For once we got going before daylight. We were out of the room by 7:00. One price you pay for getting up that early is not seeing sheep on McMinn Bench. As we passed Boiling River, the sky began to lighten and get a little pink tinge to it. The snow had that blue tinge to it, the color we never noticed until Doug Dance posted that one twilight snow picture. The car thermometer read 23 degrees as we approached Mammoth.

At Wraith Falls, the pretty boys had taken the high ground, bedding down on the ridge that runs perpendicular to the trail. The bison herd was still in residence at Blacktail Lakes while a small elk herd joined them on the fringes. The elk were moving to the south; a few crossed the road in front of us with more waiting, so we slowed down and inched past them.

We stopped at the Blacktail ski trail across from the Children’s Fire Trail to take some pictures of the sunrise. We heard wolves howling in the distance to the south. We also heard some booming echoing off the hills, 6 or 8 shots. We figured it was late season hunters in the national forest to the north of the park.

By the time we reached Hellroaring, the temperature had dropped to 16 degrees. We’d never noticed such a strong sulfur smell there before, but it was so strong that we thought we were passing Mud Volcano rather than Hellroaring. The smell continued the whole way down to Tower Junction. We saw two coyotes coming out from the Tower Ranger Station. The rangers must have turned them loose for the morning. They were well-fed because they didn’t make any attempt to beg from us as we pulled in next to the facilities.

We stopped to check out the carcass in the Lamar Canyon and saw 5 coyotes trotting toward it. One of them was extremely submissive. At first glance we weren’t even sure it was a coyote; it looked more like an irregularity in the ice next to a spot of open water. It finally moved, but it kept its back hunched and its tail between its legs as it followed the others. When they neared the carcass, three of the coyotes turned on the submissive one and chased it up into the woods. It stayed up there while the others moved to the carcass.

As we exited the Lamar Canyon, we saw a bald eagle sitting in a dead snag to the south of the river. Another coyote ran across the road in front of us and moved up behind a ridge to the north. We stopped with a crowd at Dorothy’s Knoll and found 3 black wolf dots bedded down on a knoll up on Jasper Bench. There were supposed to be 2 others there as well. This group is made up of the half-black and u-black females from the Druids, a black male from the Druids, the unknown black male that was hanging around on Friday, and one other black Druid. Everyone was speculating that this group might be forming a new pack. The Druid alphas along with 253 and 2 pups were spotted briefly back at the den site.

While we were at Dorothy’s Knoll, we met greywolf and Ray from Pebble. Doug Dance joined us after running out to Little America to see if he could pick up any of the wolves from last night. Since nothing much was going on and we were tiring of watching wolf dots, we decided to make our way up to Barronette.

The cottonwoods across from the Institute were really frosty this morning. A few hundred yards down the road, the beggar coyote was pulling his lying-in-the-road stunt, but we were wise to his ways and were soon past him. A car coming in the opposite direction almost hit him, but he was quick enough to jump to the side of the road.

We met up with Ray T. at the confluence. He was getting video of the dippers. We tried to remember what their real name was, but no one could come up with ouzel at the time. Too many senior moments there. The big horn rams were at the top of the cliff in the rocky area. They appeared to be bedded down because all you could see was their heads and horns. We got back on the road, seeing bison and elk around Soda Butte, but nothing else except for spectacular scenery. At Barronette, we ate lunch, having no luck at finding the goats today.

On the way back, we spied Doug and Ballpark Frank at the confluence. We stopped and were soon joined by Ranger Ross. Karen B. stopped to say goodbye since they were on their way out of the park. The sheep came down from the top and moved fairly close to the road, creating a small sheep jam as people stopped to take pictures. After a nice visit with Frank and Doug, we moved on through the valley. At Dorothy’s Knoll, the wolf dots were still in the same place as they were when we left. As we entered Little America, a coyote trotted in the road in front of us for a short distance, but soon jumped off to the side to let us pass.

We finally found out from Ranger Ross where Wrecker pullout is. It is the large parking area to the left just before the Yellowstone River bridge as you approach from the east. We pulled in there and glassed the hills, because the group of 3 unknown wolves had been seen there earlier in the morning. We didn’t find anything, so we decided to head back to Mammoth to get packed for our Old Faithful trip. In the Gardner River canyon, we saw one bighorn ram, who gave us a nice profile by standing up on a rock. We went out the old Yellowstone Trail as far as the corral road to look for antelope. On the way back we saw three young ones, two without horns and one that had short horns, one of them deformed and bent forward.

Back in the room, we got packed and waited for a call from Doug. He was going to get in touch with Silver Wolf and Carlene to see if we could stop by for a visit. We made arrangements to meet there at 7:00. We spent a pleasant evening visiting, although like always when Loons get together, we left much later than we had planned. John graciously agreed to keep spotting scopes and lenses for us so we didn’t have to leave them out in the cold car or drag them along to Old Faithful. We said our thanks and goodbyes and got back to the room by 11:00 for final packing. I had wanted to do some laundry before we left for Old Faithful, but the laundry room closed at 10:00. Hopefully, Old Faithful has a laundry facility. We set the alarm for 5:00 and made it to bed by 11:30.