Friday, June 8, 2007

National Bison Range

6/7/2007

It was a great drive up to the National Bison Range. The range is located on a Flathead reservation but operated by the Federal Government. Right now there is a controversy going on, the Indians want the control turned over to them. So far the federal government has refused. There is a nice visitor center with a short video and a stuffed buffalo as you come in the door, also displays about the range. As you can see from the sign next year they will be celebrating their 100 year anniversary. The road through the park is 19 miles long on well maintained gravel. It is very curvy, no guard rails and steep with some slopes over 10%. Since we drove very slowly through the park it wasn't bad at all. Peggy never got scared once. :-) The weather was great, pleasant with a cloud cover but none of the rain they had predicted.

Sign at the Visitor Center.

Stack of antlers in the visitor center parking lot. Reminds me of the arch of Elk antlers in Jackson Hole.

View of the Flathead River and the valley below as we went up the mountain to start the tour.

This is called Common Toadflax and is very prolific on the range. Looks a lot like the butter and eggs flower at home or a snap dragon.

Wild Geranium.

Harebell, most of these flower name we are pretty sure of but please if anyone knows different let us know. We also saw a lot of Wild Rose plants. Their flowers were almost gone and not very pretty at this stage.

The Buffalo or Bison which ever you prefer are so use to cars that when a heard moves it may block a road for hours. They keep the herd at the carrying capacity of the range which is about 500. The number and method of reducing the herd is the same here as it was on Antelope Island, UT.

As you can see they also have herds of Antelope on the range as well as deer, bears and they are a bird sanctuary. We could hear many birds singing beautiful tunes. We really enjoyed the ride through the range and enjoyed the wild flowers as much as the animals. We didn't see any deer but did see the damage they did to the trees around the visitor center. I always thought it would be fun to travel and see this great and beautiful country but I had no idea how wonderful it would be. Life is great just not long enough to see all of God's beautiful creations. I have always felt I was in a cathedral when I was in the forest.

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