Thursday, April 10, 2008

National Bison Range


Bison were grazing on the hills. This is what it would have looked like before settlers came west. There is nothing to interrupt the view.

Fishing in the Bitterroot


This is another part of my Montana sketchbook. Today we went on a float trip with Wapiti Waters and our guide was Jay and his dog Ruby. We floated from Darby to Wally takeout and it was about 11 miles and fished the entire time (a lunch break was provided). I hooked into a 23" Brown Trout and hauled in 2 small cutthroats and hooked an 18 inch trout. Bryan had more fish but I had the biggest hit of the day. I learned the fly fishing technique of stripping in, mending the line for dry fly fishing. Jay observed that the fish were eating golden stone flies and tied a fly on for us. We fished from 9:30 am to 7:30pm and got back in time for dinner on the deck: a delicate beef dinner with wild morel sauce, corn, green beans, salad and homemade bread then blueberry custard for dessert

Montana sketchbook


I was reminded of our trip to Montana when I received a letter in the mail yesterday that the lodge is for sale. Here are a few pages from my sketchbook: Sunday July 27, 1997- Today after french toast we hiked just over a mile or so to a waterfall on the property. There were "shoots" of water on the flat rocks that one could swim in but the water was too cold. We ate raspberries and saw ripe thimbleberries. We also saw a male rufus Hummer 3 1/2 inches, a Pine Grosbeak and a male evening Grosbeak. I could identify some of the plants: Beargrass, Sulfur buckwheat, Baneberry (poisionous) woods strawberry, raspberries, huckleberries,Fireweed, Horsemint (looks like bee balm). I pressed some twin flower in the book. So many things that I saw I couldn't identify.