Autumn Again (woohoo!)

I've gathered random images to celebrate today -- the first day of fall!

This tall collection of antlers that we came across just outside the National Bison Range said "autumn" to me. In truth, spring seems to be time that horn hunters, as they're called (see Montana Outdoors) gather for official collecting of shed deer antlers. The antler tree that we saw earlier this month looked architectural and barren, like a beautiful tree free of its leaves in late fall. 

I find that black kale, also called dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale, is absurdly easy to grow here. I have such a huge couple of plants that I harvest every other week, wash, remove stems, blanch for a couple of minutes, throw into a bowl of ice water, drain and plop into freezer bags for mid-winter soups, quiches or frittatas.

When we got an early frost this month, we covered all tomatoes and basil plants with old row-cover fabric
 left over from last winter. Some tomato foliage got hit but the fruit survived.

We drive up Willow Creek for a picnic and see a few patches of wild shrubs turning the reds and yellows of autumn.

A wildlife crossing is a feature that we often drive under north of Missoula. It looks brown and fall-like to me. We've never seen a critter crossing.

One of the pristine ditches that carries water for summer irrigation in this high-desert town looks especially lovely on a fall evening. Ditches soon will get drained for winter.

Sunflowers and other fall blooms come to me as a gift from a neighbor. JoAnn got them at the Hamilton Farmers' Market. I add eucalyptus from a previous bouquet and instantly am sorry. This gorgeousness doesn't need them. Oh well.

And my tomatoes -- heirloom Cherokee Purple, Black Cherry, Amish Paste and medium-sized ones called Stupice -- are still going gangbusters. Today's first-day-of-fall harvest joins yesterday's pickings in our mud room/laundry room because space in the kitchen has plum run out! It's a "Little House on the Prairie" around here, but truly, who knew that vegetable gardening in our little in-town micro climate in Hamilton, MT, could be so much fun?!

Labor Day's Come and Gone

Who wouldn't want to take this road on a lazy Labor Day weekend?

We drive RocketDog (aka our restored 1990 VW Westfalia) toward Anaconda Pintler Wilderness in advance of Labor Day.  The mountains there are just one of several ranges that surround a huge caldera named after a Montana river called the Big Hole. It is big. It can be gorgeous, especially on graveled side roads. It also is the site of a Nez Perce Indian massacre, and a sad-but-beautiful national monument stands tall there.

The Big Hole River.

Shelley and Rob, our camping buddies, wade in on the first day and try a few flies.

Part of Rob's fly collection.

We snack and sip wine after no luck with the fish, but Shelley spots something in trees across the water.

See the black-and-white dots in the beetle-killed trees, right of center? It's a pair of eagles. They perch there for a good while. We scope them with binoculars. (Here's where I could use a longer lens!)  We snack some more. The bug kill from climate change actually helps us see these magnificent birds. But what a price to pay for a good view!

Back at camp, skies become cloudy as waders drip dry...

...and salmon steaks from a grocery store join grilled fresh veggies from the garden to take the place of trout. Shelley and Rob have come prepared!

RocketDog takes up one side of the campground (boy are we glad to have the awning to move camp chairs under when it rains.)

Rob and Shelley tent-camp across the way.

At night, campfires crackle in front of us (and all around at other campgrounds, in the background).

We pack bear spray the next day to hike into true wilderness. We see no bears. Horsemen and an Akita, plus an eagle in flight, a hummingbird, woodpecker, nuthatch, native squirrel make appearances. All is quiet on this western front.

An opening along the trail gives a glimpse at the beauty of wilderness.

And, as I write this I realize that today, Sept. 3, is the actual date 50 years ago that Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act. Wow. And hooray!!

That night, we feast on a quick tomato sauce -- with Black Cherry, Cherokee Purple, Stupice and Amish Paste tomatoes, seed-started from my garden. They cook down in olive oil, salt and pepper, with some of our basil thrown in. All of this gets served over pasta. Later that evening, kids playing laser tag in the woods and generators on larger campers help ruin the mood. So much for no-host, no-reservation campgrounds.

We happily head home the next morning, but not before admiring the Big Hole valley once more.

RocketDog's Maiden Voyage

On Monday, we left our little sometimes-guest house in Hamilton...

...as advertised on our porch sign, designed/built by neighbor Heather Kempka (salvagesignco).

 

 We couldn't wait to depart the noisy street work out front, in the name of new City of Hamilton water lines.

(That's Heather and Jeff's little yellow bungalow, left of the mountain of rock.)

So we headed to real mountains, south and then west, over Nez Perce Pass...

...See the deer in the middle of the road? Five -- including two fawns -- skedaddled left and right, far ahead of us. (This actually is the same Nez Perce road pictured on the way home, but who's counting? Probably a few of our pickiest Montana friends.)

And the Selway River was our destination. It's just over the Bitterroot Mountains from us in Idaho, but a trip there takes nearly three hours, often on washboard roads. We wondered how our 1990 RocketDog would do. Our own teeth were clattering. What about Dog's many ancient parts??

Well, we all did fine. Here's RocketDog tucked snugly across from whitewater in the Selway.

Our campsite at Indian Creek was small but shady and with views across the Selway to a tiny -- infinitesimal, really -- slice of the 1,340,587 acres in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. It's a mind boggling amount of wild land. We are so lucky to live near it!

As sun set behind mountains to the west, extreme heat of the day subsided. We even built a small fire. Bugs were a problem -- mosquitoes and biting flies. But with screens up all around the van, we slept bug-free, snuggling to stay warm in temps reaching nearly into the 40s. In fact, we slept like babies.

Alex did a bit of gentlemanly fishing off of a big rock at the favorite Selway swimming hole.

We left a day early, however, when a log decided to move under Al's feet as he fished another site along Indian Creek -- a haunt from his childhood summers here. As he stumbled slightly, a small branch stuck his arm; Alex pulled it out. Later, a Hamilton doctor retrieved a half-inch splinter, gave him antibiotics and two stitches. I'm glad we made this call to return!

Said splinter.

But not before we stopped to smell the flowers -- so to speak -- on the drive home. My favorite?

Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax).

Look at this Beargrass bouquet! It's hard to forget an entire forest of these. We were lucky here, too. Beargrass, says the book Wildflowers of Glacier National Park, periodically produces "mass flowering displays that blanket open slopes with white, leaving a forest floor of dead stems the following summer... Elk and bighorn sheep browse the flowers, sometimes nipping off the entire flower cluster. Individual plants live a long time and are resistant to fire." What an alpine treat.

RocketDog Comes Home!

The small dog is Vinny, a Montana Jack Russell terrier and not the naming inspiration for our new/old VW Vanagon; we call the van RocketDog. That's because it is neither a rocket (we wind it out at about 60-65 mph) nor a dog, in the pejorative sense (it is terribly cute -- all tricked out, above, for a first showing to friends). When Vinny and his buddy Tigre come sniffing this new fellow "dog," we say sternly, "No Dogs!" Kind of funny, but they obey.

Here is the van in Missoula, on pick-up day, a week ago yesterday...

...and here it is from another angle, that day. The boys with their toys are, at right, my husband Alex, at left, Scott Quinnett, restorer extraordinaire of vintage VWs via dragonflyvans.com. He is based out of the Missoula airport. He rents a fleet of restored vans there in the summer to folks who fly in and want the luxe-vintage experience of camping in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Over this past winter, Scott restored this van for us. He'd found it -- a 1990 -- rust-free in Montana and was looking for a client. Now, with new engine, new transmission, new fuel lines, new brakes,  raised chassis, new pop-top, new truck fridge, new bumpers, new tires, new awning -- it cost us way less than it would have on the pricey West Coast. Follow Scott on his Facebook page. It's a trip, literally.

One of our first outings is up on Milner hill, with friends Kelsey and Eric. The awning takes a bit getting used to. But it's a beautiful addition, a whole new room under which to arrange fold-up camp chairs and a little table.

A detail of the awning (from Fiamma.)

Again a bit of the kitchen, plus the backseat. The seat pulls forward a few inches and then folds back to meet another big rectangle of foam behind it...

...We plan to camp out next week on it as it is, with a duvet or two added for comfort. But in two weeks, we get our own custom-made, cotton-and-wool futon to go on top of the foam, from the Missoula shop Small Wonders Futons. (Above is a peek into their workroom.)

Here is the van today, minus pillows and old rug. Scott came up yesterday to fix a leak in the sink,
and brought us not only new signature Dragonfly carpeting for rear and...

 

...front, plus mats on top...

...but also a snap-on rear screen to keep out bugs (bears? I think we'll close up tight in bear country).

Meanwhile, neighbors Dave and JoAnn gave us this lovely camper van book, as we all sat under our awning and sipped a little wine.

I bought commemorative Hendrix stamps in honor of my almost-hippie days. This van is reminding us a bit of that time.

Happy little hippie chic, eh? Check out Alex's '70s look...

... One part scary to two parts mellow. He was/is the real deal and deserves this van, right? We both do!!! More to come after our first camping trip.

A Wildflower Walk

We take a first spring walk up Blodgett Creek Trail in nearby Blodgett Canyon. And we see wildflowers galore. Just in this one patch are: the sunflower cousin Arnica cordifollia, or Heart-Leaf Arnica with bright yellow ray flowers on 6-to-12-inch stems;  Castilleja rhexifolia, or Common Paintbrush with scarlet clusters of flowers;  and the beginning blooms of Lupinus sericeus, or Silky Lupine with whorls of purple flowers on very erect stalks.  What a privilege to have your path edged with such beauty.

Trillium ovatum, or simply Trillium, is one of the first mountain flowers to bloom in spring. Its showy white flowers have faded to pink by the time we see it.

When we look up from the trail, we see craggy peaks to the north...

...and still more crags. We scope the scree with binoculars, hoping to see wildlife. And yet, all is still and severe in its beauty.

Back on this often shaded, duff-strewn trail, it's a quiet, contemplative walk.

A Fragile Fern (Cystopteris fragilis) catches my eye as it thrives on shallow, rocky soil.

So does a pale Blue Clematis (Clematis occidentalis) as it starts its vining habit.

We love getting high enough on the trail to get a peek into more than a million acres of roadless, protected Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

Finally, we stop for a snack where the creek meets the trail. It is much calmer than the downward-falling stream below. But still, it is gorgeous!