M O N T A N A - Day 5 (September 30)

Day 5 – Friday, September 30

Jim and Kit left for Bozeman early in the morning, so Shawna and I went to into Ennis for breakfast, then drove what’s called the Varney Road in the hopes of seeing sandhill cranes. We did see a couple at quite a distance, and managed to get a few photos of pronghorns. Wildlife viewing opportunities haven’t been abundant on this trip.

We saw this buck right after leaving Jim's driveway.

And he'd gathered a bunch of does.

This is the Varney Bridge over the Madison River.

Looking south-southeast from the Varney Bridge.

Sphinx Mountain

We got back to Jim and Kit’s a few minutes before they returned from Bozeman and settled in for a visit. In a short time, they received a call that their horse, Kato, was out. Catching Kato was no problem, but Jim needed to figure out why or how he got out. He quickly saw that a vehicle had run off the road and broken two sections of his jack fence.

Here are the tracks of the vehicle that missed the curve near Jim and Kit's  driveway.

The jack leg on the ground collected the vehicle's sideview mirror.

Another view of the damage.

Broken glass from one of the passenger side windows.

The exit path - it sure looks like the vehicle drove over these rocks - and we found scrapings on the biggest one.

Sphinx Mountain. Sigh...........

Sphinx as the sun is setting. 

Jim and Kit fixed fried rice and fresh walleye (amazing breading of Italian breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese) for supper, and we packed up the car to prepare for our two-day, uneventful (well almost uneventful) and hot drive home.

This is Sphinx at sunrise on Saturday, Oct. 1. Heavy sigh......

That's all, folks! Thanks for visiting!

On Sunday or Monday, we'll return to "regular programming," as I post photos from Rachel and John's October 8 wedding. 

M O N T A N A - Day 4 (September 29)

Today was another travel day, from Whitefish to Ennis, where our brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Kit, live. We planned just one stop – in Garnet Ghost Town. We drove through the Swan Valley on Highway 83, and stopped several times along the way at scenic turnouts. It was a beautiful, leisurely drive.

Swan River

Swan River

Summit Lake

Upon arrival in Garnet, we learned the town had closed for the season three days prior. This meant we wouldn’t be able to go into any of the buildings, but we could still walk around a get a small sense of what life might have been like in the town’s heyday, some 100 years earlier.

An overlook on the path leading to Garnet

On the trail to the mines

 After walking around the town, we felt we were making good time and could afford to take a small (20 minute) interpretive hike to the gold mining area of Garnet. About an hour and a half later, we made our way back to the parking lot, quenched our parched throats with a couple of bottles of water (each!), and headed south, in the direction of I-90.

The people who tried to eke out a living here left many scars on the landscape.

I’d visited Garnet before (when I had a Ford Explorer). I remembered a bad road, but our drive in (approaching from the north) was pleasant – a nice, wide road that started out paved, then turned to gravel. I assumed they’d improved the road since my earlier visit. There’s that word – ASSUME.

We’d gone maybe a hundred yards or so of the 12-mile descent out of Garnet, and saw a sign that said “I-90.” (How could we be off course – there was no other road.) Then we saw a sign that said something about narrow…limited turn outs…unimproved something… And it was too late to turn around.

So I started swearing. Every time we hit a jarring bump, my shoulder belt cinched tighter, chafing the left side of my neck. The sign should have said, “Only accessible by 4-wheel drive.” It should have said, “I’d go back if I were you.” It should have said, “You’re nuts!” or “I hope you liked your Nissan Altima.” I’m pretty sure we were on the original wagon trail that headed into that godforsaken place. Actually, I’m positive we were.

At one point the entire width of the road was submerged underwater. There was no stopping, so we crawled through without scraping bottom on anything. At several points, we rode the ridges instead of grooves, and still scraped bottom. At one of the two turnouts on the 12-mile stretch, we encountered a pickup coming up the hill. Talk about divine intervention!

On the bottom of this trail, it opened into a wide, circular gravel pit, and we encountered a semi pulling doubles. Here’s where we ran into unwanted choices. I opted to continue south. The sign said “Bearmouth, 7 miles.” It wasn’t on the map. There were no more signs for I-90, and the mile markers we’d seen previously went away. Instead, big blue numbers were spray-painted on trees. We hoped we were on the right road, and lucked out.

It was on this stretch we saw a big cat, most likely a bobcat, cross the road several yards in front of us. That was a first for both of us.

Eventually we made it to the interstate, and we headed east to Three Forks, then south to Ennis, arriving at Jim and Kit’s well after dark, where the yips and howls of coyotes greeted us.

M O N T A N A - Day 3 (Wednesday, Sept. 28)

Day 3 – September 28

Today we headed west to Kootenai Falls, near Troy, and to the Ross Creek Cedars, near the Idaho border. I’d been to both these places before and was eager to share them with Shawna. 

We passed through Kalispell on Highway 2, and I saw a sign for a camera shop. I’d been feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t have a circular polarizer for my lenses (a 70-200L, and a 24-105L, both 77mm). YAY – the shop had just what I was looking for, and at 20 percent off! In chatting with the owner, I learned he was from Hutchinson, MN, and had managed two Century Camera stores in the Twin Cities area before he and his wife decided to move west – some 31 years ago. He commented on my nice camera rig, and I told him I have the world’s best boyfriend. :)

Kootenai Falls is a county park near Troy, Montana. It’s just off Highway 2, and features class I-IV rapids. Because it’s late season, water volume is down, and I was able to walk around on rocks that were underwater the last time I was there. We also walked across the swinging bridge, suspended high over the river, and offering amazing views both east and west.

I love waterfalls.

Kootenai Falls runs for about a tenth of a mile, and must have 40 or 50 waterfalls in many various widths and heights. Shooting them on this day was difficult because of when we were there (between 10 and 2), and because of the bright overhead sunshine. My brand new polarizer helped to cut some of the bright light, and a 2-stop neutral density filter also came in handy to slow down this fast-moving white water.

The sign near this rock described this as ripple rock, and has something to do with
glaciers and water during the last ice age.

If you look closely, you can see the swinging bridge spanning the river. 

From there we headed to the Ross Creek Cedars. This is a small, old-growth cedar forest that has trees with diameters of up to 12 feet. The trail through the cedars is well-marked, and many signs are posted explaining the life cycle of the trees, and the many varieties of plants and animals that are dependent on them.

Finally - a photo with people. This is Shawna and me in front of one of the impressive cedars.

I talked Shawna into standing in this patch of "devil's club" to give an idea of just how big these leaves are! 

Ross Creek was, for the most part, dried up, and someone took the time to stack dozens of rocks.

On the way back to the motel, we encountered a freshly killed bear on Highway 2. The road was flat and straight, and had wide shoulders. The tree line was many yards away on both sides of the road, so I have a hard time grasping why this animal was hit. It wouldn’t have bolted out of nowhere. Someone wasn’t paying close enough attention.

DAY 2 - September 27

Welcome back to Day 2 of our vacation. Since we didn’t make our drive in on the Sun Road from the east side on Monday, we decided on that for Tuesday morning. Mother Nature had other plans, but we were blissfully unaware.

We left the Cheap Sleep Motel, donned our sunglasses, and headed toward the park. We drove Highway 2 around the southern perimeter, and returned to the Two Medicine area, hoping to get better photos of Two Medicine Lake with the sun at a different angle. We stopped a few times along the way, marveling at the bright blue skies and beautiful fall colors.

Holy cow for wind!! I mean, we knew it was windy, but this was a lean-in-to-it-or-get-pushed-backward wind. Even though I shot from a tripod, most of my pictures show vibration jitters. (I need a beefier tripod.) We managed a few shots in the Two Medicine area (with cameras on shutter priority, at 1/500 sec.), then headed to the St. Mary park entrance and the Going to the Sun Road, with intentions of  heading up to Logan Pass, where the road construction would again force us to turn around.

Two Medicine Lake - high winds and clouds forecasting our future photography efforts

According to "Plants of Waterton-Glacier National Parks" this is Cascade Mountain Ash.

What we noticed right away were cloudy skies ahead, although it was sunny at the visitor center. I bought t-shirts and postcards for my grandkids (another off season plus/minus – souvenirs are marked down/selections are iffy), and we came out to sunny skies and light rain being blown in from the distant clouds. We headed west on the Sun Road where the sunny skies abruptly ended, and a steady rain began. We drove in only a few miles, to the iconic Wild Goose Island turnout. Temps were now in the upper 40’s, and the rain was non-stop. Picture making wasn’t going to happen here, so we turned around and headed east – into blue skies.

Wild Goose Island - our only shot from the Sun Road

At the St. Mary entrance, we headed north toward Babb and the Many Glacier area. Again, as soon as we were inside park boundaries, we hit rain. But for every storm, God gives us a rainbow, and a fine one it was :)

Behind us - steady rain 

Before us - a feast for the eyes

This is the "rainshine" we dealt with on the edge of the park.

Playing with my fisheye lens

Another image of the "rainshine" with the fisheye lens - this is unedited.

We again turned around and decided to head to West Glacier in the hopes of getting out of the rain, and also hoping for the opportunity to get decent sunset photos. The weather on the return drive was cloudy, and Highway 2 was wet. About 25 miles east of West Glacier, we were second or third on the scene of a rollover accident. An eastbound SUV lost control on a sharp curve, slammed into cement barricades on the west bound side, spun out, and flipped. Both occupants were out of the vehicle and appeared uninjured. We stopped to offer help, but volunteers were covering traffic in both directions. None of us had cell signals, so we continued west, and when we finally picked up a signal (near West Glacier), we saw two emergency vehicles heading east, so we knew help was on the way. 

Grateful no one was hurt.

Our hunch with the weather was right on, so we went to Five Lake, near the town of Hungry Horse, and took sunset pictures on a glass-calm lake. We met two photographers (a husband and wife team). They were talking to a young man who was on the Sun Road construction crew. He said work on the Sun Road had been halted earlier in the day due to high winds. Get this – a gust of 94 mph was recorded at Logan Pass! 

This is a photo merge of four portrait (vertical) images of Five Lake.
It spans nearly 40 inches, so this doesn't do it justice.