Day 5: Hunting for bears

Today was a super fast and amazing day with absolutely no plans. Well, that is not true, we had a plan, but we did not follow it. So here is what happened.

The original plan was to wake up early today to catch a sunrise in the Grand Teton, but around 4 or 5 am, I heard heavy rain fall so I figure morning photo shoots are out and decided to sleep in.

Breakfast was amazing. We had abalone congee !!! It was actually pretty good

After breakfast, we packed up and said goodbye to Signal Mountain Lodge. I really liked this place it is one of the better places that we stayed during our vacation. I only wish we can stay for another one or two more nights. But before we left, we decided to walk by the lake one more time.

So the original plan was to go and hit few more spots in Teton head back to Yellowstone and visit the canyon side, but on our way to our first site, stopped on the side of the road when we saw much of people shooting pictures. We immediately pull over and asked what’s going on. This one guy said it’s a 399 sighting. WHAT? What is that? The other guy on the side of the road said that there was a bear sighting and people are waiting for it to cross the road again.

Vicky and I got super excited because this will complete our Yellowstone Photo Pokémon collection with a bear picture. We jumped out of the car with our gears and set up waiting for the bear to cross the road again. Meanwhile, we chatted with few locals and learn that every day, people come to this same stop to watch the bears. 399 is the number assigned to this female grizzly bear. Currently, 399 has 4 cubs. As we were talking I was able to take some pictures of the local pelicans.

After a while, we heard there was some movement that the bears were going to cross again soon farther down the street. We then grab everything and headed there. When we set up at the new location, the rangers would continuously herd us off the side of the road farther away because they said the bears are walking this way.

We were all set up at this one location then we hear some one said, “oh i see them crossing” and then everyone charged toward the middle of the road and trying to take picture of the bears. I ran down as well, I just saw few cubs turning around and running back to the bushes.

From what I heard was that 399 was going to cross with her cubs, then she got spooked with all the people and turned around and head back into the bushes.

It was very unfortunately, I was only able to catch a glimpse of the bears/ cubs.

Edited: So few day after our trip there… it looks like 399 and her fam made the news.

We continued to wait there for another 1.5 hours then we decided to continue our trip.

Lunch today was nothing special, just a sandwich from a gas station and we headed back north to Yellowstone.

Because there was a oil tanker over turn on one of the paths, we had to reroute once again. Because of the rain last night, the route that was close yesterday was reopened for us to take as a reroute.

On the way back to Yellowstone, we did not see any smoke or fire in that route and we safely got back to Old Faithful and onto Canyon.

Along the way, we stopped briefly at Lewis fall and Lewis Lake.

We also stopped at West Thumb, which was pretty boring. Which is nothing compare to the first few days at Yellowstone.

When we got to Canyon Lodge, it was getting cooler and we went to the dining hall for dinner and get some wifi to check on the weather for tonight.

After dinner we headed out to Hyden Valley to hopefully find a bear or a moose, unfortunately, Hyden valley is nowhere as nice as Lamar Valley. All we found were a few buffaloes.

Tomorrow we start or journey home. I can’t believe it’s already been a week.