We got up late today. After breakfast we saw that John was working and stopped to talk to him. He usually does not work the weekends but one of the staff was on vacation. It was cloudy, cold and a light snow was falling. By the time we were ready to leave it was already 12:00.

We saw about 20 pronghorn between the arch and the entrance station. Beside the usual bison and elk, we saw a large ram relaxing on the hill on the right side of the road across from the Rescue Creek Trailhead. We have never seen any sheep on that side of the road. We saw two young rams low on McMinn Bench and a large number of ewes along the ridge.

We had to wait for some elk crossing the road above the campground. We have seen quite a few elk in this area. We headed out towards Tower Junction. Bison were on the road just past the Gardner River Bridge. The large bull elk was bedded down near Lava Creek but we did not see any elk near the Wraith Falls Trailhead. We saw the normal bison herds near Black Tail Ponds and several elk on the hill near Phantom Lake.

We checked out the elk carcass near Floating Island Lake and it would appear that the wolves did come back while we were in the interior. All that was left was the head, backbone, rib cage and lots of hair. Even the ravens had abandoned this carcass. There were a large number of bison and several elk in the meadow at Tower Junction.

It was very quiet in Little America and even Slough Creek was abandoned. We did not even see any bison or elk. A bull elk had broken through the ice near the end of the Lamar Canyon and all that was visible was the top of the antlers. There were lots of coyote tracks around the antlers indicating that they were trying to find out how to get to the meat.

The Lamar Valley was not much better than Little America. All we saw were the usual bison herds and the small groups of elk. The resident coyote was still visible across from the Buffalo Ranch. We stopped at the Confluence for lunch. All that we saw there were a few ducks and dippers. We have not seen any of the otters or beaver that frequent this area this trip. The two rams were on the ridge across from Hitching Past.

We decided to go to Round Prairie to see whether there was any Druid action. As we entered Round Prairie we saw a car that had run the road. There were several cars trying to help pull him out. They had totally blocked the road. They tried several times to pull him out and then the tow rope broke. One of the rescuers got stuck himself. They got several new tow ropes but we did not want to stay any longer,

We backed up to a turn out and turned around. There were only a small number of bison in Round Prairie. We back to the Lamar. We didn’t see anything until we passed the Buffalo Ranch. Deb noticed a couple of cars intently watching something in the valley. We could not see what they were watching so we went to Coyote to see whether a different angle would be better.

Deb scanned the area but did not see anything. Suddenly I noticed an ermine carrying a mouse headed straight for the car. Deb was very happy to see this as she missed our ermine encounter last year. He was standing up in a perfect pose for a photograph. He had the mouse in his mouth with the head on one side and the tail sticking out of the other side. As soon as I moved to try to take a picture he scurried under some sage brush.

We played peek-a-boo for a few minutes and then he ran behind the car. We got out but could not see him. Then Deb saw him running through the sage brush further away from us. Unfortunately, we never did get a chance to get a picture. We waited a while but the ermine did not return.

We continued back toward Mammoth and did not see anything new. The few animals we saw earlier had not even moved to another location. Since nothing was happening we decided to call it a night and headed into Gardiner. We stopped at the Park Street Grill for dinner. The Park Street Grill had been closed for the last four winter seasons but they decided to open it for four days a week this year.

We each had a porcini rubbed rib eye steak. The meal was too large so we took several doggie bags back to the room. We would have another steak dinner on Sunday. We unloaded the pictures in the cameras and then went to bed.