Yellowstone Critter Sightings

 

There were traffic jams in Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't caused by bumper-to-bumper commuters on their way to a big city job. 

Instead, the traffic snarls were caused by wildlife sightings. On our first evening at Yellowstone, we could tell that something ahead was creating a traffic jam. From the Yellowstone guide handed out at the entrance: "Do not stop your vehicle in the road or stand in the roadway. Do not block any portion of the road with tripods, chairs or other objects. Do not block the free flow of traffic."

Let's just say there were plenty of rule breakers when wildlife was around. Thankfully, we found a parking spot and wandered down to see what the fuss was about.  (I'm a rule follower from way back. It's that firstborn child thing.)

In this case, the road block was caused by a mother elk and two babies, eating and drinking along the river. We had seen elk before, but we were just as enamored as the rest of the interlopers to watch the mama and two babies.

As I've mentioned, a bear sighting was on Randy's bucket list for this trip. (Click HERE for our first bear sighting. Don't get too excited. There's no photographic proof.)

 An NPS brochure said to "Enjoy them at a distance."

Well, that wasn't a problem. We kind-of-sort-of saw another bear in Yellowstone the next day. We saw people stopped along the road and asked what they were looking at. I could see a brown speck moving in the distance. Randy found the bear in his binoculars. My extreme nearsightedness doesn't mix well with binoculars, so I wasn't successful locating the brown bear, which was probably 200 yards away. 

Randy assures me there was a bear out there - somewhere.

During our trip, we also heard a loon - also a first - and saw some antelope in fields in Wyoming. We saw one big-horned sheep in Glacier, but, again, there is no photographic evidence to support the sighting. (I wasn't the only one on the Red Bus tour to miss the photo op. It was quick!)

There was no problem seeing the buffalo that dotted the Hayden Valley along the Yellowstone River.

 

 

Believe me, I know none of these photos is spectacular. But they were taken from the car window ... as we were moving. (See above for note about firstborn rule following.)

Earlier in the day, we'd found what seemed like a "hotel" for chipmunks at the Sheepeater Cliff. 

Though it was named by the Shoshone Indians for bighorn sheep, we saw the area's much smaller mammals.

Next time: More from Yellowstone

A Different Side of World War II: Camp Concordia

On this Memorial Day, amidst the images of flags and celebrations, I've remembered a lonely tower in the middle of a Kansas field.

Earlier this month, Randy and I participated in the Discover Kansas trip with the Kansas Master Farmer-Homemaker group. One of our stops was at Camp Concordia. Before the tour, I didn't realize that Kansas had a number of POW camps during World War II. One of them was Camp Concordia, located 2 miles north and 1 mile east of the Cloud County town.

From May 1, 1943 through November 8, 1945, more than 4,000 German soldiers were transported to the north central Kansas camp, located on 157.5 acres just outside Concordia. The camp was built at a cost of $1.8 million and consisted of 313 buildings, including a hospital, post, restaurants, fire department, and barracks.

Of course, some 815 of our U.S. military personnel were stationed at Camp Concordia during World War II, guarding the prisoners and interacting with them.

Photo from the Camp Concordia website. This picture of Camp Concordia was taken from the water tower in the fall of 1945.

Since Camp Concordia was strategically located in the heartland of America, many of the prisoners were employed on local farms.

Army trucks transported the POWs to the surrounding farms, where they earned a small wage from the farmers for their work.

From www.powcampconcordia.org
Though some local citizens were against prisoners being awarded freedom beyond the confines of the camp, farmers were thankful to have additional help, especially with so many young locals away in service to their country. With the passage of time, warm bonds formed between farm families and prisoners. The "education" both "sides" forged in the course of these working relationships was perhaps more enduring than any college curriculum could offer.

This picture is of an army truck with a POW work detail and their guards passing through Concordia. Photo from the Camp Concordia website.

While most of the old Camp Concordia has been returned back to farmland, a few of the original buildings still remain, including one of the stone guard towers, the water tower base, a Main Gate Guard post and officers club. In July 2015, Camp Concordia's warehouse building - called T-9 - opened as a museum.

During World War II,  nearly every state in the nation had at least one POW camp. An estimated 360,000 POWs were held on U.S. territory during the war. Camp Concordia was the largest of 16 camps in Kansas. It mainly housed German prisoners who'd been captured in battles in North Africa.

 

Camp Concordia was built as a model POW camp, but because approximately 50 of the first prisoners at the compound were Nazi officers, the atmosphere quickly turned oppressive and threatening. After a number of violent episodes, the Army transferred 44 Nazi leaders away from Concordia. As measures of restoring order to the camp, the library removed Nazi reading material and instituted college coursework for prisoners under the jurisdiction of the University of Kansas.

POWs were housed, fed, clothed, allowed mail and paid for work. The camp was run by the rules set forth in the Geneva Convention of July 1929, which required the humane treatment of prisoners.

The POWs at Camp Concordia had several bands and orchestras, among them the 47th Grenadier Band. The POW dance band played for USO dances.

 Photo from the Camp Concordia website.

During its two years of operation, the camp saw only two escapes and eight POW deaths.

On May 7, 1945, the German officially surrendered. The last prisoners departed Camp Concordia on October 31, 1945, and the camp closed for good on November 8, 1945.

Camp Concordia is open by appointment only. Contact Cloud County Tourism for guided tours: 785-243-4303.

Camp Concordia was just one stop of several in Cloud County. My favorite was the historic Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia. I love stained glass windows and their chapel was full of them.

Their gardens were nearly as colorful as the stained glass windows.

The Whole Wall Mural is also impressive. It's the longest sculpted brick mural in the U.S. It was on the eastern wall of the Cloud County Historical Society Museum, which was packed to the brim with artifacts from the county and region.

Bob's Toy Barn in Clyde had aisles and aisles of farm toys and other well-displayed vehicles from Bob Condray, who has been named to the National Farm Toy Hall of Fame.

Besides collecting ready-made toys, Bob makes his own in an attached workshop. I would challenge anyone to figure out which are which.

And we ate supper that night at the LCL Buffalo Ranch.

The Discover Kansas events are a good reminder that we have plenty of tourist-worthy attractions in our own backyard. Summer vacation doesn't have to mean leaving the state. It could be as close as a tank of gas and a little time.

More later on the Republic County portion of our Discover Kansas tour!

Critters

I see my fair share of critters around the County Line.

But we had a whole new menagerie of critters on our recent trip through the Black Hills and the Badlands of South Dakota and the sand hills of Nebraska.

Nearly 1,500 majestic bison roam the prairie of the Custer State Park.

One scene reminded us of home. The bison "babies" had been weaned from their mothers, a process we will do with our cow-calf herd in early November here on the County Line.

We got a "taste" of bison at our lunch stop at the Blue Bell Lodge.

Randy had the BBQ buffalo sandwich. I had buffalo stew in a bread bowl.

The weirdest encounter was with burros who had no intention of moving off the 18-mile Wildlife Loop road in Custer State Park.

People literally were weaving around them on the road to continue their journey. They reminded me of cattle who sometimes have to be nudged from a feed bunk with the fender of the pickup.

The wild burros (who didn't appear so wild anymore) trace their roots to a herd that once hauled visitors to the top of Harney Peak. At the rate they move these days, it would take awhile.

I had rolled down the window to get a photo of two small burros running and playing on a pretty fall day.

I did get the photo. But I also got an unwanted "kiss" from a slobbering burro.

It was a little too up close and personal for me. However, Randy got his laugh for the day.

We didn't see mountain goats in the wild. But one little one did "climb" up on a rock outside of Mount Rushmore. Mountain goats aren't native to the Black Hills. Introduced into Custer Park in 1924, a well-established herd now lives in the Needles-Harney Park area, though we didn't see them the day we were there.

We also saw pronghorn antelope while on the Wildlife Loop.

We saw deer quenching their thirst at the Niobrara River at Valentine, Nebraska. (Not that we don't see plenty of deer around here. I just hope I don't see them jumping out of the ditches in front of my car.)

Our trip to the Badlands led to a sighting of bighorn sheep.

It was like our own little version of Wild Kingdom ... without the television screen.