Category: Photos by Kay

Where the wild things are

YNP Bison portrait

I’ll start showing you Yellowstone National Park where we started: with some of our incredible wildlife sightings. The Lamar Valley is reputed to be the best area for this and it did not disappoint, though we saw and learned of animals everywhere in the park. For us the one animal we saw the most of were bison, some of them as close as the road we traveled on. We saw them singly, in pairs, and in herds.

YNP bison herd

At one time bison nearly disappeared from Yellowstone. By the 1880s poachers had reduced bison numbers in Yellowstone to only 40. (National Park Service rangers weren’t actively managing parks until 1916.) Management programs brought the bison back and today there are about 5,000 in the park. This small herd was split across both sides of the road. Can you see the small reddish one in the distance to the left? A ranger called this a “red dog,” one of the newest members of the herd. Young ones have that reddish hue until darker, coarse fur grows in.

YNP bison traffic jam

This was one of many wildlife traffic jams we encountered as one kind of animal or another walked either across the road or, in some cases, along with traffic.

YNP elk

Another animal we encountered soon after we arrived near Yellowstone was the local elk. We pulled into the parking lot of our first accommodations in Gardiner, Montana to find this elk cow and calf grazing on the landscaping. We saw lots of other elk throughout our trip, grazing. They’re particularly fond of the Mammoth Hot Springs Resort where there are lots of lawns and for the only time in my life I’ve had to watch my step to avoid elk droppings on the sidewalk.

Tomorrow I’ll show you other animals we visited in Yellowstone. Spoiler alert: No bears, wolves, or coyotes.

Now…where was I?

Collage licenses 1

Late last month we went somewhere new to us to do some exploring. It wasn’t long before we noticed that we were joined by people from far and wide. Have you ever taken a road trip and noticed car license plates from everywhere? Let me dispel any notion that it is something that people outgrow. At least I haven’t.

Collage licenses 2

As we moved around looking at sights I couldn’t resist recording the plates we saw from far and wide. The more I saw the more interesting it became. (I admit it. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to amuse me.) That is a European plate on the motorcycle in the bottom right, above. And a Dutch flag on a Harley Davidson (yeah, it’s not a plate, but I knew Cat would enjoy this). Then I noticed that Canadians were showing up, too.

Collage licenses 3

After DH mentioned “We haven’t seen any Mexican plates,” one morning, bingo! There was one from Chiapas, Mexico. But I’m not just posting a license plate collection here. I’m also issuing a challenge. Interested?

By the time we left I had captured 49 U.S. state license plates. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t find that last one. I’ll send a little souvenir of my trip to the first person who posts a reply which correctly tells me which state it is. (In case you have trouble reading it, the plate in the lower right of this collage is West Virginia. And the tiny one that reads “JAB” in the top shot is from New Hampshire. Two down, 47 to go.)

Porcelain Basin, Norris Geyser Basin

Where’d we go? If you don’t recognize it, this is Yellowstone National Park — Porcelain Basin in the Norris Geyser Basin. I came home with about 1,000 shots of this amazing place. I’ll show you a few of my favorites and give you a free tour in the coming days.

Farewell performance

Sand sculpture 1

The final edition of Arts in Action was staged last weekend by the Nor’wester Rotary in Port Angeles. This was the 35th year the event was organized and offered to the community and has been the site of sand sculpture contests that many of us have enjoyed for the past 13 years. There was no competition this year, just three works of sand art offered by sculptors who chose their own themes.

Sand sculpture 2

Sue McGrew, left, and another worker here put the final touches on this piece. McGrew and sculptor Sandis Kondrats designed this gorgeous Poseidon tribute.

Sand sculpture 3

A team from Merrill & Ring created this piece. The salmon at the end of the fishing line is being grabbed by a seal which is being grabbed by an Orca whale.

Sand sculpture 4

I love the look on the boy’s face.

Sand sculpture 5

Members of the Phoenix Dragon Martial Arts School produced this sculpture of the Seahawks stadium.

A member of the Sequim Noon Rotary expressed interest in possibly keeping the event alive. The group as a whole has not discussed this.For now, the event has ended. Fingers crossed that it may yet continue.

Return of a river

Lake Aldwell 3

Our walk through the former Lake Aldwell last month ended in a grove of tree trunks that had been harvested for timber before the valley was flooded behind the Elwah Dam in 1912. The huge trunks were impressive; they’ve been tagged for further study. Other relics have been found in the former lake bed. We were shown the partial carcass of a truck and heard about a wooden wagon wheel that was found, stolen, and then recovered. But much of the area’s history is told in a landscape of tree trunks and huge tangles of downed trees lost for untold years at the bottom of the lake.

Lake Aldwell 4

The river now flows freely. Time and currents are moving and depositing silt that built up behind the dams, altering the mouth of the Elwah River at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As trees and shrubs return, wildlife is finding its way back. In addition to the fishery restoration I wrote about yesterday, returning birds are the most easily noted, but rangers have seen otters, bears, and elk as well. The changes can be subtle. As the fishery returns, minerals from seagoing fish carcasses are reintroduced to the region after over 100 years, adding new nutrients to the environment. It will be interesting to see how the ecosystem reestablishes in years to come.

In addition to the links I posted yesterday, you can click here for more information, including photos and videos of the final blasts of the Glines Dam.

A walk across a lakebed

Lake Aldwell 1

Before we left town last month we went on a ranger-led walk to view the effects of a vast restoration project, the removal of two dams on the Elwah River, west of Port Angeles. Our walk was through the former Lake Aldwell which was created 102 years ago with the building of the Elwah Dam. Seven miles upstream of the Elwah Dam, the Glines Canyon Dam was built in 1927. The Elwah Dam was built by Thomas Aldwell who had quietly bought land throughout the region and was built without permit.Together the dams, which provided electric power, blocked the migration of 10 stocks of anadramous salmon and trout which at one time had been one of the most prolific fisheries on the Olympic Peninsula. The life cycle of an anadromous fish includes migrations from salt water bodies through freshwater rivers where they spawn. Damming the Elwah limited salmon to slightly under five miles of river below the first dam, dramatically affecting the fishery. The removal of these dams is the largest such project in history and the final pieces of the Glines Canyon Dam were taken down last week. In the photo above you can see the former lake level etched in a horizontal line in the distance. Click here and here for more details about the project.

To me the most amazing aspect of this project is how quickly the fish have begun to repopulate the newly opened reaches of the upper Elwah River. Salmon were found above the Elwah Dam not long after its removal and biologists found two radio-tagged trout that had migrated more than 15 miles from the mouth of the river, well past the former Glines Dam, within days of its removal.

Lake Aldwell 2

The Lower Elwah Klallam tribe of Native Americans, who had traditionally relied on the fishery, had protested the Elwah damming from its inception and have been active participants in lobbying for the dam removals and in the current river restoration. Because parts of the river flow through Olympic National Park, the Park Service has also participated in the project.

As the lakes behind the dams were drained re-vegetation of the newly exposed lands was a priority, including elimination of opportunistic noxious and non-native species. The willows above are about four years old and have quickly taken hold. Throughout the area other natives have been planted. Tomorrow I’ll show you more of the project.