Per usual, we woke up early on our fourth day inside Yellowstone National Park.  We packed the car, dropped of our room keys, and immediately drove down to the Hayden Valley.  There we were greeted with some amazing views of the sunrise.  We didn’t see much wildlife activity so we left the area and drove over to the Mount Washburn area, which we were told is prime grizzly territory.  We completed the drive all the way to the road closing (due to the Antelope Fire) without seeing much wildlife, but that all changes once we turned around and started heading back down toward the Canyon Village.

I spotted an small RV that was pulling to the side of the road, while the passenger was reaching a large camera out the window taking pictures.  We were passing on the other side, so I quickly parked the car and hopped out to see what it was.  I was shocked when I realized it was a grizzly cub!  I sprinted back to the car as quick as possible, realizing that the mother grizzly must be somewhere nearby.  Once in the car, two cubs and their mom appeared right on the side of the road in front of us.  We watched them for well over five minutes, until a park ranger showed up to scare them back away from the road.  I captured some great pictures of the bears.

Before spotting the bears, we had decided to do a nearby hike to Cascade Lake.  We were a little hesitant to do it after the bear sighting, but we continued on to the trailhead and started the hike.  We didn’t see any more bears, just a few bison that were really close to the trail.  The hike was nice and flat and only around four and a half miles roundtrip.  It was a lovely day for a hike.  After the hike, we continued down to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which seemed like the only part of the park that we hadn’t seen yet.  We spent some time viewing the waterfalls, taking short hikes to viewing points, and enjoying the nice views.  We ran out of time before we got to explore the south rim, but I feel like we saw enough of it.

With that we headed back for the car to start the drive to Bozeman, Montana.  We drove through a few parts of the park that we had already seen, including Mammoth Hot Springs, before reaching the northern entrance at Gardiner, Montana.  The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful, and we made it to Bozeman in a few hours, in time for our check-in at the Lehrkind Mansion Bed & Breakfast.  I had never done the bed and breakfast thing before, but figured how bad could it be since the house was built by an old brewmaster in the late 1800’s.  After settling in and cleaning up, we headed into downtown Bozeman for dinner.  We ended up at the MacKenzie River Pizza Company, which was awesome.  We also had an enjoyable stop at Montana Ale Works for drinks and desert before heading back to our room for the night.

Bozeman on Dwellable