WEST KOOTENAI-AMISH COUNTRY

Things were pretty tranquil around the ranch this week. The usual visits by the whitetail. I have seen a couple of mule deer and that is a sure sign that fall is in the air.

WHITETAIL BUCK


WHITETAIL BUCK

SUNSET

The Tobacco Valley is divided by Lake Koocanusa. On the west side is what is called the West Kootenai. It's mostly Kootenai National Forest but there is an Amish settlement there. We decided to take a drive over in that direction to see what we might find.

SULLIVAN CREEK

On the way we stopped at Sullivan Creek which is still running good despite the lateness of the season.

AMISH BARN


AMISH BARN

The area is quite picturesque sporting bucolic and pastoral (that's redundant) scenes. Unfortunately, this day was pretty much cloudless and uninteresting from a photographic pint of view. I really am not a fan of summer when it comes to photography. Photography is all about light and summertime offers the least interesting light in my opinion. Although, I'm sure plenty would argue that point.


MONTANA WOODWORKS


MONTANA WOODWORKS

For quite some time I have been wanting to replace the stool I use in my mudroom to put my boots on. The one I have been using is over forty years old and about to collapse. I have looked everywhere for a replacement but all I could find were bar stools.

I figured since I was in the neighborhood I would stop in at Montana Woodworks and have them just make me one. It's quite handy to have them close by. They make really lovely log furniture and you may have seen it at Costco. They ship all over the country.

FUNGI


FUNGI

After leaving the village we took a hike up the Lower Sullivan Creek Trail. I was hoping it would take us along the creek but it took us straight up the mountain. There was very little to shoot. There were lots of signs of Fall though. Won't be long now.

KOTY BEAR

©KINSEY BARNARD PHOTOGRAPHY

GLACIER NATIOANL PARK - POLEBRIDGE & MISC.

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! My oldest and dearest friend and her husband came to call and we had a great time. If laughter is the best medicine (I believe it is) then I'll be in very good shape for quite some while.

GRIZ BIZ

I couldn't resist showing you this photo. The other day whilst I was out working in my forest I came upon this enormous old log that was just shredded. Bears tear up old logs and stumps mining for ants and grubs. The picture doesn't do justice to how impressively the bear ripped this log open. There is a grizzly working the area so I'm thinking that's whose handy work this was.

BABY ROBINS

Spring and summer are such grand times to experience new life and it is everywhere, even in my rain gutters!

WOOD LILY

And, of course, the wildflowers continue to do there thing. Each month new entries become visible. The daisies are particularly lovely this year, planting themselves in perfect places to make it look as though I had been gardening.

For a very long time I have wanted to go to Polebridge. Can't say why really except that I thought it might be interesting. You can access this remote little place either through Ten Lakes Scenic Area or the west entrance of Glacier Park. The Ten Lakes way is a little rugged so we went down to the west entrance. The road to Polebridge is dirt most of the way but it is a beautiful if dusty drive. The funny thing is the drive was over a hundred miles to Polebridge but as the crow flies it is probably less than forty from where I live.

POPPIES & POLEBRIDGE

Looking at a map all these years I had thought that Polebridge and the two lakes up there, Kintla and Bowman, were outside the park which made them great candidates for exploration. The bad news was that whilst Polebridge is outside the park the lakes are not. There is a park entrance right at Polebridge.

KINTLA LAKE AT THE KINTLA CREEK OUTLET

We headed for Kintla Lake first as it was the furthest, some fifteen miles that takes well over an hour to negotiate. I had it so firmly entrenched in my mind that this lake was outside the park that when we got there I proceeded to strap on my .357 and get Koty ready to hike. Both of these things are highly illegal in the National Parks. It wasn't until I reached the trailhead and was brought up short by the info sign that I realized the error of my ways. My little sister Mona was with us on this trip and she thought I had taken leave of my senses.

KINTLA LAKE

So much for exploring Kintla or Bowman. By the time we got back down the road to the Bowman turnoff we decided to skip Bowman in favor of our stomachs. There is basically nothing in Polebridge except the Polebridge Mercantile. But, that's all we needed as the mercantile is also a bakery!

MONA & FRIEND LUNCHING AT THE POLEBRIDGE MERCANTILE

We both had a warm pork sandwich that was so, so. But, we also bought some pastries that were to die for. The one I chose had peanuts and hucklberries, two of my all time favorites. When I first moved to Montana I kept hearing people talk about huckleberries like they were manna from heaven. I thought "Yeah, yeah, huckleberries big deal." That was until I tasted them. They really are manna from heaven. Even Koty will eat them.

After lunch we headed north to the border crossing which is closed as you can see from the photo. It's about another 15-17 miles from Polebridge. This crossing is closed to entry but it is well patrolled and several new corrals suggest there is going to be mounted border patrolling this season. Over the years that I have lived here I have seen the guarding of the Canadian Border become stronger and stronger.

BORDER CROSSING

The section of road between Polebridge and the border is where I should have been. It's all National Forest and open to exploring with your best friend. I'll come back and do that one day.

It's been a great couple of weeks, as usual. We hope you've been enjoying your summer too!

©Kinsey Barnard Photography

UPPER WHITEFISH LAKE - MONTANA

I worked so hard this week with the chainsaw I have gotten sore callouses on both my hands. I decided we had to get out of our own forest and into another so we made an exploration of Upper Whitefish Lake in the Stillwater State Forest. The weather turned on us again and we went from beauty mid-seventies to the forties and fifties over night. It snowed at the higher elevations. We have certainly had the whacky weather this spring.

UPPER WHITEFISH ROAD

You can get to the Upper Whitefish two ways, out of Stryker on the Marston Lookout road or out of Olney. The Marston Lookout way is a little more rugged, the Olney route a pretty good and level dirt road. In fact it's quite a pleasant drive.

Wildflowers are beginning to appear and along this road I spied one of my favorites...

BEARGRASS

I've yet to run across the reason why it is called beargrass.

It's about thirteen and a half miles in to the lake. The road winds through beautiful meadows with distant views of the Whitefish Range. If one wanted to catch site of moose this swampy meadow is a moose's delight. Alpine meadows, you gotta love 'em.

STILLWATR FOREST & THE WHITEFISH RANGE

I love water and one of the great things about spring in the Rockies is that there is lots of water running every where when the snow begins to melt. I really enjoy trying to capture water in motion. It has so much mood and character. The below images were shot right along the road. Nothing still about this water.

STILLWATER STATE FOREST

STILLWATER STATE FOREST

STILLWATER STATE FOREST

There was quite a bit of evidence that the windstorm which had done so much damage to my forest had hit this area as well. There were downed trees everywhere. I am always expecting to get trapped one day, whilst traveling these back roads, by a tree which has fallen after me. I carry a hand saw but it wouldn't make a dent in some of the bruisers that fall across the road. All you can do when that happens is wait until someone with a bigger saw comes along. The forest service is pretty good about patrolling the roads to keep them clear.

FALLEN TREE ON UPPER WHITEFISH LAKE ROAD

By now you are probably wondering if I am ever going to show you a picture of the bloody lake.

UPPER WHITEFISH LAKE

According to the sign the lake is 100 acres and is at an altitude of approximately 4,400 ft. There are a number of campsites and it looked like a pretty popular spot for fishing, kayaking and canoeing. The road continues on past the lake and looked to b worthy of further exploration. But, the weather was beginning to close in again so we decide not to venture forth.

We had a great week and hope you did too!

Kinsey & Koty

©Kinsey Barnard Photography

Antelope Island & The Great Salt Lake

This morning we took a drive out to Antelope Island State Park. To get there you cross a causeway that should be surrounded by water but it wasn’t today. You had to go nearly three miles out before you hit water. The ranger at the park entrance said that the lake was at historic low levels. They aren’t sure why as the snow pack last year was pretty good. You can’t fool Mother Nature but she sure as heck can fool you. But, when all is said and done, Mother Nature will let you know how it’s going to be. Scientists amuse me with all their figuring.

The Great Salt Lake is the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi. It is 75 miles long and 28 miles wide covering 1,700 square miles. It’s a big’un! The island was originally a private ranch. The Fielding Garr Ranch was settled in the mid 1800’s and remained in private hands until it was sold to the state in the 80’s. The ranch/island is approximately 28,000 acres. Now that’s my idea of a proper ranch. The wildlife here consists of antelope (prong horn), mule deer, big horn sheep and buffalo. We did see some buffalo and some pronghorn way off on a ridge. Other than that no animals around that we saw. Here’s the Wiki on it.

I have found buffalo particularly difficult to photograph. The one below I was just playing around with. I have only one shot of a buffalo that I think captures some of the awesomeness of this elegant creature. Buffalo March

We had a great morning walk and Antelope Island is certainly worth the price of admission, $9.00.

Koty barfed in the back seat. His tummy is still upset darn it.

Below are a few photos of what we saw.









Ciao for now,

©Kinsey Barnard

This is it!

Well, this is it. The last day to get ready for the big trip. Cementine (that's the RV) is packed to the gills, well not really we try to travel as lite as possible. Shadow (that's the tow car) is just waiting in the wings to get attached.

Being away for six months requires a lot of thought. I always worry that I have not thought of everything. But, going a long way toward helping to alleviate those concerns are my good neighbors Doug and Joan Ann who will be looking after the place and making sure I didn't forget anything. Amongst the myriad of things I love about where I live is the sense of community and having good neighbors that look out for one another. As they say in the credit card ad "priceless".

So, today we do those last minute things. One last pass by the dump. We have no garbage pick up where we live you have to haul it to the dump. Actually, I like this because you don't have to remember to put the can out and pay for it once a year through property taxes. For about $80 a year we can dump as much as we want whenever we want. Of course, our first priority is to make as little waste as we can. But, even so, I think it's quite a good deal.

Next up is a last visit to the Post Office. We don't get mail delivery either so we must go to town to collect it. This is a bit of a pain in the patookie because it makes us have to go to town (about 8 miles) when we really don't otherwise need or want to. But, if we don't go regularly the Post Office gets mad and crams the box so full you can't pull it out with a pair of pliers.

A quick stop at the grocers for bananas and a quart of milk and back to the ranch for the final push which much to my chagrin includes getting bookkeeping up to date so we can file whist on the road. Yuck! You gotta do what you gotta do but boy I don't do it without a proportionate amount of kicking and screaming.

The above photo is of our rig on the road. As you can see we are diminutive. But, this outfit is really easy for me to handle by myself and we are easy on the environment. Clem has a Mercedes diesel and gets 18+mpg whilst towing Shadow. Shadow gets 35 mpg whilst we zip up and down those roads less traveled looking for natural marvels to photograph.

When I bot Clem I had envisioned short trips around the Rockies and into Canada. Never occurred to me that I would want to do anything like six month at a stretch. It was with great trepidation that we did our first long trip last year on the Pacific coast. As it turned out we were snug as bugs in a rug. Clem has every convenience you can imagine. In fact, it's quite remarkable. We could have a bigger rig for less money but this compact little unit suits us to a tee. It's easy on everybody.

The gods willing we will be in Dillon, Montana tomorrow night. Not this summer but the one before we spent a couple of weeks in and around Dillon. It's a great place to explore. There are ghost towns and all manner of interesting things to see. Here are just a few shots that we got on that trip. Great place to shoot old buildings and barns.

If you should see us rumbling down the road be sure and honk!

Ciao for now,

Koty & Kinsey