500 Adrenaline Adventures (Frommer's) - Lois Friedland [233]
We had started the day before sunrise at a lookout point in the Lamar Valley. Steam from our coffee matched the mist in the air, as the sun crept above the horizon and lit up the hillsides. When the birds started chirping, it was time to move on and look for the wolves. At Yellowstone, the wolf viewing tours start early in the morning because this is often the best time for sightings.
The wolves in Yellowstone were hunted almost to extinction in the early 1900s but are now protected and monitored. At the end of 2008, there were at least 124 wolves in 12 packs living in the park, according to the Forest Service. You can go scouting for wolves yourself, but the chances of actually seeing them are much better during one of the guided wolf tours. In addition to improving your chances of actually seeing wolves, most tours are led by naturalists who give insights into the lives of wolves, other animals in the park from elk to bison, and teach you about Yellowstone’s ecology.
Several times a year, Wolf Discovery and Wolf and Elk Discovery Lodging and Learning programs are offered. Guests stay at the Mammoth Hot Springs lodge in the park and go out daily to see wolves’ habitats and learn more about their behavior and the Park’s conservation efforts. The hikes or drives, depending upon the season, are led by a Yellowstone Institute naturalist.
People who desire a more intensive introduction should take one of the Yellowstone Organization’s field seminars that offer a comprehensive overview of wolf evolution, behavior, and communication. Guests stay in cabins at Lamar Buffalo Ranch (see below), while learning about Yellowstone wolf restoration, how wolves relate to prey species, scavengers, and other animals. Participants go out in the field to observe wolves and visit the carcass of an animal killed by wolves. —LF
Yellowstone National Park ( 307/344-7381;www.nps.gov/yell).
Tour: Wolf Lodging and Learning programs and Field Seminars at Yellowstone Association Institute ( 307/344-2293;www.yellowstoneassociation.org).
When to Go: Spring, fall, or winter.
Jackson Hole, WY (56 miles/90km), or Bozeman, MT (87 miles/140km).
The lodging and learning programs and the field seminars include lodging at park properties.
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Dog-Sledding in No-Man’s Land
Icy Nomad of the North Atlantic
Greenland
Among those ostensibly no-man’s-landmasses that transatlantic flights pass over between North America and Europe, Greenland seems the most unlikely travel destination in and of itself. Iceland, maybe. But Greenland? It’s the world’s largest island that isn’t a continent in its own right (about a quarter of the size of Australia), with a coastline as long as the equator. The bulk of the island lies above the Arctic Circle, and for all those terrific statistics and surface area, only 57,000 people live here, almost all of them Inuit, and concentrated on the marginally hospitable west coast. Eighty-one percent of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet, and if it were to melt, sea level worldwide would rise by 7m (23 ft.).
Greenland’s greatest natural attraction is the Ilulissat Ice Fjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the west coast, where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier meets the sea in often-spectacular fashion. Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world, calving over 70 cubic km (17 cubic miles) of ice annually, a rate that has sped up significantly in the past decade due to climate change in the Arctic. For now, however, Greenland is still connected to the North Pole by ice, which makes it—you guessed it—the home island of Santa Claus. (Read more at www.santa.gl.)
Besides the sublime quiet and majesty of nature here, perhaps the most quintessential Greenlandic experience is going for a dog sled trip. In the east and north of Greenland, some 29,000 sled