Wandering Southeast -- Chico & Yellowstone

Bison in their winter coats!

We head 300 or so miles southeast of Hamilton -- for the first time in a long time. But it's to stay at the regionally revered (and relatively cheap) Chico Hot Springs (http://www.chicohotsprings.com/) and to dip down into Yellowstone National Park (http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm) three separate times. We spy buffalo, in the photo above and several far below, many times. They are such beautiful and well-coated beasts!

One of the views from our room at Chico.

Paradise Valley, home to Chico and to the north entrance of the park, is nearly as pristine as the park itself. Ted Turner owns a good chunk of this valley, and has made public his plans to keep it in tact. Other TV and movie stars also are said to live and vacation here -- Tom Brokaw and Michael Keaton among them. Who am I leaving out?

We drive into the north entrance to Yellowstone at the town of Gardiner (here's a map from spring 2011 http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/springmap2011.gif) and basically "do" the northern 1/3 to 1/2 of the park in our three days.

Bison bring traffic to a halt in the park on Day Two.

They stray to the left...

...and stop for a scratch...

..before straying to the right.

Finally, they bound off the road.

We see elk, too. They are most magnificent to me when they're running in a herd in some distant, still-wild meadow. 

A big-horn sheep is quite sassy, with a mid-day trot down the middle of the road.

But enough of the fauna. The landscape can be as stunning as it is different, from one road and one day to the next.

Artists' Paintpots is a site where hot mud takes on different colors - pale blues, deep oranges, white and mud brown are just a few that we see.

Roaring Mountain features dozens of fumaroles -- some of the hottest hydrothermal features in the park. Water turns to steam at the surface and deposits minerals across the ground. On this overcast day, the effect is one of a black-and-white photograph.

The now-extinct Soda Butte geyser near the mouth of the Lamar River in Yellowstone.

Subtle fall color, as seen in shrubs along a Yellowstone hill.

Trees look even more like winter here.

 

We stop at a wolf sighting and Alex later gets a glimpse of two members of a pack -- pin dot size, through a borrowed scope.  There is tourism related to wolves, whether ranchers and our county commissioners think so or not.

Finally we leave the park, but not before another big bison makes his presence known, solo style.

Bye Yellowstone! You are now in our "backyard," so see you next time around.

My Oh My, It's Pie!

A poster for the Apple Day event.

I was looking for more volunteer work(?) and, behold, there it was, right in front of me -- pie!!

One of Thursday's many freshly made pies.

Not just any old pie but hundreds and hundreds of apple pies -- put together Oct. 4 for baking on the 5th and serving today at Hamilton's 33rd annual Apple Day! The Bitterroot Valley once was thought to be the ideal spot for big commercial apple orchards. Money got invested. Trees got planted. And disease took most of them. This was all just after the turn of the last century. But at least one apple orchard remains and new, more resistant varieties are filling in the gaps. Hence, there's a celebration of the historical fruit put on yearly at the Hamilton Farmers' Market and sponsored by the Ravalli County Museum at the Old Courthouse.

Just a few examples on the pie production line.

At the Rocky Mountain Grange, two women with British accents, a young woman from Bombay and a dozen or so Job Corps trainees got some of the rest of us Bitterrooters started in a morning of orderly pie-making chaos.

I walked in, slipped on food-prep gloves and quickly was put charge of butter (cutting sticks into tablespoon-sized chunks and placing one each on top of freshly filled pie shells).

Some extra filling got added after the butter work (apparently, not a single cinnamon-sugar-coated apple slice went to waste!)

My new rolling pin, made of black cherry by Bitterroot artisan Mel Holloway (http://www.madeinmontanausa.com/prod.asp?Type=Detail&RecordID=655), was just one of many pins that shook the prep tables as dough -- produced on site by the Job Corps kids -- got flattened and rounded out for topping pies.

A crimping station...

...and a crimping lesson.

Suju takes pictures of pies to Facebook for her friends and family in India.

Best of all is the scene across the highway from the Grange, in Hamilton -- mountains and NO SMOKE.  Wildfires that for weeks hid mountains from view are gone and crisp cool fall air whooshes through the valley.

On today's cold clear morning, the crowd is bustling at Apple Day.

Carrots compete with...

...apples for attention!

But pie sales are among the most brisk (some pre-baked, others frozen and ready to bake at home). This is the biggest annual fundraiser for the museum, touted as the "Biggest Bake Sale Under the Big Sky" (http://www.brvhsmuseum.org/appleday.html).

 

Into the belly of the beast

We go for an overnight this week in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Specifically, we have an invitation from Mary Alice and Mel Holloway to stay in the handsome old cabin called the Magruder Ranger's House --  http://www.recreation.gov/camping/Magruder_Rangers_House/r/campgroundDetails.do?contractCode=NRSO&parkId=75162&topTabIndex=Search. It was once Mary Alice (formerly Schumaker)'s childhood home in summer. Her father served as ranger  southwest of Hamilton, deep in the woods and canyons of the Montana/Idaho border. We thought we were getting away from smoke (yes, I'm writing another smoke story). Unfortunately, we discover that winds have shifted and also that this is near forest-fire central! It is uber smoky here!!

One smoky view -- from up top, where a gravel road climbs high above the Selway River.

Another view of smoke -- from down on the ranger cabin's front porch.

And the beautiful Selway River, as seen from a bridge at the meadow even farther below the cabin. One link that gives an overview of this wilderness region is http://www.everytrail.com/guide/magruder-corridor-guide. Another is a wonderful book that I pick up in the cabin -- "Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness," by Pete Fromm.
  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156956.Indian_Creek_Chronicles. I read up to chapter 12 in the cabin, love the story of a green, young college student learning about winter wilderness from his tent in the nearby Indian Creek campground. I later pick up my own copy of the book to finish at home.

Mary Alice also tells great stories -- a lot of them about her summers here as a child, including ones about the "beach" below the bridge, where she and her three brothers built rafts and invented other games all summer long.

There's an old lichen-covered fence in the Magruder meadow -- also an early playground.

A killdeer makes a fuss in the Magruder meadow.

A chipmunk visits the cabin front porch looking, apparently, for a handout.

A fall "bouquet" of asters adds color to the smoky days.

We leave a bit early -- driven out by smoke (Mel and Mary Alice stay on) -- but not before making a point of checking out the dedication on a big, hand-hewn bench on the cabin's front porch. Thank you Schumaker family, for everything.

Good news, bad news...

Bad news first...
We close the house tight and leave Hamilton around 2 p.m. on Monday (9/10) to get away from wind-driven clouds of heavy smoke. There are lightning-caused wildfires in craggy granite mountains outside of town. We've only driven a mile or so north when blue skies re-appear. But we crane our necks back to see what we've left. It looks like a sandstorm in the Sahara, slowly blowing our way! And yet, it seems to be lit from within. We stop in a parking lot with a few other folks to stare and take pictures. "This is so cool," says a pre-teen, her mother smiling and rolling her eyes. What we are seeing is a reflection of flames in the distance! We high-tail it to Missoula for the night; I don't plan to breathe that stuff a minute more than I have to. The fire, we read and hear, is affecting folks on wooded lots in foothills farther to our south and west.  Containment fire lines on the other side of the Bitterroot River -- east of fire and helping to protect our town -- are now set up. As of this writing, more than $2 million has been spent on man- and woman-power, helicopters for dipping buckets into mountain lakes and dropping water on fire, even infrared flights at night to track progress through smoke. This is a difficult fire to fight, but houses in town -- like ours -- will be fine.

A sandstorm-like cloud of smoke from wildfires to our south and west on 9/10.

Fair News... a new category of news in between bad and good (again, none of the really bad stuff is happening to us!)

Sept. 12, 2012 9:53:AM -- KPAX-TV
DENVER, CO- There's some federal money coming to the Bitterroot as crews continue to battle the Sawtooth Fire outside of Hamilton.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Tuesday morning that they have authorized federal funds to be used to help with firefighting costs.
FEMA Regional Administrator Robin Finegan approved a Fire Management Assistance Grant (FMAG) after receiving a request from state government officials.
The blaze has prompted a stage 2 evacuation of over 320 homes, affecting between 800 and 1,000 residents. The fire is also threatening cellular communication towers and water sheds near the area.
The Regional Administrator, Robin Finegan, determined that the fire, which began as the result of a lightning strike on August 30 and grew rapidly earlier this week due to high winds, "threatened such destruction as would constitute a major disaster," according to a news release.
The approval means that FEMA funding is available to pay 75% of the state's eligible firefighting costs for managing, mitigating and controlling the fire. However, the grants do not provide assistance to individual home or business owners and do not cover other infrastructure damage caused by the fire.
The latest figures made available by fire managers showed that it's cost $2.2 million to battle the blaze so far.
The Ravalli County Commission declared a State of Emergency earlier this week, and the American Red Cross set up an evacuation shelter at the First Baptist Church.
Large animals and livestock are being accepted at the Ravalli County Fairgrounds while the Bitter Root Humane Association is accepting small pets that have been evacuated.

*****

Good news is, we made it quickly to the clear, blue skies of Missoula and had a fine meal in an unlikely place -- the dark-and-handsome wine bar at Red Bird (http://www.redbirdrestaurant.com/), located in a renovated Art Deco hotel called The Florence. And that's next door to the historic Wilma theater (http://thewilma.com/) and performance space where hip films and live music play. You gotta love Missoula.

The lamp above our seat at Red Bird's bar had a fire-like look (yikes), but superb red wines quickly dampened such thoughts.

We walk streets of downtown at dusk. Missoula is an old mill town that became a lumber/forestry hub and now is best known for the University of Montana.

Stately old buildings in downtown Missoula.

Art galleries and chic little shops line South Higgins Avenue. I especially want to return to see the exhibit "Lost & Found Montana," by an associate professor of photojournalism at UM.

A photo exhibit of vanishing Montana communities (http://www.lostandfoundmontana.com/about.html).

Our stay at Blossom's Bed & Breakfast (https://www.blossomsbnb.com/) is perfect. It's an old/new Craftsman bungalow. We have a room with a door onto the little backyard -- with hills beyond -- and we sleep with the door wide open to fresh, cool air.

The next morning, we drive north. It's Alex's birthday -- 9/11 is -- and we want to get into beautiful mountains to celebrate. We almost get lost on old national forest roads south of the Mission Mountains. But both of our iPhones are able to keep us on track. Our destination is an Amish general store in St. Ignatius. The route takes us through an old burn. We can't get away from fire this month!

Old burn beside a road in the Flathead National Forest.

Our road looks desolate at first, but quickly we begin to see life among the ruins.

Two Mountain Bluebirds (tiny dots of blue in the center of this picture) fly about the road.

Vegetation grows up around burnt tree stumps on the forest floor.

An even bigger "garden" of fall colors tops a mound of burnt branches.

We get home in time to harvest vegetables from our own garden (including Green Zebra, SunGold and Black Cherry tomatoes started from seed back in St. Louis!)

Home in Hamilton, MT, is less smoky some days, more smoky others. Inside our little bungalow all is fine and cheerful.  However, we're making plans to celebrate Alex's birthday tomorrow with friends Kelsey and Mary who also have a September birthday to honor, at http://sleepingchildfarms.com/ south of town. And we have an invitation for next week to spend two nights at a Forest Service cabin in the beautiful Magruder Corridor. This cabin once was the residence of the district ranger, his wife and five children. The daughter in that family -- Mary Alice Schumaker -- and her husband Mel Holloway have invited us to stay with them in this rugged, beautiful place that Mary Alice once called home.  We're brainstorming garden-fresh meals, as I'm sure Mary Alice is, too. Life is good. It's smoky but it's good. Rain/snow soon will bring all back to normal here.

The two-story, five room Magruder Ranger's House.

Smoke, the sequel

Normally, a drive in the Bitterroot Valley features crystal-clear views of mountains, snow-capped and breathtaking many months of the year.

Breathtaking, however, has another connotation for the moment. The sun often gets clouded by a wall of smoke. Sitting in a neighbor's backyard and watching bits of ash falling around us is not a great feeling, even if the beer and wine are first rate. And occasionally, the smoke can take your breath. The Sawtooth Fire is about 7 miles west of town and not a direct threat (http://inciweb.org/incident/3227/), but it's the fires farther west in parched wilderness that often send thick smoke our way.

So we plan short getaways until rain or the snows of late fall end this annual event. We take a picnic up the notorious old logging road called Skalkaho, looking for higher altitudes and fresher air. The road is improved and widened beyond one lane in spots (still no guard rails to protect from the ravines as we get higher).  But air at Skalkaho Falls -- our destination -- is crisp and clear. The falls is expertly engineered now to run under the road. We meet a guy about our age and his 87-year-old mother from Michigan who loves to travel west each summer. They hand Alex a camera and ask him to take their picture next to the falls. I wish I had taken a picture of that scene; very sweet!

Skalkaho Falls (http://www.waterfallsmontana.com/waterfalls.aspx?id=11)

 On another day, we brave some lesser smoke to catch a last day of the Ravalli County Fair. Carny folks are closing down the rides...

Ravalli County Fair ride

...and we see them on the highway driving north, as we do so, too, to get to a less smoky Missoula for lunch and shopping.

Lunch outside, at Caffé Dolce (http://www.caffedolcemissoula.com/)

It seems only appropriate that, at The Good Food store in Missoula (very much like Whole Foods elsewhere), we find a coffee just right for this interesting and unpredictable region of the country:

Smoke Jumper coffee beans, at http://www.goodfoodstore.com/

Where there's smoke...

       

...there's fire, wildfire, that is, in Idaho just across the Bitterroot Mountains from where we live; it's smoky here, with wind bringing the sooty stuff our way. But we're safe and staying mostly inside to watch movies and to read over Labor Day weekend. The outlook early next week is for clearing. This spectacular photo is from NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79021.

St. Louis, send some of today's heavy rain this way, minus the lightning!

*****

But smoke in the Bitterroot Valley doesn't delay other activities, such as the annual parade in downtown Hamilton that's a prelude to the Ravalli County Fair. We march in it for local and statewide Democratic candidates.

A woman from our group hands out candy to kids! Smart!

The Missoulian newspaper gets a great shot of kids anticipating a candy barage -- http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/feature-photo-parade-kicks-off-ravalli-county-fair/article_89429fb0-f2ae-11e1-9374-001a4bcf887a.html.

As it turns out, I try shooting the same scene from a distance, with my left hand on the banner for the wonderful Pam Erickson, Democratic candidate for State House District 88, while my right hand juggles an iPhone.

Quite a difference, huh? (See kids in the middle of my frame?) But look at all the people lining a rather smoky Main Street, as far as the eye can see!

Before the march, some Dem marchers pose for pictures (Alex, not shown, is way up in front with a banner for the great  U.S. Senator from Montana, Jon Tester).

The star of our part of the show is a husky named Willow, wearing a Ravalli County Democrats T-shirt and howling -- to the delight of children -- each time we pass another pooch. The whole event is a slice of Americana (even with a dose of  Republican Tea Partiers thrown in !?!).  Check out the Democrats' musical accompaniment, below.

True blue bluegrass, from folks who are part of the annual Hardtimes Bluegrass Festival. (You know I'm biased, but I'm hoping for hard times for Republicans this year!).