Bear Lake and Ms. Subaru

Bear Lake is famous for its bright turquoise waters, and it lived up to its reputation. Had a hard time wrapping my head around this landscape, with the tropical looking water surrounded by dry, sage covered mountains.

We circumvented the lake, passing out of Idaho, in Utah. Took a drive up Beaver Mountain to get a bird's eye view of the lake and some fall colors. Little orange and red maples I think.  We stopped in Fish Haven for lunch and had the best sandwiches ever at a tiny place along the road side, Gladys'.  I hope you'll all get a chance to try their rueben sandwiches and one of the "Only Raspberry Shakes in Fish Haven."

Just north of Bear Lake is Mud Lake, a wildlife refuge, which was also beautiful in its own way. Lots of ducks and fish in the water.

The next day we went back to Bear Lake for a paddle.  This might be a good time to introduce you to the newest member of our traveling team.

This is the happy Ms. Forester Subaru. She carries all our adventure equipment, except when she forgets something, like the paddles. But she's young and we're patient with her. She'll catch on. But doesn't she look happy there at Bear Lake?

So...we headed back to the campground without taking a paddle after all and passed this other happy place. Someone actually lives in this house!

Happy surprises everywhere we go...

Two Big Parks and We're on Our Way Again - Part Two

We took a down day to recover from the Teton drive, but did do some kayaking on the Henry Fork of the Snake River. It was our first time on a western river with the foldable kayaks, and we did OK. It was a pretty windy day so we didn't kayak for long.

The next day we got an early start and headed up to West Yellowstone. Like the Tetons, we'd both spent time in Yellowstone before, so we didn't feel like we needed to push ourselves to see a lot. We chose to take the southern loop and just stop and get out to look around some when we felt like it. We ended up stopping at several places we hadn't seen before, which was a nice surprise. We didn't see much wildlife (local hunters blame the wolves). In fact the biggest wildlife watching crowd we joined was in the Hayden Valley; everyone had there spotting scopes out looking at nothing. So we moved on.  We did see a herd of bison that had taken over the Bridger campground, which was closed.

Some of the nice places that were new to use were:

The Madison River

The Firehole River

Firehole Falls

And the Black Sand Geyser Basin:

We revisited the West Thumb Geyser Basin:

Looking down into a deep hot spring hole. 

The shore of Yellowstone Lake

Long drive home, and spent the next day getting ready to head south to Montpelier Creek, our last stop in Idaho. 

Two Big Parks and We're on the Road Again - Part One

In just three days we visited two of the most dramatic parks in the US. We'd been to both a couple of times before, so we weren't really trying to see it all in an unrealistic amount of time, but were just touching base to see what they had to offer us today.

Grand Teton National Park: We drove from Idaho to Wyoming over the Flagg Ranch road, a new approach for both of us. The atmosphere has been kind of hazy due to fires in the area. We thought that getting right into the mountains, up close, might be better than looking for the grand views that the Tetons usually offer, but that we couldn't see now.

The Flagg Ranch Rd. is dirt and pretty rough all the way. It starts in the flat wheat fields of Idaho and rises very gradually into the foot hills and then the mountains of the Grand Targhee National Forest, which is between Yellowstone and the Tetons, and west of them both. The road winds its way through the forests, rising in elevation to 7,100 and passing through some beautiful valleys with streams or ponds in them.

We descended the east side into Grand Teton National Park, crossing over Pole Cat Creek, and stopped and watched three otters playing in the creek and drifting downstream.
















The drive south along the Teton range was as magnificent as ever, even with reduced visibility. The Tetons are iconic mountains. They are everything you imagine mountains to be, like fairy tale mountains.  The east side is very flat so they rise up very abruptly, making for these dramatic scenes.

We took the drive up Signal Mountain for the views, and along Jenny Lake (below).

We splurged on an overnight in a hostel in Jackson Hole and got up early the next morning to ride the big new tram to the top of the ski mountain there. We barely missed a thunderstorm that was coming over the top, so we couldn't linger there. Got a few pictures going up, at the tops and going back down though.  Some of these pictures will be of interest to skiers.  The view down looks over the valley of Jackson and Jackson Hole.

Jackson is a very a che'che' tourist location, with many very rich people with homes in the surrounding hills. Our favorite places there are Thomas Mangelsen's home town gallery and the National Wildlife Museum.  (It makes you feel like you've seen a lot of wildlife even if you haven't.) Both create a change in your sense of vision so that the whole world looks like a work of art when you emerge. I'm sure my photos will be much improved as a result. We'll see in Part Two.

Getting Back and Getting Ready to Move On

We have been away for about a week attending the wedding of two very good friends. It was a lovely weekend with lots of home cooked food, great people (including many pies!) and contra dancing. We also got to have a brief visit with my son Mark, who is building a yurt.

Now that we're back home, it's time to wrap up our stay here in the Flathead Valley of Montana. Boy have we loved it. Something that will make it a little easier to leave is the smoke in the atmosphere from fires in nearby valleys for the past two weeks. The crisp clean air and terrific clarity of the views is much reduced. But the weather has still been perfect. Cool at night, with warm dry days.

This campground has also been wonderful. If you're ever traveling through here, I'd recommend Eagle Nest RV Resort with no reservations. I'm not sure what makes it a "resort" but it does have a nice pool.

We'll spend the weekend getting ourselves and our vehicles ready for the drive, with a few paddles in the lake to break up the work. On Monday we head south to Dillon, MT for an overnight. Then on to Bear Lake in southwest Idaho for about a week. Then a couple of weeks in northern Utah. We will end up just outside of Zion National Park for a month.  Should be getting some interesting photos along the way.

Rafting the Flathead River

Rick and I liked this so much a few weeks ago, that we did it again. Rick took these pictures with his waterproof Sony Cybershot DDSC-TX10. (It even takes incredible HD video, but I don't think we can post those on this blog.)  You can view some great shots of our raft at this photo link on the company's website.

This is our guide Donald, from the Flathead Raft Company. He's quite a remarkable young man, who is also a ballet dancer and geology student. I'm especially partial to him as he was very quick about pulling me back into the boat after I popped out going over one of the trickier rapids.

This is the view looking back at one of the rapids. Fortunately, after a stretch of rapids, there was often a flat section to catch our breath and look around.

I'm trying to see a bald eagle, which in this shot is a tiny white speck in the upper right hand corner.

After the rapids are all over, we got out of the boat and floated/swam down the river in our life jackets, which is my favorite part.  Heaven, I want to be a fish in the Flathead River in my next life please.

My Perfect Day

Although our adventure started off with the disappointing discovery that the road around Hungry Horse Dam was closed, we headed off in another direction, and ended up in my perfect day. We took Camas Road north from West Glacier. It passes right through vast areas that were burned in forest fires, resulting in a strange landscape of grey toothpick trees. Once you get used to that initially off-putting view, it reveals the land in a new way. The new green undergrowth is beautiful, as are the mountains in the distance.

Glimpses of mountain meadows made us stop and explore. They were full of butterflies and mosquitos. 

While trying to take a picture of a butterfly, I had a surprise really close encounter with this lovely lady.

At the end of Camas Road we took a dirt road heading back toward Columbia Falls. Rick is not especially fond of dirt roads, but he was game for this one, probably because it follows the North Fork of the Flathead River, our favorite. We stopped at a picnic/fishing/camping area and dabbled along the river.  This was the best part.

 Kona got to swim. 

I got to wade in the water and take pictures of the rocks.

It was totally quiet except for the water sounds. It was just us and a few fly fisherman drifting down the river in their mini-pontoon boats. The water was icy and crystal clear. The scenery was awesome. 

No bears.

To top it all off, my son Mark called. Perfect.

Western Espresso Kiosks

Those of you from the east or the midwest may not know about these. I didn't. There are very few Starbucks here in Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming. But they have something better. Every town, even the really tiny ones, has at least one of these little espresso houses. Polson has three. And they are each one of a kind, with the owner's creative touches in evidence, from the names (like Pony Espresso), to the architecture (mini log cabins and chuck wagons), to the landscaping.  Some are little trailers. They are all drive ups, with one person working inside. They have air conditioning in the summer, and I assume they have heat in the winter. 

They all serve up their own version of the same kinds of things Starbucks mass produces, plus sometimes smoothies or ice cream or bagels or pastries. They're big on flavors in their lattes here. They can hardly hand a plain latte out their little windows without begging you to add a shot of huckleberry syrup or something. They really get espresso. Good espresso too, which makes me happy. 

There are a few other things that the rural Western communities we've encountered also really get.  Little burger joints (instead of McDonalds). Local bakeries (instead of Dunkin Donuts). Good, friendly customer service.  Clean restrooms. Whole wheat bread. Outdoor sculpture. RV's. Irrigation. Petunias and dahlias. Practical shoes. 

Latitude 48 in Whitefish, Montana

A few weeks ago I raved about a restaurant at 147 Central Ave., Whitefish, MT but neglected to include their website, so here it is: http://www.redroombasementbar.com/latitude.php

They have a bar in the basement that I can't comment on as we haven't visited it yet. We went back a few days ago for another dinner and it was just a delicious and entertaining as last time. Here's a picture of the chefs at work:

Unfortunately they all have their backs to the camera here, but you can get a sense of the kitchen space and the chefs bar. We will definitely go back again if we can.

Goofy Hikers

That's us. We are not experienced hikers and the idea of a hike is not the same as the real thing. I really wanted to take a hike in Glacier to access some of the quiet places you can't get to by the one main road (The Going to the Sun Road, which is spectacular but crowded).  So I picked out a modest hike to start our hiking experiences: the Avalanche Lake hike that starts at the Trail of the Cedars.  But by the time we got there, there was no parking at that trailhead even though it was pretty early in the day.  After driving up and down the road a bit we finally found parking at McDonald Lodge, poked around there a little and settled on a short hike up to McDonald Falls and back, called the Johns Lake Loop. The trouble was that the only ways to get from the Lodge to the Loop were either the road or the horse trail, so we wisely picked the horse trail over the road. But we couldn't even find that trail from the minimal information on the map, so we hiked the wrong way for awhile. Once we found it, it was a stinky and not very scenic couple of miles.  But we did finally get to the falls, which was a lovely sensory reward in every way.

By then I was ready to head back, but we didn't want to take the stinky trail again, so we took the road. The walk was kind of stressful as there was no shoulder to speak of and traffic was a little heavy. The sensory experience was not inspiring, as you can imagine. It was much shorter and we did get back to the where we started in one piece. All in all, a goofy hike. Not what I imagined.  If there is a next time at Glacier, we'll take the lovely shuttle to Avalanche Lake trailhead.

By the way, we did carry our bear spray with us. The bicyclers and park staff we saw commended us on our well placed, accessible bear spray. The only wildlife we saw was a hummingbird. 

No prizes

Well, there were many creative guesses for the photos, but no correct answers. The first photo was of mayflies, looking like bats or birds. The mayflies swarm along some of the shores of the lake. No wonder there are so many fish in the lake.

The second was of yaks! Turns out there are quite a few yak farms in Montana, Idaho and Canada. Native to the Tibetan Himilayas, they do well in high altitudes and cold weather.  The literature says they are smarter, cuter and more playful than cows, and hardy like buffaloes. They can be used as pack animals, and are raised for their long hair and for meat.

There are no answers to the other two mysteries. The heartworm pill never showed up and the pictures are still tilted. I assume it's the way I'm holding the camera. It does have a really comfy grip on one side and not on the other, which may cause me to tilt it.

Here is the consolation prize for us all. (Corrected somewhat in Picasa for the tilt.) Notice the tiny line of irrigation sprayers at the bottom.