From The Tetons To Yellowstone

It is very strange for us to spend an entire week of vacation the way we spent a week in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Generally speaking, we crave variety when we travel and spend our days rushing from one different thing to the next different thing to take in as much as possible. Call it attention deficit disorder or a fear of being bored or impatience or wanting to suck the marrow out of life every day we are not at work, but the notion of spending a week focused on just two National Parks is craziness for us. But that's just what we did. 

Not that Yellowstone and Grand Teton are lacking in variety.

We definitely had an agenda. Elk. Moose. Bison. Geysers. We felt pretty sure we'd get all of these and we were right, although the quality and quantity of moose sightings exceeded our expectations and was definitely very much appreciated. But we also didn't want to be too myopic on this trip and lose sight of the big picture. We wanted to see more wildlife than just elk, moose and bison. We wanted to exist in a place that man has left largely untouched. We wanted to be awed and relaxed and forget about how badly our species has messed up this planet. At least for a week.

We got all of that.

One of the reasons we could stand to spend a week out in northwest Wyoming was simple: these places are enormous. There's just a whole lot of territory to cover. And that means that filling a day is easy, especially when some drive times to the places we wanted to go are 2-1/2 hours or more. I knew this before I went out there because I'd spent a little more than a day in Yellowstone nine years ago and missed a ton. But it really hit home when we spent the better part of two days in the Tetons and pretty much four whole days in Yellowstone and STILL missed a ton. Maybe MORE than a ton.

I asked some friends before we left for this trip for some advice on must dos in Grand Teton. A boat trip across Jenny Lake sounded like a can't miss thing to put on our list and then check off at some point in our couple of days in the Tetons. But honestly, we just didn't have time. And it was probably due to the hours we spent down Moose-Wilson Road watching moose and bears. We also missed about half the length of Antelope Flats Road, all of Mormon Row in the same area and a whole bunch of turnoffs and side roads that could have really been worth exploring. We also didn't do any hiking in the Tetons.

I think we did a better job of covering ground in Yellowstone, although we didn't drive between Lake Village and West Thumb (in favor of another pass through Hayden Valley) and the road between Canyon Village and Tower-Roosevelt was closed to all traffic (it's closed all of 2020 and 2021). We missed a side road here and there I'm sure, especially when we were in thermal areas information overload mode. It makes sense we'd cover Yellowstone more comprehensively. We did spend almost three times as long in that Park than in Grand Teton.

I could easily have spent probably two more days, most of it in Grand Teton, than we did. I'm shocked to be writing those words. 

The Teton Range looking west from the Mormon Row area.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park.

So how did we spend our time? Mostly driving around and gazing at the scenery and the wildlife.  Pretty simple.

On the scenery side of things, Grand Teton is dominated by the Teton Range on the west side of the Park. These peaks are so striking and they seem to be visible from just about everywhere you go in the Park. They form a sort of staged backdrop to the incredible landscape in the main part of the Park and they are reflected in the Snake River and other bodies of water you encounter as you make your way around the loop in the south section. They are without doubt the singular most distinct memory I have of Grand Teton.

Yellowstone is completely different. Whereas the Tetons are fairly homogeneous, Yellowstone is like a theme park with different worlds seemingly invented by a park designer to get the visitor the maximum range of landscape experiences. Geyser basins, valleys, rivers, canyons, mud pots, cliffs, mountains, scorched vistas, water containing multicolored collections of microscopic organisms and one really, really big lake. Yellowstone has all of that and way more.

We traveled most of Yellowstone for the first time in the dark, getting up before dawn to get to Hayden Valley or Lamar Valley before the wildlife got moving off the wide open spaces and into the Park's forested areas. It was astonishing to see some of the places we'd driven and how close to the edges of roads with some sheer drops. It sounds like a stupid statement but Yellowstone is way more varied than it looks at night but one of the aspects of Yellowstone that I found fascinating was the fact that we traveled through such diverse landscapes in the dark without realizing it.

The Teton Range reflected in the Snake River near Schwabacher Landing, Grand Teton National Park.

First mountain goat I've seen in the wild. Yellowstone National Park.

The river valleys in both Parks were some of my favorite places to hang out. This year has in many ways been one where we've visited river after river all over the west of the United States and the Snake and Yellowstone and Madison Rivers we saw out in Wyoming were just as striking as any others we've seen. I love the way the valleys are so broad with a lazy waterway winding its way down the middle with mountains or forests on one or both sides. It also doesn't hurt to have a bison or elk or two or three or ten dotting the valley.

I also appreciated the mountains. I mean we were in the Rockies for crying out loud. I loved the very small mountain area of Yellowstone for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we managed to spot a couple of mountain goats hanging out among the rocks. And it's difficult not to gaze in wonder at the Tetons at every opportunity. These things look like God just deposited a series of perfectly crafted peaks on a great plateau in the Rockies. We couldn't help taking picture after picture of these mountains from about every spot in the Park we could see them.

And of course, nothing could be further from the truth about how the Tetons got where they are. They came from below through tectonic action, not from above by divine act.

Fall colors with two elk. Grand Teton National Park.

Coyote. Lamar Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

I also think that visiting in the fall helped our trip. The last time I was in Yellowstone it was as green as can be from the grass in the valleys to the evergreens and deciduous trees everywhere else where anything could grow. In the fall, there are trees here and there with bright oranges and yellows to inject a dash of color into the sameness in the forests and the grass in the valleys is a pale straw color, which among other things is perfect for hiding coyotes.

I don't know why I am still amazed at nature's camouflage. I have watched lions the color of grass and leopards in trees in Africa and marveled at how the colors and shadows of their natural environments hide those animals. I've also written just last month how the color of the bark and the darkness of the trees in Yellowstone obscure animals as massive as elk. I guess I just didn't expect coyotes to be so invisible in the fall grasslands of Yellowstone. Maybe it's the Road Runner cartoons.

Ultimately, we did spend the majority of our time in both Grand Teton and Yellowstone either watching wildlife or moving from one place to the next in hopes of seeing wildlife. I've already written about the moose, elk and bison we saw last month in separate posts because those were the most visible species. But that wasn't all we saw. 

Bald eagle in flight over the Snake River. Grand Teton National Park.

Bear no. 2. Grand Teton National Park.

If there was a hope we had in our animal search in Yellowstone and the Tetons, it was that we would see plenty of bears. By plenty here, I don't mean plenty like we saw plenty of elk or bison. Maybe 10 was a stretch goal? We saw three earlier this year in Rocky Mountain National Park in a single day in a park where bears aren't that common. I felt I was being realistic in hoping to exceed that total in six days in a place where there are more bears. And by that I mean more total quantity (although the precise numbers in RMNP aren't known) and more species (two vs. one). There are more than 700 grizzly bears in Yellowstone alone; Rocky Mountain likely has less than 1/4 of that total number of just black bears. Of course, it's a bigger area. Much bigger.

If there's one thing we pretty much counted on not seeing, it was wolves. Wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone in 1995 and their numbers as of the date of our visit were reported to be 99 total. I'd seen every species we hoped to see in Grand Teton and Yellowstone before with the exception of mountain goats and wolves. No way did I hope to see either. I didn't even realize there were goats in Yellowstone or the Tetons, or at least not visible from a car, but we saw our first couple ever. But wolves? The odds seemed stacked way against us. Yellowstone was full of surprises.

There were really no disappointments on this trip but if there was an unpleasant surprise, it was that we only saw two bears in the whole week we were roaming around the Parks. They were both pretty poor looks. The best photograph we got of either bear (and frankly they may have been the same bear in the same area of Grand Teton at two different times) is above. We struck out entirely in Yellowstone.

I know. I know. I'm whining. Or Crying. Wahhhh!!!!! I didn't see more than two bears on my week trip to one of the premier destinations in the United States. But it's true. We wanted more bears. We thought we'd see more than two. For the record (and based on the narrative of people around us who may or may not know what they were talking about), it was either a grizzly and a black bear or two different black bears or the same black bear twice. Personally, I'm leaning towards a grizzly and a black bear, although the best photographic evidence of bear no. 1 (the "grizzly") is below. That bear, by the way, was moving fast. Good thing it was a good distance away.

Grizzly or black bear? I'm leaning towards grizzly.

But we did see wolves.

I know I've already said this but I thought there was no way we were going to see any wolves whatsoever. We're talking 99 dogs in an area almost twice the size of Rhode Island. What are the odds?

But we didn't just see one or two wolves. We saw a lot of wolves. On three different days in two separate locations in Yellowstone National Park.

My first tip for seeing wolves in Yellowstone based on our very, very limited exposure is to visit the Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the Park. I know, it's remote and if you are staying in West Yellowstone, Montana (like we were), you'll need to get up super early to get over there when the wolves are still active in the morning (we left one morning at about 5:30 a.m.). But we were two for two in Lamar. Two visits, two sightings of multiple wolves.

Admittedly, both sightings were at a very great distance. Probably at least half a mile away. The animals were like ants on the landscape, even when using binoculars or the zoom lens on our camera which we have been so impressed with in the past. But they were clearly wolves and it was remarkable to see them move across the landscape as a pack, not in a group like I expected but single file with a really good amount of space between them. I think one of the most remarkable benefits of observing wildlife with your own eyes in a natural environment is seeing behaviors that wouldn't necessarily stand out if you were told about those behaviors in a TV show or something like that. How wolves move is indelibly stamped on my brain from our visits to Lamar Valley.

If you do go to Lamar Valley, or anywhere else in the Park really, be prepared to share space with people with some fantastic and very large zoom lenses and telescopes. Their equipment dwarfed what we thought was the ultimate travel camera for seeing and photographing wildlife. Their gear was much better than ours. Although I wouldn't want to lug their stuff on a plane as cabin baggage. 

Wolves in Lamar Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

Lone wolf. Hayden Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

My second tip for seeing wolves in Yellowstone is to get lucky. I know...it's a terrible tip. But in a way it applies to all wildlife watching. We didn't get lucky with bears. We got super lucky with wolves.

We always have an itinerary for our trips. Most of the time, we follow those agendas to the letter and build in enough float to linger or improvise. Sometimes, we read the conditions on the ground and decide to go a different way. We did the latter in Yellowstone and it completely paid off. Our original plan for Yellowstone had one trip to the Hayden Valley, but after driving through once, we not only adjusted our route back to our hotel to take another pass on the same day but we decided an early morning visit on a different day might pay off somehow. That's where we got to see a wolf at a distance of about 20 feet.

There were a number of wolf false alarms (or was it crying wolf?) in our time in Yellowstone. There were at least four or five or maybe more times when we heard someone calling a coyote a wolf. So on our second day in the Hayden Valley we were not quite ready to believe that the dog-like creature trotting about ten feet off the road just before the sun was really up was a wolf. But after a second or two lapse of brain processing time, it was.

Right there in front of us (and a caravan of 15 or so cars) was a yearling wolf separated from her pack. Super close. Way closer than the 100 yards of separation recommended by the Park for this kind of an animal (although that doesn't really count when you are in a car). Honestly, this was such a thrilling sight that for the 20 minutes or so we followed this wolf, we forgot all about the whole no bears thing. This is one of the apex predators in the Park and it's right there in front of us.

This was absolutely amazing. So amazing in fact that our fellow tourists stopped their cars as close as they could and piled out of their passenger side and driver and back seats to snap the best possible pictures. I'd love to say that we exercised a little more caution (and I think we did - keeping the car between us and the wolf or opening the door but standing on the step of our SUV) but it's super easy to get excited and lose track of what the rules are. I mean it's a wolf less than 30 or maybe even 10 yards away.

Wolf. Carcass. Hayden Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

If there has to be a singular experience that represents this trip (and I'm not sure there has to be), this was it. To get this good a view of a wild wolf is something that's not going to happen each time you visit Yellowstone. It truly was so lucky, although getting up early was definitely a part of making our own luck.

We don't have great pictures of our lone wolf. The lighting was not ideal and she moved pretty fast which made taking amazing pictures with our camera a little difficult. I still think we got a couple of pics that I'm proud of for us to remember what we saw.

Two Parks. Six days. It's still crazy to me that (1) we spend this much time doing sort of the same thing over and over again and (2) that we still missed so much. No hikes. No Jenny Lake. No bears (well...two), no Tower-Roosevelt, tons of missed side roads and drives. But wolves, fighting elk, moose, herds of bison, geysers, multicolored pools and those gorgeous Tetons in the fall? Tremendous. What a week. 

Everyone should go to Yellowstone at least once in their life. If you go, make your own luck. Get up early and stay for multiple days.

One last look at the Tetons. From Mount Moran Turnout. Grand Teton National Park.

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How We Did It

Both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks are open all year round but access to certain parts of both Parks are severely limited in the winter season. Check their websites for current conditions by clicking the names of each park earlier in this paragraph.

Both Parks charge admission, although there are days of the year when admission is waived. You might also save a few bucks by purchasing U.S. Parks Annual Pass which will get you into all National Park Service properties and a whole host of other sites for free. The Pass, which we purchased last November, costs $80 as of this writing. The 2020 entrance fee for Grand Teton is $35 and you can add another $35 for Yellowstone. It won't take but one more Park visit somewhere else to make buying a Pass worthwhile. The $35 admission fees to both Parks are good for seven days each.

Note there is a large amount of territory in the south end of Grand Teton that is outside of the entrance gates so depending on where you want to go, you might be able to visit Grand Teton for free. You can get to our favorite moose and bear watching spot down on Moose-Wilson Road without paying. Or at least you can if you are traveling from the south.

We found the best places to see wildlife in Yellowstone to be Lamar Valley and Hayden Valley. Get up early for the best sightings or stick around until dusk. We considered hiring a guide for a day to help us find wolves but found pricing to be north of $500 per day. We took our chances on our own and I think we made out pretty well. We actually followed a couple of guided tours in Grand Teton for a while and they didn't seem to have any better luck finding animals than we did. I guess a huge advantage of being with a guide is that they likely have better gear than you do. I'm happy with the $500+ that's still in my bank account.

We also found it really useful to ask what people were looking at. We got a lot of help from strangers pointing out what they were focused on when we were just lost. You might not have that long to see some of these animals. They have a way of disappearing into forests quickly. Ask for help.

You can see that gorgeous Teton mountain range from just about any spot in Grand Teton south of Jackson Lake.

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Rack 'Em

This year started out looking like an amazing year for wildlife watching. With trips planned to Costa Rica in March; Yosemite in June; and Rwanda, Uganda and Zanzibar in October, it looked like my hard drive would be packed with all sorts of new pictures of wildlife being wild in jungles and forests and grasslands. But if you've read any of my blog posts recently, you'll know through all my whining and complaining that things didn't go as planned this year. No Costa Rica. No Yosemite. No Africa.

Despite all that, we did get some quality wildlife sightings in 2020, albeit all in the United States. Sure it was nowhere near as good as trekking and kayaking through a jungle in Central America or tracking gorillas on foot in the mountains of Africa but in traveling for an overview of large mammals in the United States, I think we got some great looks at some animals. And let's face it, everything I've done this year would have been on my list eventually at some time. Why not do it now when travel options are limited?

Our vacation to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks this month had its roots in our trip out to Colorado and Utah earlier this summer. We ended that trip with a day plus in Rocky Mountain National Park and got super lucky with some quality viewings of moose, elk, black bears and particularly bighorn sheep, which have been eluding me for many, many years. 

While those two days in RMNP sated my lust for bighorns, it also teased me with moose and elk. I saw more of both of those species on that trip than I had ever seen and I kept thinking about them over the summer. When it came time to decide if we were going to even go anywhere to replace our 2020 Africa trip, eventually Yellowstone and the Tetons started to make sense as a way to finish what we started in Colorado in June.

The elusive and solitary moose...

and the not so solitary, but sometimes equally elusive, elk.

Why teased, you may ask? Well, honestly, it was all about the headgear here. And we didn't see what I wanted to see in Colorado. What we saw in Rocky Mountain were moose and elk with developing antlers. Not because they were young animals or anything but because these two species of animals grow their antlers every year for mating season, and mating season (or the rut as it's more commonly known) occurs in late summer and fall. That means smaller, velvet-covered antlers in late June and larger (or much larger) and significantly more dangerous racks later on in the year. This is what I came to see. This is what I'd been thinking about this summer.

A fully grown set of elk antlers can weigh as much as 40 pounds and they look downright lethal. The early summer softer rounded ends of the antlers are transformed into sharp points for the rut and they are used in combat against other elk bulls for competition for their very own harem of cows. Moose go a little bigger on the headgear but with the same goal of competing for cows, although moose tend to eschew the harem in favor of loving and then quickly leaving a single cow. Moose antlers top out at about 60 pounds. Can you imagine carrying 60 pounds of antlers around at the end of the summer after growing them all year?

Let's go see if we can find some antlers!!!

This is exactly what I came to see: moose antlers...

and elk antlers.

We started this trip in Salt Lake City and drove up to Jackson, WY, which meant our first shot at either species would come in Grand Teton National Park. It would be on to Yellowstone National Park after that. Oddly enough, from a moose and elk perspective, these two parks were polar opposites. Perhaps it's to be expected with about four times the moose in Grand Teton than Yellowstone and about double the number of elk in the Tetons up in Yellowstone but the contrast was clear and obvious. We got some awesome moose sightings in Grand Teton but only the most fleeting of elk viewings there. In Yellowstone, elk were easy to spot, but moose...not so much. 

Our task at hand would need some early wakings. Both moose and elk are most active at dawn and dusk. We spent seven nights out west and used an alarm to wake ourselves every morning, although admittedly the last one was to get to the airport. We knew we needed to be up before sunrise and head out to where we guessed and had read we might lay eyes on these species. The sun comes up in early October at around 7:30 a.m. or so. That meant alarm times anywhere from 5 a.m. to 6:15 a.m. depending on the day and our destination. I guess we could have slept in and just shot for the dusk movement but why cut our chances in half? Alarm every morning, please!

It was completely worth it. Yes, we came home tired and a bit sleep deprived but the looks at these species and the other animals we saw in the Parks were way worth it. There is something about seeing animals live and in the wild and observing their habits that sticks with you in a way that reading something in a book or seeing something on TV doesn't. Watching behaviors in person sinks in. I'll never forget watching elephants eat grass along the banks of the Chobe River in 2015. There are some moose and elk (and bison) behaviors I won't forget from this trip. And of course, we saw some antlers.

Moose in the early morning light in Grand Teton National Park.

Bull elk bugling along the banks of the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park.

We used West Yellowstone, Montana as a base for our explorations through Yellowstone. The town is right outside the West Entrance of the Park and our hotel, which was deep into the town, was all of a mile from the Park gate. Pretty darned convenient, I'd say. We generally spent the early morning and mid-day somewhere in the almost 3,500 square miles of the Park itself before exiting for a quick early dinner and then heading back to the Park for sunset.

Because we'd been driving around for up to nine hours earlier in the day, we wanted our dusk trips to be short and sweet. Fortunately, we found that the Madison River valley, which parallels the road to the West Entrance, is a great spot to watch elk. There were herds every night along the banks to the south of the road and in the trees along the north side of the same road. And always with a bull with some good sized horns.

Elk are some massive creatures. They are way, way bigger than the deer we sometimes see along the roads in Northern Virginia. But they are amazingly quiet when they want to be and they blend into the Wyoming forests in a way that I guess I should expect but which is astonishing anyway. In the early morning or late evening light, their lighter coats almost perfectly mimic the colors of the bark on the lodgepole pines that make up the forest, and the darker portions of their fur recedes in the shadows between the trees. You can't even spot their antlers because they so closely resemble the branches sticking out from the tree trunks.

We got great and clear looks at elk when they were out in the open along the river. It was a lot harder to pick these animals out when they were buried in the woods. I am sure we probably drove within 20 feet or so of many elk that we didn't even see. But of those we did see along the Madison, we got some great looks at some pretty good-sized antlers. This is what we came to see.

Elk in the forest along the road to the West Entrance, Yellowstone National Park.

Bull moose spotting a cow, Grand Teton National Park.

Our Yellowstone strategy of finding somewhere close to the hotel to see wildlife in the evening worked equally well at dawn and dusk earlier in the week in Grand Teton. I'm all for getting up early but not any earlier than I really have to. It took us maybe 10 or 15 minutes to get to a prime elk viewing spot in Yellowstone in the evening; we found an equally desirable spot in Grand Teton about 20 minutes from our hotel in Jackson.

Where was this magical spot, you might ask? Moose-Wilson Road. If there was ever a spot to spy moose, it had to be road with the word moose in it, right? I know, I know, we visited a road informally named Moose Alley earlier this summer and saw nothing. But we didn't go to Moose Alley first thing in the morning or right before dark.

I have probably spent too few mornings in my life watching the sun come up. Doing it twice in a row in Grand Teton National Park was amazing. Both times it was pitch black when we arrived at our spot along the creeks that feed the Snake River and it was so still. There were stars and likely Venus or maybe another planet (we didn't bring our star chart along on this trip) overhead and we were not alone. 

By "not alone" I don't mean that the forest was packed full of wildlife. I mean other humans beat us to the parking area along Moose-Wilson Road. And of course, in the black of pre-dawn, they claimed to see moose. It's pitch black and we are looking into a shaded (were there any light at all, of course, which there was not) valley at animals with dark brown to black hides. A cow and calf by the water and a bull a bit further back from the shore. I know I have poor eyesight but there's no way these people can see dark moose in the black of night!

On morning number one, they were right. I mean, of course, they were right. As the darkness receded and gave way to the light, there were revealed to us three moose right there in front of us. Eating and poking around in the willow thickets without a care about our presence. We could see on the first morning there that the young bull moose (shown in the top photograph above) had some ideas about how he'd like to get to know the cow a little better, but she seemed totally disinterested and he didn't pursue anything. Just kept eating and walking and (in between some excitement about a bear) eventually we'd move on and seek more moose elsewhere and come up empty. We'd seen our first moose antlers. They weren't as big as we thought they might be.

Day two played out in much the same way. Get up early. Drive 20 minutes. Park in the dark. People already there. Tall tales about moose here or there which turned out to be totally accurate. Only this time with two bull moose. And the newcomer was quite a bit bigger, with a much more impressive rack. He's pictured right above. This was more like it.

I don't know why I'm obsessed with antler size in this blog post. Maybe it's because this feature of the elk and moose give identity to these creatures in a way their body shape or faces or hoofs or whatever else it might be cannot do. Who can grow the biggest, most massive set of prongs on top of his head? That's what I wanted to see. I was happy to see the second moose. 

Like the smaller bull the day before, he also had some designs on the cow, complete with some moose catcalling (is that a thing? it wasn't exactly the bugling of the elk). But as soon as he started looking her way she moved away from him. Her reaction was completely different from the advances of the smaller of the bulls. She moved into cover by the water quickly, followed by him. Nothing happened, I swear, but how three massive dark-colored moose (remember there's a calf) disappear into willow thickets which are not that dense is beyond me. But that's just what happened. Poof! They were gone. Right before our eyes. This camouflage stuff, folks...pretty impressive.

The only other thing I can say about the moose we saw in the Tetons is talk to your neighbors. "Surely," some folks next to us said, "you must have seen the three very large moose on the way into the Park by the Visitor Center that morning." Very large moose? We're gone!

We didn't find three moose. But we did find the guy above. And I'm just putting these pictures up for your enjoyment. I am sure there are moose with larger antlers in this world, but this guy is real and he is spectacular. This is some impressive stuff. I'm happy now. Enough about moose.

But not enough about elk.

Moose at a distance are awesome to see. So are elk. I love these creatures. Most of our looks at moose in the Tetons and elk along the Madison River came from a football field or two or more distance away. But nature is so much more intimate when it's closer. 

There are many, many places in Yellowstone National Park where you can see elk, but one of the best spots to see these animals is in the town of Mammoth. For most of the year, elk cows sit around in the town 24 hours a day and graze and sleep. But it's a little bit more exciting during the rut. Where there are female elk during mating season, there is at least one testosterone laden, sex-crazed bull around. If there's more than one, get ready for some fireworks and get ready to move out of the way quickly.

Two elk bulls during the rut equals trouble.

I never really felt like I was in any danger from wildlife in Yellowstone but there were a couple of times that the adrenaline surged in response to wildlife moving a bit too fast and a bit too close. One of those two times was in Mammoth with the two boys above: a younger bull on the left (known as 24 for his ear tag number) and the slightly larger dominant male on the right who had already claimed the town's harem of cows.

They bugled at each other and to the cows. Bugling is a long higher-pitched-than-it-seems-like-it-should-be noise used to ward off competitors and signal availability for mating to a partner or partners. They chased females. They chased each other. And they actually came to blows, locking antlers twice quickly in a test of strength before separating and splitting up. Each time over the course of an hour or so, 24 lost. He didn't bugle loudly enough or he lost an antler fight or he was chased away. No matter how many times he came back, he was run off. And every time he did, the team of six or eight Park Rangers moved gawking spectators like us out of anything resembling a straight line between the bulls and another elk.

We never saw an elk bigger or closer with a rack like the bull who had installed himself among Mammoth's cows. The antlers on this male were majestic and enormous. If they had been intact, they would have had a full 12 points, although some past skirmishes had clearly knocked off a tine or two. When he bent his head to graze, his antlers stretched above the top of his back, a good four and a half to five feet tall. There are signs all over Yellowstone posting warnings about how fast or dangerous or both the wildlife in the park are. If you want to see some very large animals with very sharp things on their head move very fast, spend some time in Mammoth during elk mating season. Scary dangerous. But oddly enough somehow completely safe.

It seems odd to see elk in the middle of a town but these things are wild and dangerous.

We spent a total of about five and a half days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone. If we came to see just moose and elk, we had checked that box quite securely. I can't imagine getting any better looks at these animals in the short time we spent spread all over these two parks. No complaints at all here from me. Almost no moose sighted in Yellowstone? Who cares. We got them further south. No elk to speak of in the Tetons? That's what Yellowstone is there for. There's no real way that I could have expected more here.

Two days after our first elk encounter in Mammoth, we passed back through the town. 24 was there. The other bull was not. 24 had run him off. Life comes at you fast. Be prepared.

24, ruler of Mammoth. Do not approach elk, folks. Don't mess with those antlers!

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How We Did It

We found the most reliable spots for elk watching in Yellowstone National Park to be along the Madison River and in the town of Mammoth.

The Madison River runs just to the south of the road connecting the Park's West Entrance to Madison Junction. There are a number of pullouts with parking lots along this road to stop and gaze out over the fields on the banks of the River, although if there are any sorts of animals roaming around, you'll likely see a ton of stopped cars and people standing by their vehicles with cameras and binoculars. We had some amazing success along this road in the early morning and just before sunset. According to the Park map that you get handed when you enter the Park, the road along the Madison River is closed from early November to mid-April.

The town of Mammoth is just south of the North Entrance to the Park. The primary attraction in this area is Mammoth Hot Springs but both times we drove through the town we saw a ton of elk and right in the middle of the day. Don't stop in the road to take pictures. Park and get out of your car and obey the directions of the Park Rangers at all times. They are there to keep us safe. Elk are dangerous.

For moose spotting in the Tetons, I can't recommend the Moose-Wilson Road enough. We spent both our sunrises and our one sunset in the Park at the exact same spot and we saw moose all three times. To get there drive north from Jackson, take a left at the Moose Junction sign, drive past the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center and take a left. After a little while you'll come to a noticeable slope up. There's a parking area on the left just beyond that slope. Look behind you further up the hill towards the treelike and you might see some elk. We also saw two bears in this spot. Definitely a good spot for wildlife.

Two final and likely totally irrelevant details. First, if you love elk so much that you want to try having some for dinner, I can totally recommend the Elk Burger at the Slippery Otter Pub in West Yellowstone, Montana. I thought it was seasoned and cooked perfectly. Second, if you want to drink a beer with a moose on the can, I'd enthusiastically recommend you pick up some Big Sky Brewing's Moose Drool. It's about the most delicious brown ale I've ever had (and I don't typically drink brown ales because I find them lacking in flavor). If you are in West Yellowstone, pick some up at the liquor store portion of Bullwinkle's or it's also available at the Market Place grocery store at 22 Madison Avenue.

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