Week 9 - Internationals on Tour.

Monday October 20th


We started some climate change lectures in Wildlife Physiological Ecology today as a change from normal lectures, and I loved this! So very interesting! We also got our lab results back today and even with all my study, it didn't pay off! Slightly pissed off/disappointed because of all the study I had put in. Dave cooked Fiona and I an unreal stir-fry for dinner today. He'd make a fantastic chef so he would! Spent all the rest of this evening studying for our exam that we've got tomorrow.And holy Christ it's cold today. You can definitely tell winter is on it's way!!



Tuesday October 21st


Another fabulously cold day today. We had our dreaded Wildlife Habitat Conservation and Management exam today. It was a seriously long exam for only 50minutes - NINE PAGES LONG. My watch fell off the table half way through, so I lost track of time, Dr. Dreitz announced when we had 15 minutes left to go and I still had two long questions left to do, so I hurried through and got them all done (just about). I'm not sure what way it went, kind of hit or miss really, I feel I did okay, but then again I thought that about my lab exam from last week so I'm not sure now, we'll have to wait and see. How to Train Your Dragon also happened to be on the TV tonight so we decided to sit down and watch this as a study break :P



Wednesday October 22nd


 Had more of our Climate Change lectures today, they're so interesting! This time though, we talked about how climate change affects different animals in various ways. I absolutely love this class so much! She's a very engaging lecturer too and always tries to come up with new ways to make us enjoy the classroom experience more. It's brilliant. In our Vertebrate Design and Evolution class we've moved onto nerve functions and the mechanics behind them. Thank the Lord we've moved away from the Physics stuff because I really hated it.. Fiona suggested we watch a movie tonight after both of us started and finished our Lab Reports that are due in tomorrow. We watched 'Warm Bodies' which I really wasn't all that gone on to be honest.. Fiona enjoyed it, and there was bits I did find to be funny but I really didn't enjoy it :P



Thursday October 23rd


Called up the RV company today and set up our time to collect it tomorrow morning. So excited! Watched the videos on how to work the RV and such as well today, just giving myself some background information on it and whatnot. We moved onto talking about communities today in Conservation and Management today which I enjoyed, Dr. Dreitz is trying to get us to be more engaging in class so two of us got called up to the board today (I was one) and we just had to interpret a diagram, wasn't all that bad. I don't mind speaking in front of crowds so much when I know what I'm talking about, haha. We also got handed a nice big assignment which I think is worth 30% of our grade. We have to write a review paper on a habitat issue of our choice, but the issue had to have an affect on a certain community which we also have to talk about. As well as this paper, we have to do a 15 minute presentation on it on December 2nd in front of our classmates - which to be honest I'm quite excited about, I've never done a proper presentation before so it could be kind of cool.
I already know the kind of issue I want to talk about, so I spent most of this afternoon, while on Facetime to Mom, researching and finding different Peer Reviewed Literature Papers on my chosen topic, which I will tell ye about, but more so when I've made a definite decision on what it is I'm going to be doing.


Friday October 24th


So today, my Wildlife Physiological Class was optional because it was just a review class, and seeing as we were leaving for Yellowstone today I didn't go because there was a lot to organize and pack up. James and I left at 9.30am and picked up the RV and brought it back to Lewis and Clark. I started to load up some stuff into it with the help of my roommate Sarah. We began our journey from Lewis and Clark about 4pm and headed for Yellowstone National Park. We swapped drivers half way with James taking over and driving the second half and we arrived at Yellowstone RV Park roughly about 9pm. We got our electrical hook-up and wifi going and we settled down and made dinner. We had a gourmet dinner of hotdogs this evening with some mash potatoes also :P I also saw one incredible shooting star and we could just about see the milky way also, truly stunning!!

This was the big ass RV that I really enjoyed driving!

The inside of the RV :D

Another view of the RV, Dave and I claimed the bed above the drivers cabin, so comfortable and incredibly warm!

Saturday October 25th


We woke up at 8am this morning and left the RV park for 9am and headed for Yellowstone. We paid our fee to get into the park, $25 gets you access for a full week which is class! We spotted a small herd of pronghorn first, we were heading for the Lamar Valley and accidentally missed the turn so we ended up carrying on straight and heading for Norris, stopping at a few places along the way. I'm just going to put up pictures of basically everywhere we went besides talking through step by step where we went. We ate lunch in a picnic area near a waterfall and set off to see more of the Park again, such as Artists Paint Pots (big disappointment, nothing artistic about them), we then went and saw the Fountain Paint Pots, Grand Prismatic, Excelsior, Old Faithful, Roaring Mountain and loads of other random little stops inbetween.

A nice group selfie :)

Roaring Mountain.

Some geysers on the Fountain Paint Pot Nature Trail.

Grand Prismatic - It's got a variety of colors going through it based on the different bacteria. They each have their own optimum Temperature at which they work best at. These bacteria are colored differently, giving the Spring it's different colors. It's truly amazing.

Old Faithful. This geyser erupts often, being given the name Old Faithful. Depending on the amount of water, and the duration of each eruption, the scientists in the park can determine when the next eruption is going to happen, normally plus or minus 10 minutes.

We got back to our RV Park between 8/9 pm, we were gone for a full 12 hours, we did and saw so much it was incredible! Fiona cooked up a nice dinner with the help of Kate, of burgers, mash potatoes and potato salad. We lay on the ground relaxing with a few drinks just looking at the stars and having a laugh. No better bunch could have gone to Yellowstone, we all get on so well it's fantastic.

The Open Road - Yellowstone National Park.

Sunday October 26th


We rose early at 6am this morning to leave for 7.15am in order to try and get to The Lamar Valley for sunrise. This is the best time to try and see wildlife, the main reason we were coming to Yellowstone really. We drove to basically the  of the Lamar Valley. We drove passed what I was almost 100% positive was a bear, but we didn't stop the car, which upset me quite a lot because I REALLY wanted to see a bear :P After we turned around we did pull over and I hopped out with binoculars and low and behold there was a fine fat grizzly bear munching on what appeared to be a carcass of some sort. I thought I saw a cub there also but we watched the bear for about 15/20 minutes and I didn't see a little bear anyways so I'm not incredibly sure. But I don't care, I FOUND A GRIZZLY BEAR!! We then left and continued driving and I don't think 5 minutes had even passed and we saw A WOLF PACK running across the mountains in the distance. This had already been the best day of my life and it wasn't even 10am. Unfortunately, both the Griz and the wolves were too far away from me for my camera to make them out when I zoomed, so I'm slightly disappointed but what can ya do!

We took a right turn onto Slough Creek, a notorious place to spot wolves as there is (or used to be, a wolf pack called the Slough Creek Pack). We didn't see any wolves but we did see a massive herd of Bison! We parked up here at the end of this road and had our breakfast. We then turned back and started to have an RV Sing Song with our road trip song - Mi Mi Mi. Our incredibly amazing singing startled a small herd of bison which caused them to all run away from the RV (technically a stampede). They stopped on the road ahead of us and stared at the RV - slightly intimidating, these animals are huuuuuge!! We slowly crept passed this herd of bison only to be greeted further on by an exceptionally large herd of maybe 150 bison all alongside or on the roads. We crawled along the roadway, being careful not to disturb the bison too much, this is critical because these guys could throw their body one way and completely write off a car - not something we wanted to happen!

Just a small few of the bison taking up the entire roadway..

We then went to Mammoth Terraces, since I had seen these with the other Yellowstone trip I went on, I dropped the other 6 off at the top of the terraces and then I drove down the hill and met them at the bottom instead of them walking up and back down the terraces again, it just made more sense. We parked up and had some lunch, we noticed some very light snow started to fall at this stage so we were starting to rethink our afternoon. From Mammoth, it would have taken over an hr to get to Yellowstone Lake due to road closures and bad weather. We decided it wasn't worth the trip down there because we would have got back to Missoula far too late and everyone had something they had to be doing for college. We had our last family meal of the trip and headed home!

Our last family meal, the fantastic 5 + 2.

We made the decision to head back to Missoula and we eventually made it back home for after 6pm sometime. James drove the first part of the journey while I took a power nap or two using Dave as a pillow. I drove the second part then back into Missoula. We spent about an hour or so cleaning out the RV and unpacking all our belongings. We filled back up the gas tank, and the propane and emptied out the dump tank and returned the RV to Lolo.

Had the best weekend ever with the Bison Bunch / Fantastic 5 + 2.





The weekdays aren't really all that exciting anymore, it's all college work, assignments and exams and I really don't want to bore you lot with the details so I'm just shortening them down a little bit. This weekend was a bit of an exception, seeing as we spent it all in Yellowstone. We've already started planning our next trip away together as a group for Thanksgiving. I know this weeks post was a long one but I didn't want to shorten it down because I know a lot of you would like to hear about the Yellowstone trip! I hope ye enjoyed this weeks post!


Thanks for reading!

- Shannen.