We Don't Want to Leave Montana:-)

 After our last evening in Ennis, we drove over to Paradise Valley, south of Livingston to Yellowstone's Edge RV Park right on the Yellowstone River.  We had hoped we would escape the smoke, but no dice.  We went there for two reasons, we needed to stay within striking distance of Bozeman as Jan had a hair appointment, and we wanted to make a foray into the park.  The campground is 38 miles north of the North Entrance to Yellowstone, but out here those distances seem different.  Everything is so spaced out, I guess it is a lot like living in Texas when an hour drive or so is nothing.

We got up very early, even earlier than normal for us, about 4:30, so we could get into the park by sunrise.  It is very scary driving that road in the dark, there are so many animals about, in fact the car ahead of us smashed his brakes on to avoid several elk just in front of him.  So with nerves on edge we got almost to Lamar Valley to an overlook where we had breakfast and coffee while trying to see through the smoke.  

The sun coming up through all the smoke

Then on to Lamar.  We took few pictures along the way because of the smoke.  Wolves are the big deal in Lamar, there are several packs that use the valley as their hunting grounds, and you know there has been a sighting when you see literally tons of people, vehicles parked every which way, and more binos and spotting scopes than you knew existed.  Well about half way through that is what we saw ahead of us.  We grabbed a parking spot, asked what was going on and found out we had missed a kill by only 45 minutes.  A pack of wolves had taken a bison down and that kill was perhaps 1000-1200 feet away, sounds far, but in the park to view a kill, that is pretty close.  We got the camera and lens set up on a tripod, mounted the spotting scope on our window mount, and of course had our binoculars and were treated to an amazing sight.  We counted at least 8 wolves, and folks there said there had been even more for the actual kill.  They were tearing the bison apart, with the ravens and the eagles standing back to wait their turn for a bite.  Having seen a few other kills in the park we knew that at some point in time, the grizzlies would come in to feed as well.  It is very interesting, when the grizzlies come in the wolves back away, lie down and wait until the grizzly is full and leaves and then back in they go.  These kills are fed on for days.  The circle of life.

Remember as you look at these photos, it is a long way off.
Jan took these with her Nikon D500 and a 600mm lens
You can see 7 wolves in this pic with 2 over the dead bison

Look carefully and you can see the gray wolf has a chunk of the bison

Still feeding

We found this odd.  This lone bison came walking through not far from
his brethren who met his demise, although there are enormous herds
of bison all around, this bull was all by himself, and not far from the pack

This was quite a gift, we have been in the park perhaps 20 times or more, and we always are on the look for wolves and grizzlies, but we have only seen them a handful of times.  It was actually humorous, we met several people that had never been in the park before and were under the impression that this happened every time, and this close.  Some of you probably find this morbid, but this was awesome!

We continued all the way up Lamar Valley, saw the wolves that were leaving the kill a few more times, then decided to make our way to Hayden Valley, another good spot for wolves.  A slight complication and a bit longer than normal as the direct road was closed for construction.  Other than the smoke, it was a beautiful day, not too crowded this late in the year.  We drove through Hayden and stopped to have a picnic on the Yellowstone River above the falls.

Nice spot for a picnic

We decided since it was such a gorgeous day we would just continue all the way around by Old Faithful and back up to Mammoth that way.  We saw hundreds of bison, a few elk, but no more wolves, and no bears.  Still beautiful though.  YNP is our absolute favorite park, there is so much diverse topography, rivers and streams full of trout, all the geysers and hydrothermal wonders, canyons, waterfalls, and of course the animals, it absolutely has it all!  When we returned to Mammoth there were a couple rangers keeping people in check and we wondered what was up.  I should mention almost every time we have been through the Mammoth area and its parklike surroundings will green grass areas and open spaces there are elk lying about, and of course with people the way they are anymore, rangers to keep the people away from the "pets".  As we got closer we saw why the ranger was moving folks, there was an agitated bull elk with a magnificent rack, I should mention this is rutting season, bugling, snorting and running back and forth.

The big guy

Now was he alone?  Hardly, he was gathering his companions and trying to keep them in line:-)

His nearby harem

So we made our way out of the park and back to the campground, 280 miles worth!

Down the hill from Mammoth to the North Entrance
You can see the smoke

Changing gears now, we have been talking about a weather station for the coach.  There are many times we'd like to know what's going on around us, how hard is that wind blowing, how much rain did we get, what is the dew point, etc?  We have been studying them on line and looking around the campgrounds as we take our walks and zeroed in on an Ambient Weather WS-2902C weather station.  It arrived while we were at Yellowstone's Edge.  Also we worked on how to mount it so it would be easy to put up and take down similar to our flag.  I ended up using a piece of 1 1/2" PVC pipe mounted in another Flag Pole Buddy ladder mount, and used a short piece of PVC attached to the station, and another longer piece that could be joined using a threaded coupling that sits in the mount.  It needs to point north for accuracy, so I check my phone for north and then spin the station and lock it in with a set screw.  It sounds like a big deal but it actually takes about a minute.  It turned out well and we are very pleased.

Up and running

This shows in detail how we made the mount

Another shot

The monitor

After our run to Bozeman, Jan's haircut, a delicious pizza lunch, and a few errands in the "big" city, we were ready to move on again.

A happy Jan after our day in YNP

So up early again to leave by sunrise on our sortie back over to Fish Trap, the fishing access and campground on the Big Hole River near Wisdom, MT, a 180 mile trip including time to fuel and try to get one of the best waterfront sites in a first come, first serve place.  We had our heart set on the same awesome site we had earlier this year, but we forgot about hunting season in full swing here, so as we pulled down off the road we saw "our" site was taken!!!  But, another one was still available and we quickly squeezed in, and what did we find out?  This one was even better, super privacy like we had the whole river to ourselves, no lights, no noise, absolutely perfect!

We don't call too many sites perfect, but this one was.

From the river

And the happy old crotchety guy:-)

Hard to tell here, but this is a huge bird
We think a Bald Eagle youth fishing

Jan tried hard to capture it in flight

So now we are back down in Idaho at Picabo, which we like but should have done a little research before coming back to fish.  The Big Wood where we had such good luck in earlier is almost dry!  We are going up to Sun Valley and Ketchum to see if it's any better, but if not we are only here for a couple days before we, believe it or not, return to Ennis for a few more days.  Yup, we have a really hard time staying away from there:-)

Last Day in Ennis, Wow, a Whole Month!

Well here it is, time to move on already.  Seems like like we've been very busy, certainly have done a lot of fishing, and mostly successfully.  We've taken a bunch of rides and done quite a bit of exploring.  Not much hiking here as it turns out.  We've also taken a couple forays into Bozeman for groceries and other odds and ends, it's 40 miles each way, but it is so scenic.  Not bad for us, but I think it would wear on you if you lived here.  Ennis is a wonderful little town, and even has its own grocery store, hardware store, lumber yard, shops, a few restaurants, auto supply, and even a medical clinic/hospital, but......

We had a very common air fitting fail on the coach, a tee, and for some reason I didn't have a spare, very unusual, but I figured it should be easy to get, even here in Ennis, no.  I went to the auto parts store, the hardware store, and even the lumber yard as was recommended to me, and ended up driving to Bozeman to get the $7 part.  That would get to me.

We have had an interesting time with the weather, lots of extremes.  And the smoke has been very bad a few times, and wafts in and out the rest of the time.  And to think we saw no smoke before we got here a month ago and were starting to feel pretty cocky that it would be a year without fires, ha.  Looks like it is shaping up to be one of the worst, particularly on the west coast.  For us the fires in ID, MT, and WY have affected us the most, so as the wind shifts so does the smokiness.  And wind, man have we had some wind!  Shaking and rocking the coach wind, several of our neighbors have retracted their slides the wind has been that bad.  We luckily were shielded somewhat by our neighbor's rig, and the direction was such we left ours out.  We went from 96df, smoky and very windy to a storm with 50 mph gusts, rain mixed with snow with a high of 37df and below freezing for 2 nights, quite a change!  But it dusted the mountains beautifully.

This post will be mostly pictures, hope you enjoy them.

Looking west across Ennis Lake

Moonrise on a hot, hot evening

Someone's dream

Amber waves of grain

Back down the hill

The sunset is pretty

But the glow it gives to the mountains looking east is fantastic!

Here comes the weather

Yes, that's snow in the campground

A snowy view from our site the next morning

Even more snow to the north

We fished in the morning and then when we saw some clearing from the smoke, we grabbed some coffee and headed up on a loop road we found, it was a gorgeous day!

About as clear as it got with the smoke,
so we took advantage

Up we go

Spectacular

This was our coffee spot, not bad:-)
It's hard to see in the photo, but we are far, far above the valley

The last overlook before heading back down

The famous Madison River

Got one!

Taking a break

Lunch on the river with happy Jan

Doesn't get much better than this!

So a whole month here in Ennis, very out of character for us, would we do it again?  Maybe, but probably 3 weeks would be the max in the future.  That itch to get moving is strong with us:-)  It did afford us to slow down and not try to fit everything in a quick time frame, and as we sat still, we were able to meet some of our neighbors that moved in and out.  We especially enjoyed meeting and visiting with Ron and LuAnn, also fishermen. Funny, actually almost everyone here is a fisherman, that's what Ennis is, a fly fishermen's mecca.  

I'll leave you with one last picture, our last evening's view at cocktail hour.