Let it Snow

Interstate 90 at the Van Buren Street Interchange

Missoula, Montana

December 28, 2014

Whenever I tell Kevin I love him, he always asks "Why?" even though he knows this question drives me crazy.  Last Sunday, December 28th, provided a good example to show just why this man is so important to me.  He is the most generous man I know.

The day brought snow and cold temperatures, and during the night a lot of snow had fallen.  As we headed out for breakfast, Kevin asked if I thought our friend Mike would need to have his driveway plowed out.  Mike has been given a temporary position in Seeley Lake, which is about 60 miles northeast of Missoula, and one of the places in our region that gets a lot, and I mean A LOT of snow.  I gave Mike a call and found him with his mother in Missoula, but he would be heading up to Seeley in the early afternoon because he had no idea what he would find there.  We agreed that after breakfast, we would drive into Missoula, meet him, and follow him to his Seeley Lake home.  Just in case.

After breakfast, we made a quick drive home to pick up my camera (ALWAYS take your camera) and also to throw the chains into the back of the pickup.  I should note that Kevin has a big-ass plowing blade that in the winter usually lives on the front of the pickup.  He uses it to not only plow our third of a mile driveway, but also to plow out the rural fire station, the ambulance barn's parking lot, and the local Conoco station.  If you have a need for plowing, just call Kevin and he'll probably come as quickly as he can.  But with the kind of snow we were anticipating in Seeley, he knew he'd best have the tires chained as well.

The Blackfoot River near Angevine Park

No, this is not a black and white photo

December 28, 2014

What started out as a quick trip home came to a halt near the bottom of our driveway where we found our "next-door" neighbor on his knees putting chains on a Honda sedan that was half buried in the snow on the side of the road that leads to our driveway.  A young man was standing by the car, and occasionally assisting in tightening the chains.  Turns out our neighbor's son and his family had left the house to return to their home, and when they tried to turn off the driveway into the county road, they continued to slide across the road and into the snow bank on the far side.

After kibitzing for a while, during which time another neighbor showed up to lend his advice, our neighbor went back to his house to put chains on his own truck, and we headed home to throw the chains in the back of ours.  I took advantage of the time at home to load a few geocaches into my new Garmin so that I could show off my Christmas present to Mike.  As we headed back out, we found our neighbor ready to tow his son's car out of the ditch, and we waited patiently until the car was safely back on the road.  Only then did we set off for Missoula, almost an hour after we had expected to be on our way.

The roads between Plains and Missoula were wintry, to put it mildly.  As we approached the WYE where US 93 heads north after crossing Interstate 90, we began to hear radio chatter talking about a multi-car accident in the westbound lanes of the interstate.  Because of Kevin's present and past work with Search and Rescue, the Rural Fire Department and the Ambulance Corps, he has a police scanner in the truck which is always turned on.  As we listened, the Highway Patrol asked that the interstate be closed, at least westbound, because the traffic was making the situation worse by the moment.  When we first heard the call, there were two semis, a tow truck, and numerous private cars all involved in the wreck.  The Highway Patrol, understandably, wanted to minimize further damage.

Looking East from Greenough Hill

December 28, 2014

By the time we got to the WYE ourselves, a patrol car was blocking the westbound onramp and we were hearing that somehow the patrol had managed to block the interstate itself so that westbound traffic was forced to exit.  We, however, were heading east, so we drove past the westbound onramp, and took the large loop leading onto the eastbound lanes.  I also took the time to call Mike and tell him that we were, at least, much closer and should be at his place in fifteen to twenty minutes (ten miles away by the highway, but such were the conditions).  Mike suggested that conditions were getting worse by the minute, and he wasn't comfortable with us trying to follow him another fifty miles.  We agreed to leave it up to Kevin, as he was driving, and Mike agreed to wait for us to reach his house.

Streets in Missoula were a mess, but Mike lives relatively close to the Orange Street off-ramp, and we were soon parked in the alley behind his house.  Mike came out with two shopping bags full of books, four hymnals and a fourteen volume set of Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys, printed in 1916, that he had inherited from his father, former Missoula Symphony Director Joseph Henry.  Knowing how much I love playing hymns, not to mention reading, Mike thought that I would appreciate having these books, and he's absolutely right.  I'll write more about Hubbard's stories in a future post.

Back on the Interstate heading east, I really was having second thoughts about the whole venture, especially considering that we would be driving back home in the dark with the storm apparently worsening by the second now.  We were still hearing chatter about the accident on the Interstate, and in a telling comment on how dysfunctional our state government has become, the Highway Patrol had not been able to get any response from the Montana Department of Transportation concerning closing the highway.  At this point, we had been hearing all the communications for over a hour, and could confirm, if anyone were to ask, that MDT was not responding.  It was at this point I took the first picture shown above which should give you an idea of just what the weather was doing to the highway.

In my experience, if conditions in Missoula are bad, then conditions along Montana 200 as it follows the Blackfoot River are usually worse.  I was really not looking forward to the next forty miles.  You can tell just how little light there was by the lack of color in the photo of the river.  And as I noted above, that is NOT a black and white photo.  I have done nothing to subtract any color from the original shot.

Pyramid Peak and the Bob Marshall Wilderness

Seeley Lake, Montana

December 28, 2014

Fortunately, the road was not as bad as I had feared, and east of the community of Potomac, we actually began seeing some, not a lot, but some color in the sky.  Cresting Greenough Hill, we saw the sun shining on the peaks of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and that created the gorgeous winter scene shown above.  By the time we turned off MT 200 onto MT 83 for the last fourteen miles north to Seeley Lake, the road was clear.  I had hoped to get some good winter shots of Salmon Lake, but all we saw was a vast snow field where the lake normally lies.  There were a couple of ice fishing shacks up toward the north end of the lake.

Arriving at Mike's place, we found that someone had already plowed him out.  I asked if the shop needed plowing, but Mike assured me that someone would already have done that.  But, one of his co-workers was hard at work at home trying to clear his own driveway with a snow blower.  We got directions and headed over that way.

While Mike chatted with his co-worker, Kevin got busy plowing the driveway and access road.  He decided against putting on the chains, as it was getting late in the day, and without the chains, he couldn't do much about the high buildup on the sides of the road, except make them higher as he drove the plow back and forth along the road.  After six or so passes, he said he'd done about as much as he could, under the circumstances, and we picked up Mike and drove him back to his place.

Boy Scout Road, East Side of Seeley Lake

December 28, 2014

In Missoula, we stopped at El Cazador for supper.  Kevin had his normal Steak Fajitas and I had Chile Relleno a la Jarocha, which meant the that filling included shrimp and crab meat.  Very good.  I recommend it.  The streets of Missoula were, by this time, mostly ice covered, and still people drove way too fast for the conditions.  I wasn't sure if I'd be able to walk the half block back to where we had parked, but taking it slow and easy, I made it to the truck, and with Kevin driving judiciously, we made it home safe and sound.

Can you see why I love him so?  Who else would offer to drive 140 miles, one-way, on the off chance that a friend would need to have his driveway plowed?  And then, upon finding that the friend didn't need help after all, would volunteer to help a total stranger?  He's a good man, and I eagerly look forward to seeing what our lives bring in 2015.

Happy New Year!

2014 in Review, Part II

American Bison (bison bison) on the National Bison Range

Moiese, Montana

July 6, 2014

July was a month for entertaining friends at home, viewing wildlife around the state, and not an insignificant amount of in-state travel.  In addition to the bison shown above, I managed to get pictures of antelope also at the Bison Range, ducks in Missoula, and even a cow and calf moose on our own property near Plains.  My dahlias brightened the deck with their red, pink, lavendar, and yellow blossoms, and one of the large orchids given me by my friend Hank deigned to bloom--one small, solitary bloom, but one I could photograph, none-the-less.  I got some wonderful shots of Glacier National Park, taken from the backseat of Kevin's big red Ford.  Not having to drive Going-to-the-Sun, I was able to see (and capture) scenes that have always eluded me when driving that narrow, twisting road.

Canadian Pacific Railway Water Tower

Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada

August 6, 2014

August brought us another WarmShowers guest.  WarmShowers is an on-line community of bicycle tourists and people who can host them, offering them a warm shower, as it were.  We have hosted many such guests over the past couple of years as Montana Highway 200 is one of only two roads into the state from the west that don't involve crossing a mountain pass.  The day after our guest left, we took a day trip up to Cranbrook, British Columbia, the first time I had been out of the country in three years.  I was able to find a few geocaches while there, which allowed me to add a foreign "souvenir" to my geocaching statistics.  We went to Trout Creek for their annual Huckleberry Festival.  A Scottish pipe band was visiting from Sandpoint, and I recalled the day, some thirty or more years back, when our Scottish Country Dance group from Missoula performed in Trout Creek. We also traveled to Butte for one day of the Montana Folklore Festival, and spent a great day near Sheridan with friends from Butte and our gracious host Jim Schwindt.  August also brought lots of blooms in the guise of my dahlias, my hibiscus, some lovely and quite different petunias, and the patch of wildflowers that grew like crazy around the pond in our front yard.  (Ok, they're not really wild.  We bought a packet of wildflower seeds and spread them in the dirt around the pond.)

Two Medicine Lake

Glacier National Park, Montana

September 21, 2014

The beginning of September brought my dear friend Ken to visit from Fairbanks.  I've known Ken since the early 1970s when he was my first Scottish Country Dance teacher in Berkeley.  I traveled to Turkey with Ken in October, 2000, and it was great fun getting to act as his tour guide this time around.  Together we drove through the Mission Valley and around Flathead Lake, we took another day trip to Cranbrook, this time to visit the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, and we spent a couple of days in Glacier. Our garden started producing peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers, more tomatoes that we could use, actually, but we do have quite a few jars of home made tomato sauce and tomato juice in the pantry now.  Our one and only CouchSurfing guest visited from southern California, and during the week that he stayed with us, I got to play tour guide all over again, including another two days in Glacier.  We drove Going-to-the-Sun on the last day it was open for the season, and a few days later rode our bikes down the Hiawatha Trail on the last day it was open for the season.  In between, we hiked into Cabin Lake, a four mile hike (one-way) from the trailhead along the West Fork of the Thompson River.  We also made another trip to the Ross Creek Cedars.  All in all, September was a great month for being outdoors.

Bowman Lake

Glacier National Park, Montana

October 13, 2014

October started with a hike up Spring Creek, a few miles west of home, and ended with a four-day down and back trip to Phoenix, Arizona, a trip I've already recounted in this blog.  In between I turned that magic age, 65, and went on Medicare, which dropped my medical insurance costs significantly.  Another visit to the Ross Creek Cedars, and yet one more to Glacier, this time to the western side of the park, where we visited Polebridge and then Kintla and Bowman Lakes.  A week later we drove up Going-to-the Sun one last time (the road was closed at Logan Pass), and I got some beautiful photos of the fog in the McDonald Valley.  I spent more time in Glacier Park in 2014 than any other year in my life.  It's a beautiful place to visit, and I look forward to many more exploratory trips.  Having a Federal Senior Pass means that I don't have to pay entrance fees, nor do any of the people traveling with me.  Come for a visit and I'll show you the Park as well.

Loaf Shaped Como Bread, Fresh From the Oven

November 11, 2014

It's been an unusual year, weather-wise.  I still had flowers blooming on November 1st.  Most of the photos I took during November were loaves of bread I baked.  I pulled out my stone mill and ground my own wheat berries to make what has become our favorite bread, a version of Como Bread that calls for both sourdough starter and yeast, as well as both whole wheat flour and white bread flower.  I have made it free-form and in loaf pans, and have used primarily the home-ground flour with just a touch of white, as well as two-thirds white to one-third home-ground.  It doesn't seem to matter, we love this bread.  With Thanksgiving, my "Christmas" cactus bloomed yet again, but by the end of the month, the only flowers we had blooming were the occasional hibiscus which I had moved to the family room downstairs.

Mount Baldy

Sanders County, Montana

December 25, 2014

December brought snow, then rain, and on the night before Christmas, more snow.  We did have a white Christmas, at least at 12 Kay Wood Drive, if not in the town of Plains itself.  December also saw me say good-bye to my trusty 1989 Ford F-250 and the 11' Lance camper that rode on its back.  We haven't used the rig in the two plus years we've been here, so it was time for it to find a new home.  More bread, more hibiscus blooms, and an early Christmas present.  In the Spring, I had the opportunity to try a new GPS unit, and while I found it somewhat frustrating to use without proper instructions, I knew that I could learn it given time, so I asked for a Garmin Montana 650t for Christmas.  Kevin found one on-line and ordered it.  I showed up a week or so before Christmas, and after asking my Facebook friends for advice, I decided that life is short.  I was able to use the unit for several geocaching jaunts, most of which I've written about earlier in this blog.  I love it, and I'm so grateful to Kevin for buying it for me.  We have one week left in 2014, and who knows what mischief I can get into in that time.  I hope you have enjoyed spending the year with me, and I look forward to chatting with you through the new year.  Please feel free to leave any comments you might have on the blog site.  I know people are looking at the site, I see the number of visitors.  But almost no one ever leaves me any messages.  Go on, I promise I won't bite.

2014 In Review, Part I

On this, the 23rd of December 2014, it seems appropriate to write up a review of the preceding year. and since I always intersperse my words with my photos, I'm choosing to write this review on the basis of the photos I've taken over the course of the year--one photo for every month, which means that I'll divide this into two parts, each covering six months.  What follows today then is January through June.  On Friday, Boxing Day as it were, I'll box up the year and put it away.

My kitchen orchid in full bloom

January 5, 2014

January is not normally known for its floral displays, at least not in northwestern Montana.  But one of the big additions to my life this year has been my increased interest in flowers.  My mother always had house plants, and one of the hardest things for her in our move to California was giving up all her African violets which would not have been allowed into the Golden State.  I bought the orchid pictured above three years ago as a decoration for my gallery space on Missoula's First Friday opening night.  I'd never had orchids, but this one bloomed for quite some time, then, as happens, lost its blooms.  January 2014 was the second time it had bloomed in our new home, and I was glad to be able to catch its beauty in pixels.  Since then, my friend Hank gave me his two large orchids and I have great hope that I will see them bloom as well, some time soon.  In addition to the three orchids, I have had great luck with my Christmas Cactus, which bloomed three times during 2014, and I added an Orchid Cactus this spring.  This latter plant has been growing like crazy, its various shoots are now covering my coffee table, and I can't wait to see it bloom this spring.  The ones blooming in the greenhouse where I bought mine looked like a Christmas Cactus on steroids.

Gypsy in the Snow

February 24, 2014

February was a winter wonderland.  With one exception, all the days I spent camera in hand brought back pictures of snow scapes.  Snow on our driveway, snow on the mountains, snow on the trees, snow by the river.  It was like a photographic exposition of Wolfgang Borchert's story Der Viele, Viele Schnee (I cannot find an English translation of this story so I'll call it The Very Great Snowfall) which I read in my early days at Berkeley.  Borchert was writing from his experience on the Eastern (Russian) Front as a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht.  Most reviewers comment on the ubiquity of the snow and the silence it engenders, somewhere in Russia.  With five Miniature Pinschers in the house, we never have to worry about silence.  Or perhaps, silence would be a cause for worry.

St. David's Day Cactus

March 1, 2014

March brought more snow, and I have photos a plenty of dogs, deer, mountains, etc. in the snow, but by the 20th of the month, my pictures show bare ground.  I did get a wonderful shot of an Amish buggy at the Mission General Store in St. Ignatius, now one of my favorite photos, but we didn't travel much in March, other than running Kevin's bread route.  My question for the month is "What do you call a Christmas Cactus that blooms on March First?"  Perhaps a St. David's Day Cactus, as the feast day for that Welsh Saint is the first of March.

The Polson Docks on Flathead Lake with the Mission Mountains in the background

April 10, 2014

My photos for April show that grass was turning green, even if there was still considerable snow in the mountains around us.  I have pictures of Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep on the highway, white-tailed deer in the back yard, a herd of elk in a field nearby, cows just down the road, and our first bear (actually the only bear I saw all year) just off Prospect Creek Road leading to Thompson Pass.  But perhaps the most iconic photo I took in April was the one showing the heavy snowpack in the Mission Mountains while Flathead Lake was still too low for boating.  Not sure that anyone would want to be out boating in a Montana April, even if I did see one brave gent driving his convertible down Highway 200 with the top down.

Dahlia After the Rain

May 4, 2014

And what do April Showers bring if not May Flowers?  May was a glorious month.  Kevin had I don't know how many cubic yards of top soil brought in so we could plant a garden.  This was to be a vegetable garden.  My flowers stayed in pots on the deck.  I discovered Dahlias.  Never had them before, but I have them now.  Lots of different sizes, shapes, colors.  What beautiful plants--and they'll bloom all summer long if I remember to dead head them.  May also saw me back out in the wild, GPS in hand, geocaching, beginning with a meeting with other cachers out at Trout Creek.  Mother's Day took us to the Amber Bear Inn in Heron, Montana for Sunday Brunch with Doug Jones and Adar Benjamin, and more geocaching.  Yet another passion of mine, cars, was fed by a visit to Sandpoint, Idaho and their annual classic car show on the 17th.  And still more geocaching.

My 1980 Triumph TR7, Entry 5 in the Plains Day Parade

June 7, 2014

June First took me to the Ross Creek Cedars between Noxon and Troy, Montana.  I have wanted to visit this preserve for many years, and by 2014, the trip was long past due.  That may be why I visited the Cedar Grove three times over the summer.  Or it may be because the grove reminds me of the redwood forests in Northern California. June also saw my hibiscus blooming.  There are now four hibiscus plants in different colors and sizes growing in the den.  Plains Day and the Hot Springs Homesteaders' Day were festive occasions here in Sanders County.  The garden grew well.  Lots more geocaching around the area, and all in all, a good month to be alive.  In fact, I have no regrets for the first half of 2014, and while there are always things we could have done differently, I’m pleased with the way my life is going.  Come back on Friday for the second half of the year.

A Snowy Day on the River

Snowy Day in the Coeur d'Alene Range

12/18/2014

Munson Creek Trailhead, Sanders County, Montana

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

To hear Michael Bublé sing Let it snow, click here.

Wednesday turned out to be a beautiful day, bright, sunlit, not terribly cold.  The kind of day that should get you outside and active.  Especially since the forecast was for rain and/or snow for the next several days.  I debated whether to stay home and work on chores, or go out and enjoy the weather, but ended up staying home.  I know, the chores will always be there, but still...

Thursday brought snow flurries.  Nothing major, but the skies were not at all conducive to good photography and who knew what the day would bring in terms of temperature.  So of course, I loaded my camera and GPS in the car and headed out toward Thompson Falls with the intent of getting some new smiley faces on my own personal geocaching map.  (A smiley face indicates that you have found a cache.)

My first stop was about ten miles west just off Highway 200 at the trailhead for the Munson Creek trail.  There are two caches hidden here, and I had found one last May.  The second, appropriately named Munson Creek Too (sic), eluded me.  My eTrex Legend had me going in circles and no cache was to be found.  This time, with the 650t at hand, I ended up looking about 30 feet away from where I was last May, and this time there was the cache, almost in plain sight.  I sure do love this new tool.  Now it turns out that the cache owner has changed the co-ordinates, so I can't be sure just how much better the new tool is, since the old one had incorrect information.  But the important thing is that I was able to mark this cache as found.

Back in the parking lot I took a couple of pictures, including the one at the top of this post.  It wasn't a good day for photography, but I had to try.

Down the road a piece was another cache I had been unable to find.  Located at a pull off where there are lots of signs telling about Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, this cache proved elusive yet again.  Before when I tried, I was using the geocaching app on my iPhone, and my phone ran out of power before I was able to locate the cache.  This time, my 650t led me to the same general area as the iPhone, but no matter where I stood, the arrow pointed me into the center of a very large wild rose bush.  I could not see any cache standing outside the rose, and frankly, didn't care to tear myself to shreds on the thorns.  The last time someone found this cache was on my birthday, October 17th, and several people found it then.  My guess is that they were all together.  I'll try this one again sometime.

The Clark Fork River

12/18/2014

Sanders County, Montana

Equally elusive was the cache on the river side of the road named "I Found This Cache Humerus."  The cache is hidden along a semi-circular pull out that manages to be dangerous to enter and exit.  None-the-less, I pulled in and almost immediately found two piles of deer bones, one of which, I suppose, could have been a leg bone.  No cache, though.  I did get a new view of the river from the site, and, again, while conditions were not ideal, I'm pleased enough with the photo to post it here.

I drove by my next unclaimed cache, Saleesh House, as the most logical place to park, I thought, was in the middle of the construction zone where the Montana Department of Transportation is building a new bridge across the Thompson River.  I see now on the geocaching.com map, that there is probably a better place to park and access the site, so I'll try it one day soon.

A group calling themselves the Clark Fork Valley Geocachers has hidden a series of caches all along highway 200 from the Idaho line to east of Thompson Falls.  They call these the MOSBY caches, an acronym for Montana's Own Scenic BywaY.  To date there are 54 of the MOSBY caches, and yesterday I found five--the five located east of town.  The cache owners have provided very specific hints for these caches, which make them quick park and grab finds.  I did have to notify the owners that the log for number 54 was so wet that it was almost impossible to sign my name, and when I got to number 50, I parked and found the magnetic container at the base of a stop sign in full view of two Sanders County Sheriff's Department vehicles.  I just know that one of these days I will be arrested by Homeland Security officers who will have absolutely no concept of geocaching and no sense of humor.  Fortunately, this time I seem to have escaped unnoticed.

I missed the cache hidden by the grocery store on the east side of Thompson Falls, but found another down the road hidden by the same cachers.  I had never driven down this road before, and thus was able to add to my knowledge of Thompson Falls.  Back on Highway 200, I began searching for another series, this one called Summer Fun, which was placed in an effort to teach young people how to use GPS units.  What a great way to indocrinate, er mentor, young people.  I was able to find caches 1, 5, 8 and 9, but had no luck with 2, 6 or 10, caches others have not been able to find either.  I didn't try for 3, 4, or 7, at least not this time, as 4 would have me crossing the grounds of the high school and I'd rather do that on a Saturday.  Maybe tomorrow.

David Thompson Memorial

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Summer Fun 8 and 9 are near the monument to David Thompson, a location I thought would be perfect for a cache.  Indeed, someone else had that same thought and the cache located there is called Pioneer Geographer.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find this cache, and I heeded the owner's request not to dismantle the memorial in looking for it.  I talk a lot about Thompson so I'll just note that the plaque on the memorial reads:

DAVID THOMPSON

1770-1857

PIONEER GEOGRAPHER

"Koo-Koo-Sint"  The man who looked

at the stars

Built Salish House Near the Mouth

of Thompson River 1808

I missed the next four caches I sought, and my GPS was beginning to act up--probably due to a need to be fed some more electricity--so I called it a day, turned around and headed home.  I did get the cache hidden on the pedestrian bridge leading to the island in the middle of the Clark Fork near the Thompson Falls Dam.  I also got one more picture of swans on the river.  All in all it was a good day, with eleven caches added to my "Found" list, and more than a few that will still be waiting for me on another day.

Swans (yes they're there) on the River

Thompson Falls Dam

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Easter in December?

More Swans on the Flathead River

12/15/2014

East of Perma, Montana

No fife did hum nor battle drum
Did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus bell o'er the Liffey swell
Rang out through the foggy dew.
--Irish ballad 

To hear the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sing this song of the Easter Rebellion in 1916, click here.  And yes, in the course of this post I'll tie in both fog and Easter (and the Irish as well--in the form of a church built for an Irish community in, I kid you not, 1916, the year of the Easter Rebellion).

Monday morning I rose with a list of chores that I would need to get done during the day, if only to feel as if I'd accomplished something.  But even as I stripped the bed and filled the washing machine, I watched the sun light up the hills surrounding our home.  You should never pass on a sunny day when you live in a winter climate, so I threw caution to the wind, grabbed my camera and my new Garmin Montana 650t GPS unit (note how I made sure to get the Montana and not the Colorado or Alaska model), and hit the road in search of more photographic opportunites, not to mention geocaches.  Photography is, after all, the use of light (φῶς, φωτός) to write or draw (γράφειν), and this morning promised beautiful light.

I hadn't made it to Highway 200 (roughly five miles from home) before I was in a deep fog--the kind that you really hate to drive through.  But by now I was on a mission, and besides, I really did have to get to Polson to pick up new test strips for my blood glucose meter.  The fog held on through Plains, but by the time I reached Paradise, some six miles further east, I was back in sunshine and all set for a great day on the river.

The first of my pre-programmed geocaches was a couple miles east of Perma on the side of Highway 200, and I quickly added "Sword Play" to my list of finds.   A few miles further another cache was hidden, this time by a rather long pull out on the river side of the road.   The name of the cache was "Why did you stop here?" and the cache owner had suggested we come up with a reason--presumably one other than "I wanted to find your cache."  The swans were swimming (may have been seven, I didn't count them all), but I grabbed a couple as seen through the trees above.  I also grabbed the cache, and proceeded on to the next on my list.

The Mission Mountains

12/15/2014

West of Dixon, Montana

My next scheduled caches were in the town of Dixon, but before I reached the town, the Mission Mountains drew my attention, and I just had to pull off the road and take their portrait.  The Mission Mountains are one of the more spectacular ranges in our part of the country, and they never fail to impress visitors.  Well, there have been times I've brought guests to see them, only to have the mountains hide completely behind fog or clouds.  Who knew mountains could be so shy.

The Flathead River at Dixon

12/15/2014

Dixon, Montana

I tried for two different caches in Dixon, one at a fishing access by the river and the other in the town's tiny city park, but I was unsuccessful with both.  I did get a great view of the river, a view I had never before seen, and looking downstream, there was a bald eagle perched high on a tree along the river's bank.  I switched lens and took several shots of the eagle, but I'm not particularly happy with any of them.

Just east of Dixon, I turned north off MT 200 onto Highway 212 and stopped almost immediately to grab the cache hidden under the bridge spanning the Jocko River.  The cache's name is Jocko's Troll, and the clue suggested looking just where you'd expect to find a troll--well under the bridge, silly.  There was a hint suggesting that the cache was along the Jocko under a rocko, but when I found it, the cache was in plain sight, with no rock covering it at all.  After signing the log, I carefully replaced the cache where I found it, then laid a large flat rock over it.  Wouldn't want the hint to be wrong now would I?

Bald Eagle leaving its perch

12/15/2014

Old Agency (Dixon), Montana

North of the river, as I was approaching the Lake County line, I passed two bald eagles perched on power poles along the highway.  Turning around, I pulled off the road opposite the large birds and caught several shots of the two of them, before they finally flew out of range.  And yes, I know I clipped his wings in this shot, but he looks so majestic flying there that I'm using it anyway.

Turning the car back around, I stopped to grab a cache at the entrance to the National Bison Range, and at the same time grabbed another photo of the snow-capped Mission Mountains.  The one peak I wanted to capture, however, was behind some trees and I figured I'd have plenty more views of that peak before the day was out.  Famous last words.

St. Joseph's Catholic Church

12/15/2014

Moiese, Montana

South of the town of Charlo, I turned onto Dublin Gulch Road and grabbed the cache hidden at St. Joseph's Catholic Church.  I've passed this church many a time, but I'd never stopped to read the historic marker on the front of the church.  The full text for the placard can be found here, but the main items of interest are that the church was built in 1916 (I believe), had its last service in 1978, and is one of only two churches in Montana built in the Craftsman style.  See.  That's why I go geocaching.  I learn so much about the area.

After leaving the church, I relied on my GPS unit to lead me to more caches, having forgotten to grab the Montana Atlas which would show me the back roads that cross the landscape connecting the various area farms.  Some of these roads are blocked by fences, and most are dirt, but hey, I was out exploring, and I didn't have to be home until 4 or so to fix supper for Kevin.  Oops, it's already 3 and I'm an hour from home and haven't done my shopping yet.  Oh well.  It will all work out.

My main destination for today's trip was actually the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge, a 4,027 acre refuge established in 1921. I figured with the light and all, I'd be sure to catch some birds in my lens. I had programmed several caches hidden around the Refuge in my Garmin, and figured I'd catch a few more before I continued on to Polson and shopping. I did find the cache at the Stocky Memorial, a parking area dedicated to the memory of biologist Dwight "Stocky" Stockstad, who was responsible for much of the Refuge being set aside, including the 70 acres dedicated to him. I previously had no idea such a place (or person) existed.

The next two caches managed to elude me, even though my GPS told me I was right on top of them.  What I did notice was that my fingers were getting very cold, and the beautiful sunny day had disappeared into a heavy bank of fog.  I caught the Easter 2014 cache, so named for the date on which it was hidden.  The clue suggested that the cache site would tie in to the name, and sure enough, when I rolled away the rock, all was revealed.  The cache container, a camouflaged plastic Easter egg, gave me some trouble when I tried to open it, but it all worked out in the end.

Down the road another mile, I stopped at the Leon Community Center, but again, even though my GPS told me I was at ground zero, I found nothing and felt even colder than I had earlier.  At this point, I was one mile away from US Highway 93, and I decided to call it a day.

Traffic on 93 was moving very slowly, as the fog had moved in completely.  The mountains, just a couple miles distant, were hidden to the point of being invisible through the fog.  I drove north, and by the time I reached the Tribal Governmental Complex at Charlo, I was back out of the fog, but I had no desire to seek out any more caches today.  There's always tomorrow, and with the seven I did find, I passed my goal of getting 300 caches reported by the end of 2014.  (Geocaching.com now shows me with a lifetime total of 302 caches, and that will probably change before New Year's Eve.)

In Polson, I was doing my shopping when Kevin called to ask if supper would be ready by four.  Oops.  Nope.  I'm in Polson, over a hour away from home.  Kevin suggested that he would get something for himself and suggested that I do the same.  Accordingly, when I saw Bambino's Pizza and Pasta alongside Polson's main street, I stopped and had a wonderful dinner of Lasgna Fresca, with a side salad and fresh, crusty bread to dip in a balsamic/oil/herb mix.  I left the restaurant with a piece of Tiramisu in a box, and the sure knowledge that I will return to Bambino's in the near future.

Polson Bay and The Narrows, Flathead Lake

12/15/2014

Polson, Montana

Star Gazer and the Swan

Trumpeter Swans on the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

She'd her apron wrapped around her
And he took her for a swan
But oh and alas
It was she, Polly Von.

To hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing this beautiful Irish ballad, click here.

We seem to have a large population of Trumpeter Swans in our area this fall.  At least I'm assuming they are Trumpeter Swans, the largest bird native to North America.  They are known to live in both Ninepipes and Pablo National Wildlife Refuges, both of which are close to us, just to the east of Sanders County in Lake County.  They could be Tundra Swans, which are slightly smaller.  All the guides I consulted said that it is hard to tell the two species apart.  As a very amateur ornithologist, with at best an 800 mm lens set up on my camera, I was could not get a clear enough shot of the birds to be able to detect whether they have a red spot (Trumpeter) or a yellow spot (Tundra) on their bills--but apparently, even that distinction doesn't always apply.  In any event, I set out yesterday to see what I could find, since I usually see the birds on the river when Kevin is driving and I have no chance of getting a decent shot of them.  In my sightings, they range from the reservoir at Thompson Falls in the west almost to Dixon in the east, and are most commonly seen in the area around Seepay Creek, west of Perma.  That's where I saw these birds yesterday, and I crossed a barbed wire fence, trespassing on someone's land, to get the picture shown above.

In actuality, I set off yesterday to do two things I dearly love, geocaching and photography.  Last spring, I had the opportunity to use a Garmin Montana GPS unit, and while I found it somewhat frustrating--being handed an expensive and complicated tool with no instructions on how to use the thing--the more research I did, the more I felt that I had to add one of these to my own arsenal.  Accordingly, when Kevin asked what I wanted for Christmas, I had no trouble coming up with a response.  Kevin ordered one on-line and it was delivered Wednesday afternoon.  I debated whether I should open the box, or wrap it and put it under the tree, but in the end, I followed my doctor's orders (I had asked my Facebook friends what I should do and my physician said "Go definitely," so I went.)  Most of the rest of my friends who responded agreed that I should start using the thing immediately.  After all, life is short and we have no promises for tomorrow.  Right?

Pat's Knob as seen from MT Highway 28

12/11/2014

Near Plains, Montana

I got started geocaching back in 2006, while I was in California during the last year of my mother's life.  I bought a Garmin eTrex Legend and thought it would be a good tool for measuring how far I was hiking through the redwoods each week.  Turns out, the overstory in a redwood forest is generally so thick that the satellites can't penetrate the foliage, and the unit was useless for my purposes.  It was, however, ideal for searching out geocaches.  And if you don't know about geocaching, I recommend visiting geocaching.com to learn more about this passtime.  The best description I've seen is "I use multi-million dollar US Government equipment to find Tupperware containers in the woods.   What do you do for fun?"  Geocaching got its start in the Portland, Oregon area, and has grown into a world wide hobby.  At the time I started, there were over 1,500 caches hidden within a 100 mile radius of my California home, and as that home sits three miles from the Pacific Ocean, you have to figure that at least half that circle is under water.  By comparison, there were only about a hundred or so caches within 100 miles of Missoula, Montana in 2006.   To show how much the hobby has grown, there are now 6,178 caches within 100 miles of Plains, Montana.  I don't want to do the math.  You can see the exponential growth for yourself.  Suffice it to say that there are plenty to keep me busy for the rest of my life, and that's without leaving home.  Caches are hidden world-wide from Afghanistan (250) to Zimbabwe (188), and recently a cache was taken into space and placed in the Russian section of the International Space Station.  I don't think I'll be finding that one any time soon.

The Flathead River at Koo-Koo-Sint Fishing Access

12/11/2014

Near Paradise, Montana

I enjoy combining geocaching with photography, and the camera around my neck is a good excuse for me to be out in the open, searching around for something hidden.  Who knows, maybe I just lost my lens cap and that's why I'm down on the ground digging around the base of a tree.  It's handy to have such an excuse because you really want to protect the cache from "muggles," as non-cachers are known--people who might move or even destroy a cache should they become aware of its existence.

Armed with my Christmas present, I set off yesterday morning in search of a couple of caches that had been eluding me.  I figured it would be a good test to see just how much better the Montana 650t is over my old eTrex Legend.  And oh my, I have to say I fell in love with the new toy, er tool.  Workers at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital have placed four caches on the hospital grounds, and I had been unable to find two.  (I hadn't even attempted the other two.)  With my new unit in hand, I drove to the site of the first cache, and walked right to the cache.  I can't explain why I was unable to find it before as it seemed very obvious this time.  What I do know is that using my eTrex Legend, the coordinates appeared to be all over the place, and this time, with the Montana 650t, they stayed fixed in one location--the place where the cache was hidden.

Well now, if that was so easy, what about finding another cache that had successfully resisted my efforts.  Montana Highway 28 runs 47 miles from Plains at the southwest end to Elmo at the northeast.  There are 19 geocaches along that route--all but one right alongside the highway.  I had previously found 16 of the caches, avoiding the one that was two miles off the highway and not attempting one where major construction was being done at the time.  But one cache, appropriately called Spam, had stayed hidden even though I went back three times, and even took Kevin with me to try to find the darned thing.  I used my eTrex Legend.  I used the geocaching app on my iPhone.  I knew I was in the right area, but again, the co-ordinates were all over the place.  I could stand in one spot and be told that I was 4 feet from the cache, but if I circled around and came back to that same location, I would see that I was now 28 feet from the cache.  Frustrating doesn't begin to describe the situation.  Yesterday, with my Montana 650t, I found the cache--if not immediately, then pretty quickly.  And in fact, the new GPS led me directly to the cache.  It's my fault if I didn't see it right away.

The Perma Pictographs

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

Driving back toward Plains, I stopped at the site where construction had stymied me last Spring, and quickly found the diabolically clever cache hidden there.  I also took the first of yesterday's photos, the view of Pat's Knob shown above.  Pat's Knob is the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alene range of the Bitterroot Mountains, and I have written about it and my trips up the mountain several times in the past.  John W. Patrick was one of the earliest white settlers in the Plains area, and the Plains Chamber of Commerce explains the mountain's name on their website.

After a quick lunch at Subway, I headed east on Montana 200 in an attempt to find more of the caches hidden in this area.  The first place I stopped was at the Koo-koo-sint Fishing Access on the Flathead River.  David Thompson is the most important person in the northwest you've never heard of.  At least that's what I believe.  Thompson is the man the British government sent out to beat Lewis and Clark and thus solidify Great Britain's claims to the Oregon Country.  He didn't succeed, but in the attempt, he did more to map the Northwest than anyone else.  His name lives on in Sanders County through the Thompson River, the Little Thompson River, the Thompson Lakes, and of course the Sanders County Seat, Thompson Falls.  Because of his habit of going out at night, sextant in hand, the Salish people living in this area called him Koo-koo-sint, or Star Gazer.  Two locations in Sanders County bear the Salish name, the other being a hiking trail between Plains and Thompson Falls.  Thompson has become one of my heroes, and I heartily recommend that you learn everything you can about him.

Just east of the fishing access, Highway 200 enters the Flathead Indian Reservation.  This is the only place you can cross into the Reservation without seeing a sign so stating.  According to a friend and former Tribal Chair, James Steele Jr., the tribe got tired of constantly replacing the sign and no longer notes the change in jurisdiction.  I picked up a couple more caches along Highway 200, one of which was at a beautiful spot on the north side of the river, west of Perma.  This is a sacred site for the people of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and one should approach it with reverence.  Unfortunately, that has not always been the response of visitors to the Perma Pictographs, and many of the scenes have been destroyed.  I have to admit, that I was unable to see any writing on the rock walls, but the location itself is so beautiful and so peaceful, that I can see many returns in the future.

All told, I added seven new caches to my list of those found, bringing me to a lifetime total of 295 finds.  My goal for 2014 is to pass 300.  With only five to go, and with this great tool now at my disposal, I don't think that will be a problem.

Camas Creek entering the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Perma, Montana

By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Day 4

White Pine County Courthouse

10/28/2014

Ely, Nevada

On this, our last day on the road, only the first 138 miles were new territory to me.  Once we got to Wells, Nevada, the rest of the way home would all be on familiar roads.  But first, we had to get out of Ely.  It was a cold morning, and we quickly packed up the truck and headed to breakfast.  Once again, Yelp let us down, as the spot that seemed most promising turned out to be a major disappointment.  Breakfast was ok, but not great, and the waitress and the cook seemed to be more concerned with catching up on gossip rather than tending to their customers.  A quick stop in front of the courthouse allowed me to get the photo I should have taken the night before when the building was beautifully lit, but hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

On the way out of town, I checked the temperature.  According to the truck it was 19 degrees outside, the coldest temperature we had seen since the previous Spring.  We headed east a ways on US 50, then turned north to stay on US 93 for most of the rest of the way home.

I have always been fascinated by the Nevada landscape, mostly bare, with lots of mountains, and White Pine County proved no different.  We crossed into Elko County, the northeastern corner of Nevada, without noticing any change and in time reached Wells, crossing under I-80 and heading on north toward Idaho and home.

U.S. Highway 93 in Southern Elko County

10/28/2014

Elko County, Nevada

The first town you come to in Idaho is Twin Falls, and all I can say is that this town sure has grown since the last time I went through it in 1997.  Between 1990 and 2000, the city's population increased 25% and another 28% during the next decade.  The 2010 Census showed 44,125 people living in Twin Falls--a town I thought had around 15,000.  I'm not sure just what led to such an increase, but I know that Chobani's Greek Yogurt plant isn't the only reason, even if the company's largest plant is in Twin Falls.  (Greek Yogurt from Idaho?  Who knew?)

Twin Falls sits on the Snake River whose canyon Evel Knievel attempted to jump back in 1974.  He didn't succeed, but we had no problem driving across the canyon on a highway bridge.  Didn't even notice any particularly high winds, Knievel's nemesis.

Snake River Canyon (and Bridge)

10/28/2014

Twin Falls, Idaho

We drove through Jerome County without stopping for me to grab the courthouse in the county seat, also called Jerome, and soon we were in Lincoln County.  Shoshone is the seat of Lincoln County, and while there, I did make Kevin stop so I could photograph the United Methodist Church and the Lincoln County Courthouse.

North of Lincoln County, we entered Blaine County which has to be one of the most oddly shaped counties in the United States.  It actually looks like some gerrymandered election district, with a narrow strip of land dropping south from the main body of the county.  Blaine County is where Sun Valley is located, as well as Ketchum where Ernest Hemingway committed suicide.  Those towns are on (or near) Idaho highway 75, which used to be US 93.  We wouldn't be going that way.  Instead we turned northeast toward Arco and entered Butte County.

Craters of the Moon National Monument is a lava field that covers 618 square miles and parts of five Idaho counties.  It's one of my favorite places to photograph, but I haven't been there in years.  This trip was no different, in that we drove right on by without stopping at the visitor's center or even along the road.  Just to give you an idea of the extent, Craters of the Moon is over half the size of the state of Rhode Island (admittedly a small state), or one-fifth larger than the city of Los Angeles.  It covers a lot of ground, that is.  Looking at the hardened lava, it struck me as miraculous that anyone was ever able to get a wagon train across this landscape, and yet Goodale's Cutoff allowed travelers on the Oregon Trail to do just that.

Craters of the Moon

10/28/2014

Butte County, Idaho

On the northeastern edge of the lava flow sits the town of Arco, seat of Butte County.  Arco prides itself on being the first community in the world to have its electricity supplied by nuclear power.  The Idaho National Laboratory, successor to that first generator, still provides most of the work for the people of Arco.  We stopped for lunch in Arco, and made a decision about the rest of our way home.  Instead of heading north on US 93, a road that twists and turns through the Sawtooth Mountains, and one we had both taken many times, we would drive east on ID 33 then ID 22 and catch I-15 at Dubois, the seat of Clark County.

Dubois has a warm spot in my heart because it is home to the US Sheep Experiment Station, one of whose projects is a scientific study of why sheep are homosexual.  Now before you get your panties in a twist, think of it this way.  If you were a sheep rancher, would you be interested in buying an expensive ram, only to find that he's only interested in other rams?  Not ewes?  I didn't think so.  Your tax dollars at work, and fine work it is.

The Pioneer Mountains

10/28/2014

Beaverhead County, Montana

From Dubois, we got on I-15, followed it to just west of Butte, where we turned west on I-90, then got back on 93 at the Wye west of Missoula.  Thirty miles later, we turned west on MT 200 and drove the last 45 miles home.  I was so glad to see our home still standing and find the kids happy and healthy, if a bit put out with us for leaving them alone for four days.