolves, though we heard others saw some earlier playing in a snow patch.  The Pack now has ten wolves, some having joined the Cougar Creek Pack on the west side of the Park.

At Sedge Bay, the grizzly sow, Snow, was being courted by 288, a boar also known as Quill.  The two grizzlies grazed and grubbed contentedly near each other, at one point Quill ambling away to lie down and rest his head on a log; when he returned to Snow’s side, she turned over, lying on her back her feet in the air.  She is golden brown with very dark brown, almost black legs and paws.  The bears nipped and nuzzled each other’s faces, Snow embracing Quill’s head with her two paws.  Watching such courting behavior makes it hard to believe there isn’t some attachment between the two, even though after mating the boar and sow will separate.  I read somewhere that Snow had “kicked out” her two two and a half year-olds so she could mate.  Maybe next spring there will be another cub – or two.

Heading back toward Hayden Valley, a wolf was about to cross the road near Trout Creek.  It was a lucky sighting, the dark wolf crossing right after we pulled over.  It was a fading black with a dark gray saddle and a lot of brown in its fur and it also had a collar.  It must have been a Wapiti heading back to the den, milling around in the sage and grass, close enough to see well with binoculars.  We didn’t see many elk that day aside from a cow running through the valley near the Wapiti den, a young buck whose antlers were just starting to grow, and a herd of nine cows grazing along the Madison River.

Yesterday we hiked a path from West Yellowstone to a quiet spot on the Madison River.  Though this trail is commonly used, it almost feels like cheating because we don’t have to go through the Park entrance.  The trail runs almost straight through the woods until it reaches the river and continues on high above the river bank with great views of fields on the other side.  Tim fished, catching two brown trout while I walked along the trail.  A great blue heron flew in, perching on the opposite bank and then soared off down the river.

We are finding lots of places to hike near the cabin.  Just across the highway Denny Creek Road leads to campsites tucked in the woods and winds up through woods and clearings where larkspur and glacier lilies are beginning to pop up.  Yesterday and today we took Daisy on hikes on Little Snowy Road and Cream Creek Road.  She is settling in, too, becoming more confident in her surroundings.

– Christine Baleshta