Ashley, our granddaughter, is staying with us for a few days so Granny and I planned a late afternoon at the National Bison Reserve (which was established in 1908) about 50 miles north of St. Regis.
First stop was at the visitors center which closed at 4:30 in the afternoon...even though 6:00 to 8:00 pm are the best times to see the local inhabitants, weird huh?
At the visitors center is this huge collection of elk antlers. Funny thing is, that as large as this collection is, the elk was one of the few animals we did not see.
The loop to see some local life is a 19 mile dirt road (my favorite kind of road by the way) and Ashley assured me that her daddy lets her out of the car seat sometimes on dirt roads so...what the heck, average speed is like 10 miles an hour so I guess we are rule breakers!
The parks name sake was one of the first we ran into. We spotted two or three small herds through out the park.
From the very start of the scenic drive there was one animal we all wished to see, but rarely do. We could hardly hold in our excitement when Granny saw this beautiful black bear walking up the hill towards a river.
From near the top of the reserve it a grand view of nothing but Montana from west to east.
We saw plenty of deer to photograph, both mule and white tail, but this one silhouetted under the tree was too much to pass up.
We took one short hike out on the Bitterroot Trail with the dogs that overlooks miles and miles of the Bitterroots.
Yeah!!!! We made it to the edge of the cliff of a valley 2000 feet below.
Come on little doggies...a few more feet and Granny and Opa won't have to baby sit anymore...ha ha!
Besides the beautiful photo of the girls, if you look at the valley which is 1000's of feet below us it has an interesting story...read below.
9.5 cubic miles of water per hour? Are you kidding me...what an enormous amount of water flowing through the break.
Donna and I have seen golden eagles in flight a few times before but this is the first time we have been able to see one sitting so close to us in a tree.
Montana's Mission Range on the far side of the valley still had some snow patches in early August. The great dirt road below leads us to more adventures with a new life form at nearly every corner.
One of the larger racks on a white tail deer...still in velvet, that we have seen.
This female pronghorn (don't call them antelope...they are not!)
was just cruising until she saw a male eyeballing her.
This guy couldn't keep his eye off the female above...even though he already had four or five females in tow.
Saved the best for last. It was so awesome at the very end of our trip to see an owl. Granny first saw the owl and then we spent an hour or so trying to determine which kind of owl it was...turned out to be a Great Grey Owl. Owls are notoriously hard to view since they normally hunt in the late evening or nighttime but I felt this one may of been a young immature and still looking for its mom.
3 comments:
Like the geology about ancient lake, 9 cubic miles per hour is a lot of water, wonder for long that flow was. Bet the ocean level rose a bit, good info. Wonder if you can inbed a google earth link to each place or point of interest you find. Naturally I can hunt and find it myself, but it would give you something to do, with all your free time :)
Travel safe!
Joe
Wow, you guys explained what you saw that day , but reading and seeing it is a different story.
True on the Pronghorn, but so many of us call them Antelope -
Though not an antelope, it is often known colloquially in North America as the prong buck, pronghorn antelope, or simply antelope,[3] as it closely resembles the true antelopes of the Old World and fills a similar ecological niche due to convergent evolution
Post a Comment