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WEB ONLY: Yellowstone in The Off-Season

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The park draws more than 2.3 million visitors between Memorial Day and Labor Day; only about 1.5 million arrive during the rest of the year. But there are plenty of incentives for visiting beyond summer.

FALL Autumn arrives the last week of August and is over before Columbus Day. The fall foliage is gorgeous (especially the yellow cottonwood trees and aspens). The bears are out and about, eating vast amounts of pine nuts and berries before they hibernate, and other animals are returning from higher elevations as the cold sets in. The whole park grows a little quieter with one glaring exception. September is when male elk sound their insanely loud, trumpet-like mating calls, appropriately known as bugling. On autumn nights the meadow behind the Browns house becomes a veritable orchestra pit. We call it the Love Shack, Becca giggles. Sometimes we can t sleep because of all the noise!

WINTER This is the Browns favorite time of year, not least because Yellowstone's beloved snowcoaches are rolling. These crazy contraptions imagine a squat school bus with skis and tank treads for wheels are the park's main mode of transit after November. The Brown girls love riding the snowcoach out to the Indian Creek trailhead, 45 minutes south of Mammoth, to play in the huge snowdrifts and go cross-country skiing on the 2.2-mile Indian Creek Loop. There s a cozy warming hut where you can sip hot chocolate by the fire afterward. An easy place to stay and to rent Nordic ski equipment is the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel (doubles from $100), a simple, historic lodge that's one of the few open year-round in the park, plus it has hot tubs Or consider the cushier but less accessible Old Faithful Snow Lodge (doubles from $160), reachable only by snowcoach or snowmobile from Mammoth, but a three-minute walk from the geyser basin.

SPRING Blink and you'll miss it: Yellowstone's window between winter and summer lasts only a few short weeks, from mid-May to mid-June. Here s when the wildflowers purple asters, upland larkspur, marsh marigold, fringed gentians begin to bloom, and crowds are still minimal. Plus, spring is when the baby bison and elk are born and they re so cute! says Sarah. The bison calves are small with reddish fur. They're easy to spot because they walk down the road right next to their mothers they never stray far. (Bison tip: Babies do their romping during the cooler morning hours, and are especially common along the Madison and Firehole rivers from West Yellowstone to Old Faithful.) The newborn elk have tiny white spots all over their backs, like deer. Their legs wobble when they first learn to walk, and they make funny little squealing sounds. Best strategy for spotting the younglings: try the Lamar Valley and Mammoth Hot Springs. Stashed during the day to keep them away from predators, elk calves can be seen nursing in the morning and evening. Soon enough, like the Brown girls, they'll be frolicking about their park all year long.

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