From BC to Missoula: The Road To Yellowstone I

 

 

Ready, Set, Go - From British Columbia To West Yellowstone

There is nothing like having a couple of good friends with the similar interests. 

2 years ago Nel, Judy and I decided to make a photo-nature-fun trip to Yellowstone National Park. Life being what it is, last year did not work out for neither of us. 

This year we decided that NOTHING was going to keep us at home. 

Not sure about this one but as you can see it did "talk" to us in a fun way  ... it also keeps on prompting me to think of many social aspects of various societies and of the times past and present.
Glad to be free to be able to go on a trip with "only" female friends.

Being from British Columbia we would have to travel eastwards across Montana to our base "camp" in West Yellowstone (we were really going to rough it out) From there we could take daily trips to the park and return in the evening to our glass of red .... you know.

Our idea of roughing it out in one of the Moose Creek Cabins: right smack in the middle of the city of  West Yellowstone!!!!

That was the plan. But ... first we would have to get there!!!! 

There are 5 different ways to enter Yellowstone National Park:
West - West Yellowstone = ours
North: Gardiner
Northeast: Cook City and Silver Gate
East: by Cody Peak
South: from Jackson by Moose Junction 


We could have taken HWY 90 from Spokane, WA straight to our day's destination - Missoula, MT but, wanting to learn more about the smaller places we took twists and turns of lesser roads. Therefore we chose Hwy 200 which took us from the northern corner of Idaho to Montana - there it ran along blue reservoirs and crystal clear rivers all the way to its junction with Hwy 93 which took us to Missoula. What a great choice it was!

We got a wonderful Montana Welcome at Noxon Dam - a patient Great Blue Heron just finished its breakfast and gracefully allowed us to take its picture.

Our 200 continued along Clark Fork River and past the community of Paradise (truly!) it switched to Flathead River.

Physical map of Montana shows clearly the differences between West and East topography of the state. The western part bears numerous mountain ranges that differ in their makeup and size, most running their lengths from South to North. The main backbone is formed by the rugged Rockies - past those the country flattens out. Since we traveled from West to East we were in for great changes of scenery, wishing to have planned a month instead of ten days trip. Next time perhaps.

Shot while approaching this animal crossing: a neat idea, beneficial to both the drivers and animals alike

Sun was at its highest when we drove past this industrial place. Some say that one cannot take creative photos at noon, but travel with Nel and you might change your mind. She saw the patterns and that was it: for the next 30 minutes we circled about the humongous tanks trying to be true to the car stickers above. 

Reach:ing Missoula: in a vast flat area surrounded by what seemed to sandy hills sprawls a city of about 67 000. We did not have much time to explore the geological features of the area - the city occupies the flat, bottom portion of what used to be a vast glacial lake. The steep hills that surround it are the banks of the former lake. They are still bearing the signs of  water levels as the lake was yielding to the dry land. 

It was still quite sunny when we reached the historic downtown, with the light being harsh, we opted for HDR photography (not sure what we are trying to do? Click here .... be patient, this guy is good)

The Missoula County Court House - a definite showpiece of the city since 1908.

We found a block of houses in Colonial style, a church and more - .... next time we need to budget for more time in order to explore this city and its interesting history.

No tripod? 

According to all the photo-literature you have a problem!

Unless your name is Nel.

(Read the stickers!)

We ended up the day in an excellent Thai restaurant - Nel acquired two more friends but they refused to travel along

Morning was announced by a bunch of Brewer's Blackbirds discussing their breakfast. 

Have a listen then multiply by hundred. 

(In the www. you have to scroll down a bit and click on "Song")

That's an alarm clock for you. 

Day 2 found us travelling on another set of smaller roads and discovering more neat places indeed.

Where Did June Go?

A visible Aurora borealis is a rare occurrence in Southern British Columbia.
It must have been amazing this June 29th in the Northern portions of Canada.
(The blue tint might have come from a far-away cool street light that was
polluting the night directly underneath the scene.)

Where did June disappear? 

It slipped away in various directions, different for each one of the billions of human beings on this planet. 

For me it started with and adventurous trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming/Montana/Idaho, USA and then had taken me back to Kamloops area in British Columbia, Canada which altogether means one thing:

This year's June is gone! 

Gone as if it has never been. 

Evaporated back, somewhere into the mysterious crevasses of Universe to stay and perhaps never repeat itself.. leaving us here on its 29th day with a final curtain of one of the most awe-striking events:

Aurora borealis; 
The Northern Lights

Northern lights or aurora borealis (please click on the link for proper explanation) is quite common in July and August.
Although these were quite dim compared to occurrences and images I've seen elsewhere, I was surprised by my camera's ability to record everything what was in the sky at 11 pm.. Set at F5.0, ISO 200 I just pointed my 18-55 mm lens, set at 18 on manual, towards the sky and let the camera to choose its time - it took about 25 seconds to record the scene. On a tripod - of course!

So that was the glorious June departure - now I am at home, recounting the many special meetings and adventures of that month that now, just like the entire month of June 2013, dwell in the past. 
As if they never happened.

Has it not been for our memories and the wonders of the recording equipment the past would not exist. There would be just a blank sheet of nothing (surely changed by our actions but the changes not remembered by anyone) rolling back ... back ...... back into the past. 

I often wonder what it is that keeps us writing down the notes and, recently, our blogs, taking all the photos and sharing them online.
Is it some kind of hidden fear of falling backwards into the emptiness with nothing to grasp onto,  that compels the humanity to keep on clicking? 

It probably is for me.

Speaking of the memories .... this shot is one year old. It is a view of sunset over Valhallas, a wonderful provincial park of the West Kootenays. 
A friend and I were at Idaho Peak (elevation listed as: 8970 ft / 2734 m) at about this time of the year.
It was close to 8 pm when the sun started to make its departure.
Valhallas are in the background and the mysterious Slocan Lake in the middle. 

The sunset was spectacular that night! 

What was even more interesting was the vivid play of light after the sunset, quite a ways away from the Sun itself - neither of us has never seen anything like that before. 

As the ever-obliging-photographers, we took the photos of the phenomena which actually made us feel kind of strange - we did not know what to make of it. 

When the show was over we hiked back to the parking lot some 2 km down the trail and then drove home in the darkness, still talking about the ominous play of light in the darkening sky ..... (more knowledgeable people might come with a better explanation .... we were happy with what we observed that evening.)
It must have been some change in temperature and the weather in general for the following night the atmosphere above Southern British Columbia lit up and Aurora Borealis danced all over in the midnight skies.

As I said before - this is southern BC and the lights show very little this far South - yet, I believe that the strange sunset at Idaho Peak and the following Northern Lights display had something in common. 
Scientifically, all can be explained. 

For me, it was all about the time and the summer passing by - a moment or two, lasting in our minds and on our memory cards (what a suitable name). 

So that's where this and the past June went .... it came and disappeared like all the Junes before. 

Meanwhile we were traveling this wonderful planet Earth - planning to share our adventures and memories in a series called  Road to Yellowstone. And THAT's what I actually wanted to write about.

ALBERT: The Solved Mystery of the ....

Move over Sherlock Holmes! Our mystery has been solved. Lest we convicted a wrong guy.

Remember last year's post about Dogbane and the creatures that use its deadly sap for their protection?

Of course not but that's OK.

In that post I was milling about a handsome white caterpillar and the cocoon it it spun about ten days later. 

We found the caterpillar on August 24. It was white, hairy and somehow forecasting a subtle message: 

"Do Not Touch."

Or maybe it said: "Do Not Eat." 

The birds certainly heeded the warning since the white one was freely roaming about, looking for a place of solace.

Who was it, we wondered, totally taken by its beauty and tickled by the subconscious thoughts of it perhaps stinging or even being poisonous.

By September 3rd, the caterpillar arranged for a wild haircut - all that remained was a soft-looking, somehow unrecognizable lump of cells wrapped in a mat of scary looking hair. Our caterpillar readied itself for the upcoming winter. And we still did not know who might emerge next spring.

Another ten days later, on September 13th, we found another caterpillar - same shape, same size, only its fur coat was yellow. Who was he in relation to the white one? A brother, uncle or a total stranger? We chose to believe that it belonged to the same family. But its name was still far from clear. This one too, crawled into a pile of vegetation to become a cocoon.

I am not sure what happened after. I believe that there was a huge reorganization inside of the hairy cocoon that resulted in a pupa -  hard cased structure that would overwinter in soil. Inside it a creature much different from the caterpillar would patiently wait for the glorious days of Spring.

Now, imagine this: one day you go to bed and by the morning your body will have fallen into bits and pieces which will reorganize and rejoin in a totally different way. By itself! You will go to sleep being a crawling caterpillar and wake up being a flying moth. No waste. That's efficiency!

But I am getting ahead of this story.

Winter arrived and left. 

It is end of May now and millions of things are happening all the time and all over the place. 

The plants are sprouting and blooming, and with them a whole world of other creatures is rushing to commence and complete new cycles of  life.

Just yesterday, I too was crawling in the grass trying to be artistic! That's what Spring does to everyone.

I was taking photos of a tiny chickweed flower. 

(Chickweeds, Stellaria - So good for you - did you know?)

It looked so fancy through my macro lens that my mood shifted into a nostalgic mode 

(it does not take much these days). 

All I could think of was how many amazing things and creatures we go by every day without looking, without even knowing that they exist.

When I finally peeled my eyes off the viewfinder I was staring straight at another white creature that must have just emerged from the safety of soil; its whiteness so pure that it made me gasp in awe. 

(I was in that nostalgic mood, remember?)

It sat there - hugging the grass stems,  motionless - for quite a while, probably sensing all the Carbon dioxide given off by my body and flooding its space, cursing its bad luck.
(Insects and other creatures can tell the presence and size of another animal by the amount of CO2 that it exudes. That's why they wisely move off or move in - depending on their way of making a living.)

There was a lot of CO2 at the moment  and even more poured out with my breath as I whispered a flurry of questions:
You? You were that caterpillar! Who are you? I think that you are a male.....but ... what's your name?

He should have answered:
Of course I am a male - I have big antennae which females do not posses. It is MY job to seek them out, not theirs to seek me. They only exude their perfumes, you know? And, by the way, my name is Yellow Wooly Bear Moth, Spilosoma virginica.
Nice to meet you!

But no!

All he would do for the moment was to sit there, feeling (instead of thinking):
"Dry fast my body! Pump air into those air tubes in my wings so this body can harden, the wings stiffen and carry me away from this gaseous heap!
I need to fly, flitter about, start looking for females (not this one though!). 
I hope that I will not get squished soon.
I need to carry out my job - I have to mate!"

Not knowing his real name then, I named him Albert.

The reasoning for giving him that name is quite obvious: in its white lab coat and with a head full of untamed white hair, even with a hint of a bushy moustache, he made me think of Albert Einstein.
He also made me think of many unsolved secrets, of the processes that make his white body work, his ways of dealings with the world - so different from ours, his powers and his role in the interconnected world that we, humans, are only vaguely becoming to understand.

Finally! His wings spread wider and then wide until they were flat and ready. They started to vibrate in a very rapid sequence, his antennae perked up, one last breath and a clumsy take off. Airborne at last! By the time the sun sets he will be an expert flier. And then ......

Every moth-boy knows by default how to get a moth-chick. There are two ways:

The first way is kind of crude: one can patiently sit perched on vegetation, saving his energy for things to come. When a suitable moth-girl flies by, peacefully giving off her pheromonal perfume,  he takes a sniff, takes off,  forces her to the ground and .... is this legal? REALLY? Bully style?!?

The other, more caring way, is to fly about, seek the girls by tasting the air with the huge antennae and hone on closer and closer. Follow a bunch of irresistible pheromones, release some of own... and ... voila.
When done, go and seek another. Energy consuming?
Yes. but ... job is a job.....is.....a......job!

Albert is the caring kind - he will fly and seek and find his girls, his awesome antennae (which the bully guys do not posses) tasting and analyzing the air for molecules that came his way from miles and miles away. He will not eat or drink; just fly ceaselessly, using the fatty reserves of his strong, handsome body. He will father several families before his time is up. Then, before the summer arrives he will die. But the summer generation(s) (some say one and some say two) will progress towards the Fall. His offspring will gorge on dogbane and milkweed and other horribly tasting and poisonous plants that could harm me and you but not them. So the birds and mice and skunks will leave them alone allowing them to make a bed in the cold October soil.,  ..... -

......and the cycle will repeat itself as it has so many times.

Good luck Albert - fly well! I am glad we've met.

TREE SWALLOW (Of The Birds and The Bees)

This is a story of the magnificent Tree Swallow and its domestic life.

A Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor, got its common name from its nesting preferences - it likes to place its grass-lined nest in a tree cavity or an old woodpecker hole.

Had The Happy Prince of the famous fairy tale met this hardy little swallow instead of the European one that, with the first sign of the upcoming winter, needed to fly to Egypt Oscar Wilde's story would have had a much happier ending. Our Tree Swallow would have been able to take a bit of a colder weather and it would not die. Fewer children would have to cry over the story's sad end (as I certainly did, over half a century ago).

The North American Tree Swallow is quite hardy and does not need to travel as far South as the other swallows do. So, when the winter comes to its end this handsome bi-colored bird is one of the first to return.

It is usually in March or April  when we notice the flocks of these fast flyers arriving to Southern British Columbia.





Tachycineta bicolor is bi-colored indeed. It is freshly-white underneath and metallic-blue on the males or beige-brown on females on the backs. Very elegant!

How do the the birds come to those amazingly shiny metallic feathers anyway? These questions are lately being answered by the ever-evolving science, leading us away from Biology and Chemistry of  Pigments to Biology and Physics, due to the arrangements of extremely tiny particles of the feather and their reaction to the environment.

As John Muir once famously said a Century ago:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Another reason why Biology, Chemistry and Physics should all be compulsory in every High School in the world.

These birds are Tree Swallows by the name, but just like many other birds they will happily take up their residence in man-made nesting boxes. Smart!
Once they have arrived they do not waste much time before taking care of the business. Their job here is to bring up a family ( or rarely two if something goes wrong with the first clutch).

So, it is the real estate that they need to look up first.




He is the one who seems to look for a suitable site first. Then he invites her for a closer look.

              A big discussion follows:
              What do you think Honey?
              Up to your specifications?

             Hmmmm .... lets see what it is like inside!

She likes the site and indicates that by commencing to collect building material.
I would like to use this kind of grasses, please. oh ... and some loose feathers too, if available.

They flitter about, happy that the real estate issue has been settled. He tweets his heart out in series of happy notes. She joins him for a couple of seconds and what looks like a shouting match is actually an exchange of gentle chirps - the sign of things to come. It really lasts only a moment before they take off to catch some bugs.
Swallows are multitaskers; they feed in flight -with their beaks widely open, sucking in mosquitoes and such.
Sorry to spoil the fun with a scientific fact.

She returns to her perch and starts on her makeup - a VERY feminine thing. She fluffs up her feathers and twists her body this way and that. All done up she settles down, pretending that nothing special has been going on.

Honestly, I did not mean to pry!

I was just peacefully hiding in my blind, clicking away, thinking about the fact that the birds need to preen their feathers 75 percent of their time and about the importance of it. I clicked the shutter open in the very same second that this kamikaze appeared out out of nowhere. One short second to join the plumbings and the most important task of the season was done!
Tricked me, if you happen to wonder!

My university years are well in the past. But I still remember my zoology prof talking about the bird reproductive strategies and how they pass and accept the reproductive cells. Cloaca was the word - an opening that, like the Jack of All Trades, serves the reproductive, urinary and elimination purposes in one. Call me dirty, but ever since that lecture I always wondered how on Earth can birds do it with their long tails and layered feathers covering the whole works. Fifty years later I got my answer!

What a speed! Split of a second, an amazingly precise balancing act ....and - over. 

Was it worth all the fluffing and twittering?

You bet!

And the bees? How about some other time?