Let me tell you a story about the adventure in looking for otters in Yellowstone National Park.
For over twenty years, I thought about planning a trip to Yellowstone National Park as I would honestly love to visit all the National Parks before my time is up and Yellowstone seems to be one of the top choices of everyone’s list. So the year came to start the planning and everything I researched said for wildlife you need to visit in late May to mid-June, so that was the plan I went with.
The big year finally came and I would be visiting Yellowstone for the first time ever, we pull through the gate to Yellowstone National Park around the second week of June. Just the trip from Cody and in the Northeast gate to Fishing Bridge campground alone proved that we had planned the perfect time of year. I was with three people that had been to Yellowstone several times before and all of them said they couldn’t believe it, bighorn sheep on the banks of the road, moose at the entrance gates, grizzly bears by the road, elk in the field and of course the bison and all that on the first half day in the park and we had planned four full days.
By the time we headed through Hayden Valley and up to Tower and through Lamar Valley, it was literally like being at a zoo without bars. By this time we had added wolves, black bears, snowshoe hares, beaver, pelicans, porcupine, and more to our list of the wildlife we had seen.
At one of the park general stores, I looked at the book section and found a Yellowstone Wildlife checklist pamphlet. I open it and realize we had seen almost all the animals in the pamphlets already and we still had a few days left. Then I see a book called “Watching Yellowstone And Grand Teton Wildlife: The Best Places to Look From Roads and Trails” and I think ‘that’s it’ our remaining days in Yellowstone are going to be a wildlife scavenger hunt. I purchase both and the game is on.
We used the guide reference to tell us where we had the best shot of seeing the few things we hadn’t yet seen. The one that everyone wanted to see was river otters so the guide said head to the Madison River so off we went heading towards West Yellowstone.
If you’ve been to Yellowstone, then you know about wildlife ‘jams’ which are just traffic jams caused by some type of wildlife. Bear jams are the most popular and this time of year there are tons of bear jams along with other jams. While the jams can be annoying it’s also a good way to know there is something to see ahead and to find out what it is all you have to do is simply roll down a window and ask if it’s not already obvious. At this point in our trip, we could be picky in what ‘jams’ we participate in and what ones we just roll on through as we were doing great on our wildlife checklist.
So here we are heading down the road along the river and come across a large jam with people heading down an embankment to the river. We couldn’t see anything from the road and there was not really anywhere to park, so I jump out to run ahead and scout whether it was worth finding a place to park or not. I run down the road and when I get to the embankment a couple of people are coming up so I ask “what’s down there?” and they instantly say “really big otters”. The amount of joy I instantly felt was huge, we had done it, we had found Yellowstone otters. I wave to my travel companions to park the car and I wait for them to join me before going down to the river.
We go down as a group and everyone is so excited to see these little guys or BIG guys according to the people I had asked. As we get closer to the riverbank, there they were, two furry creatures, swimming together in a little island of grass in the river. Finally, OTTERS! But wait, something doesn’t look right and about that time is when my joy deflated, we were looking at beavers and not otters.
From that day forward if we see a beaver, we yell “REALLY BIG OTTER”. And if you happen to drive through central West Virginia on Interstate 79 you’ll now laugh when you see the signs for the town of Big Otter and wonder if the town is named after a beaver.
Links to books mentioned to help you during your trip.
Yellowstone Wildlife: A Folding Pocket Guide to Familiar Animals of the Yellowstone Area – Amazon Affiliate link
Watching Yellowstone And Grand Teton Wildlife: The Best Places to Look From Roads and Trails – Amazon Affiliate link
