There was a flurry of activity at the East Gate to Yellowstone National Park on Sunday as park employees prepared to close to automobile traffic for the winter. East Entrance supervisor Brian Perry manned the booth, taking payments and checking annual passes behind a plexiglass window in personal protective gear.

The gate will remain closed for about six weeks until the winter over-snow season starts. But the next time Park County’s only gate will swing open to wheeled vehicles won’t be until the first Friday in May. Hopefully: The 2020 opening was delayed about three weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Who knows what 2021 will bring.

Despite the late start and an early fall blizzard, the park continued to draw a good crowd. More than 837,000 visits to the park were logged in September, smashing the previous September record of 724,000 visits, set in 2018. October attendance has averaged about 5.5% of the year’s total, according to the parks vital statistics report, but the final numbers for the month won’t be reported until next week, said Linda Veress, in the park’s public affairs office.

In his third year, Superintendent Cam Sholly said he is very pleased with the way the season went. “Although a challenging season in many ways, the Yellowstone team and our partners made this summer a success and allowed millions to experience Yellowstone, while maintaining low COVID-19 infection rates,” Sholly said. “I cannot say enough about the performance of this team and the strong collaboration with our surrounding states, counties and communities.”

The East Gate was fairly quiet Sunday, with mostly locals looking for one last chance to search for wildlife on a beautiful day in the 50s. Traffic in the eastern section of the park was light and, even at the Midway Geyser Basin and Old Faithful, parking was a breeze.

Trumpeter swans flocked to Yellowstone Lake and rivers across the park. They slowly foraged for a meal, occasionally honking like a first-year band student with a used coronet in hand for the first time. A large boar grizzly crossed the ridge line between Sedge Bay and Lake Butte Overlook, looking for a meal and drawing a small crowd. He never descended to the East Entrance Road, close enough to keep serious photographers hopeful. Bison predictably mowed the margins between the peaks and the road.

A bigger thrill for many entering through the East Gate was crossing the bridge over Pelican Creek with both lanes wide open. The cranes are gone and remaining crews worked to return the dirt road used for the past two years back to nature, remove the temporary bridge over the creek, replace boulders and rip rap and some finishing concrete work. Work on the bridge at Old Faithful and road construction between Canyon and Tower will continue into 2021.