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.

Missoula

6/6/2007
It was a rainy day today so we decided to go and take the Smoke Jumpers School tour. The school was only a few miles from our campground but a little difficult to find. We found out latter that all the signs directing you to the school were for coming from the other direction. The tour is free and last about an hour. There is a visitor's center with a short video and some displays. The tour guide first explains the type of clothing the jumpers wear. She then takes you to another building were they are actually making and repairing their own equipment. All Smoke Jumpers must learn to sew. They have a room full of commercial sewing machines. When we were there, there were two people working on making and repairing some equipment. The next room was the one below.
This is where they hang the parachutes to straighten them out to get ready to fold.

They use different color chutes for different things. The blue chutes are the primary shoot. The red chutes are the reserve chutes in case the primary shoot doesn't open. They didn't have any red chutes hanging there today.

This young lady is a Smoke Jumper and a licensed rigger. You must be licensed to pack a chute. She looks too small to pass the strenuous training they much go through to be a Smoke Jumper, but apparently she is strong enough to make it. One of the requirements is to walk 3 miles with an 80 pound backpack and do it in 90 minutes. There are other requirements that are just as demanding. Thirteen percent of the Smoke Jumpers are women.

In this view she is just starting to pack the chute. After the tour it was still raining so we drove down town to get some information on the bike trails in the area. We went to the office of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Department. It was located in the back corner on the second floor of the City Hall. He showed us on a large map where all the trails were in Missoula and gave us a small copy of the map. He also gave us a pamphlet about a trail that is about 80 miles from Missoula. It's called the Hiawatha and is a Rail to Trail bike trail. It is suppose to be one of the most beautiful in the country. It is 13 miles long, has some very high tressels on it and some tunnels, one of which is 1.6 miles long. There is a shuttle service to take you back to your car. The trail cost $9.00 to ride and $9.00 for the shuttle service. It will be the first time we have ever paid to ride a trail. Since it was still raining we went back to the motorhome and had lunch. Latter we found the Wal-mart and got some supplies. Tomorrow is suppose to be another rainy day so we are going to drive up to the National Bison Range. It's about 40 miles north of here on route 93 and 200. Route 93 is the route we will take to go to Glacier so it will give us a chance to check out the road.

Idaho, 6/4-5/2007

6/4/2007
We left Salt Lake City this morning heading for Glacier National Park. We knew it was too far to make in one day, 625 miles, so we had planned on stopping at the Wal-mart in Blackfoot, Id. When we stop at the Wal-mart in Blackfoot the parking lot was so small and crowded we just got some groceries and left. On the way north on route 15 just a little way past Pocatello, Id. we stopped at this rest area. It had a visitors center, rest rooms and this informative walkway behind the visitor center.

View of some of walkways on this informative trail about the lava field. It explained that this lava field was not a result of a volcanic eruption but just from a crack in the earth and the lava oozing out.

The lava rock.

Some of the lava looked like it was a collapsed lava tube. From there we drove to the Wal-mart in Idaho Falls. It had a much bigger parking lot, in fact there was already a motorhome there parked for the night. We parked in front of them. I found out where the post office was and drove a few miles into town to mail some packages. The directions I got were great and very easy to follow the only trouble was that the post offices aren't marked very well. I drove done the correct street, Capital, but never saw the post office. When turning around to go back down Capitol, I got turn around, which I never use to do in my younger days. By the way Capitol is a one way street. Believe it or not I did ask for directions and finally found the post office and my way back to the motorhome. It was still about 400 miles to Glacier so we planned to stop in Missoula, Mt. the next day for a day or two. I knew they had a Smoke Jumper's school there that I wanted to see. I had read about it when I was doing my thesis on forest fires in Pennsylvania. I called ahead and made reservations for two days at Jim and Mary's campground in Missoula.

6/5/2007

We left early Tuesday morning because we had about 325 miles to go and we usually don't drive that far in one day any more. On the way to Missoula we stopped at a small town called Spencer which is just a little way south of the Montana boarder in Idaho. The main attraction here is opals. There are opal mines in the area and of course a lot of places that sell opal jewelry.

They had some really beautiful stuff but expensive. Peggy however couldn't resist and bought a pair of earrings. When we got to Missoula we found our campground and registered in. It is a nice neat campground with lots of trees. Unfortunately trees are a no, no to those of us with satellites. How ever the gentleman that made the reservation the night before had asked me if we had satellite, so he had assigned us a site with a clear view to the southern sky.