Our path took us through Paradise (Montana). We were expecting something a little fancier in paradise, but the mountain views were great.
Mark drove the motor home down narrow highway 200. We had the Flathead River to the left, and rock mountain walls to our right. It is amazing that the little boat on the river is so close to our motor home driving down the highway, and the car coming around the curve is even closer. It's not a highway for the faint of heart when driving a big motor home.
After experiencing a wet summer in Canada, we can see that Montana is getting dry. We have enjoyed low fire danger signs all summer, but now we are in high fire danger territory.
As we drive away from the river, we are seeing more of the golden hills as we get closer to our destination for the day.
We have been traveling for almost five years now, and we have repeated very few places. But we really enjoyed our first trip to the National Bison Range, and we decided to make a return visit today. So we started driving the loop road at about 6 p.m., hoping to find animals out this evening.
True to its name, our first animal sighting was this big bull bison. The dust is still flying from his roll in the bison wallow. These big animals roll around in the mud and dust to get relief from the flies.
Another bachelor bison was heading across one of those golden hills. We enjoy these big guys, but we have to be truthful, we were hoping for some bears. We saw one the last time we were here, but we both decided this just didn't look like bear country.
That's when Mark noticed movement in the brush right beside the road.
A black bear was grazing on the grass beside a little pond.
Visitors are required to stay in their vehicles, so Mark did some creative stretching (without touching the ground) to get a new angle for pictures.
If was fun to watch the little bear go for a swim right beside us.
Then he wandered into the trees, where he had to stretch up on his back legs to eat the berries off the branches.
If we had been a few minutes earlier or later, we would have missed that great bear sighting! As we pulled ourselves away, we rounded a curve and Mark caught sight of a black dot moving across the hill in front of us.
That's our second bear sighting this evening!
Goldilocks had three bears, and so do we! We saw the third one making his way across an opening close to the road.
He was heading toward a berry tree for a little snack.
After finishing up the bottom branches, he raised up on his back legs to reach higher. What a great view of these three bears! Denisa has been giving Mark a hard time about not getting pictures of the two bears we have seen while hiking lately. Today he redeemed himself in the bear photography category as all three were on his side of the car.
The only time that visitors are allowed outside their vehicles are on the park's two walking trails. We knew to take the bear warning signs seriously at the trail head, as we took this walk out to a viewpoint.
Back to the car, our wildlife loop headed sharply downhill as we came to the lower section of the park.
What we love about this wildlife refuge is the diversity we remembered from our last visit. So we weren't surprised to find these three bucks at the bottom of the hill.
They were concentrating on eating, with their muzzles down until something caught their attention.
We only saw one pronghorn this time.
We were thrilled when he moved closer to us for a better look.
The sun was getting low in the sky when we found this sizable herd of bison grazing on the hill-side.
Part of that herd was also scattered across the road, causing a bison traffic jam.
One young bull walked right past our stopped car,
while we waited on two of the youngest members of the herd to cross the road.
But the award for the the worst attitude in this bison traffic jam, goes to this one sticking out his tongue.
We found this remnant of the herd crossing the river.
The only animal group we hadn't found this evening were the elk. As we rounded the last curve on our loop, we saw this small herd with many young ones.
We were pretty impressed with this big bull, showing off his horns and standing guard over his harem.
But we were more impressed with our last sighting of the night--this grand-daddy of all elks showing off this rack near the exit.
Gates close at 9 p.m., so we had to hurry to hook up the car to the motor home that had been waiting at the visitor center.
Then we were on the road towards Missoula, Montana for the night. We include this picture because it was a very unusual view for us through the motor home windshield. We've only seen this night-time driving view a few times in the last 5 years, and it's not our favorite.
We rolled into Missoula after 10 p.m. We'll be here a couple days as this college town seems to host lots of fun. Have we mentioned that this is a repeat visit to this city too?
This is still one of favorite parks as well, definitely worth a revisit!
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