There are about 9 packs in Yellowstone National Park with a total of over 100 wolves. One pack is about 1.5 hours away from Fishing Bridge in Lamar Valley. Fortunately, there is also pack in the northern part of Hayden Valley that has between seven and nine pups. This wolf pack is only about 15 minutes away from Fishing Bridge.

Kate spoke to our neighbors a few days ago and learned that they saw the Hayden Valley wolves walking by their car at 7am. Since Hayden Valley is fifteen minutes from Fishing Bridge, we decided to try to see them. Sadly, this required getting up at 5 am.

We arrived at the pull-off around 6 am to the sound of wolf howls, but no wolves. The howls lasted about 5 minutes, and then all went quiet. Well, except for people driving up every five minutes asking if we saw wolves. (Click here for a Google street view of where we watched for wolves.)

We saw the sun rise. (John almost never sees this.)

John set up the camera.

Kate went zero to selfie in 0.25 seconds.

We saw a few small flocks of Sandhill Cranes. One flock flew through the valley. Their calls did not sound like enraged pterodactyls.

Nothing happened for a while. John photographed sparrows. Kate photographed signs. We looked at a dark lump laying in the shadow of the hill and debated whether it was an elk, bison, or goat. (Spoiler: It was a bison.)

It is a Savannah Sparrow, just in case you were wondering. And yes, we did mark it off our list.

Things got exciting for about 15 minutes, when we saw a canine in the field. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a Coyote, not a wolf. We think we saw him pounce on a few things and eat them.

And another long wait. We were starting to pack up around 8am, when someone said they saw wolves on the ridge. We whipped out our binoculars and scoured the horizon. John saw them, but Kate had a little trouble finding them. The magnification in the photograph below is about the same as binoculars. Can you find the wolf and cubs in the picture below?

Click the triangle to the left for a hint …

John consoles himself with the knowledge that the wolf in his photo is larger than the bear in his aunt’s photo.

We stayed and watched until about 9 am. Other visitors were kind enough to let us look through their spotting scopes to get a better view. Most of the spotting scopes went up to about 60x, so about 8x more magnification than the photos above.

On the drive back, we saw an animal jam. This time it was two Coyotes traveling together. While we watched, one of them waited, pounced, and chomped. (Click here for a Google Street View of where we watched the coyotes.)

When we got back to the campsite, Kate ordered a spotting scope.