David and Enid's Travels

Beehive Basin

It was definitely cold last night.  There was frost on the windshield this morning.  Fall has arrived here in the mountains of Montana.

We drove to Big Sky after breakfast and stopped at the tourist information office where we got some information and maps about the hikes in the area.  We decided to do the Beehive Basin hike, since it was about the right distance.  To reach the trailhead you drive for 9 miles west of Big Sky towards the ski resort area.  The valley is dotted with expensive looking chalets and houses (many of which are for sale if you have a few extra million dollars).  There are many, many ski runs visible on the mountain.  But it is definitely off season, as nothing appeared to be very busy.

Butterflies on asters

The trail turned out to be almost exactly 5 km long to the top and an elevation gain of 450 m.  The elevation gain is spread over much of the distance, so it was never extremely steep.  The steepest part is the last 1.5 km, about the part that is inside the Lee Metcalf wilderness area.  The first part of the hike is abutted by private land, and there were some nice “cabins” visible on the hills beside the trail.  The last 500 m is definitely the steepest, and then the trail opens out into a wide basin with a very small and pretty lake, framed by the backdrop of rugged mountains.  The trail is in very good condition, and surrounded by very lovely views.  Though there were not many flowers still blooming, we did find on the way back, a few late asters that were covered with butterflies.  All around the meadows were covered with seed pods, so it must have been very spectacular in the early summer.

The fisheries department are trying to kill off the non-native trout in the lake.  They have set several gill nets in the lake.  We spoke to one of the men working on this project.  He said they estimated there were about 200 fish in the lake, and they have so far netted 42.  They want to get the population down to a level where it can no longer reproduce, and then they may re-introduce the native cut-throat trout to the lake. 

There were quite a few people that made the hike today.  The weather was beautiful, sunny, and a very nice temperature to walk.  We ate our lunch at the top in the basin, surrounded on three sides by high mountain cliffs.  It was a lovely spot.

Red Cliff and cave

There was a very pretty sunrise this morning.  The only other campers in the campground were also up early this morning, and they were taking pictures of the sunrise over the lake.  We left at 7:30 am, drove through Helena without stopping and bought gas in the small town of Townsend.  We noticed what seems to be a nice forestry service campground along the Missouri River, right on the outskirts of Townsend, and thought it might be a nice place to stay in the future.

We got to Bozeman about 9:30, and first went to McDonald’s to use the wifi (and get a cup of coffee).  After catching up on emails, we went to the REI store, where we bought some clothes, and I got a new pair of hiking shoes.  They had an interesting wood burning stove there, which uses heat from the fire to generate electricity, charge the battery which runs a fan, and also can be used to charge USB devices.  I was tempted to buy one, but after reading several reviews on the Internet decided against it.  It does seem like a neat idea, but apparently you have to keep stoking it up with wood constantly, which doesn’t work so well when you are cooking on it.

There is a fair amount of construction taking place on Highway 191 south of Bozeman.  We had to wait for pilot cars twice so it took us some extra time to get to our campsite here at Red Cliff.  We weren’t sure where the site was, and the directions we had didn’t mention that it is just south of the town of Big Sky.  If we’d known that we’d have been a lot more confident we were heading in the right direction.  We did find the site, and it’s clearly marked with a highway sign.  As we learned later tonight from the campground hosts it also has a newly constructed left turn lane.

We hiked for a couple of hours south along the river.  It is obvious why this is called Red Cliff campground, as right where the trail starts is a high red cliff with a large cave.  The trail that leaves from the end of the campground eventually joins with trail 165, which is marked on my topographical maps.  We didn’t have time to go to the end of the trail, which runs for several miles back into the mountains, but did follow it for a few kilometres.  At first the trail follows the river, then it goes up a switchback for a while (we were worried that it was just going to be a steep hike up the hill), but it soon flattens out, and was a nice pleasant hike through some large trees.  We saw a lot of wolf scat with lots of hair in it along the trail.

Gallatin River

There are a lot of very large old trees in this campground.  Many of the trees here have one or two plastic “buttons” in a strip of plastic about 2 inches by 4 inches long nailed to them.  It is some type of insecticide that is being applied to the trees to minimize the effect of parasites (pine beetles?). 

Hauser Lake

We got away in good time this morning and drove to Milk River where we checked our email.  From there it is just a short drive to the border crossing where everything went very smoothly.

After crossing the border we drove to Shelby, MT and got gas, then continued on to Great Falls.  We stopped there to buy a good supply of groceries, stocking up for about the next ten days.

After Great Falls we drove to just north of Helena, MT.  The White Sandy campground is a forest service campground, but very nice.  It is on the shore of Hauser Lake, a reservoir on the Missouri River.  When we got here there was a small notice posted on the registration board that the campsite is closed from today until September 20.  There is no-one else in the campground, but the ranger said we could stay here for one night.  They are closing the campground to seal coat the roads.  The roads are in very good shape though, so there can’t be a lot of work to do.

I washed the front bumper of the Tahoe, and the front of the trailer this afternoon.  They were very badly covered with grasshoppers.

We drove through quite a bit of light rain today.  It was also very windy this afternoon.  It threw the trailer around a great deal, since it was mostly a cross-wind.  It hasn’t died a great deal yet this evening, and since it is a north west wind, it’s quite a bit cooler.

Unfortunately there is no T-Mobile coverage in this area, so our Roam Mobility cell phone doesn’t do us any good.  We will have to stop somewhere to get wireless access to post this.  We are not likely to have any coverage in Yellowstone at all.

Hoodoos along the Milk River

It began to rain last night, and it poured heavily for at least an hour.  It was just about the time most people were starting to build campfires for the evening, so the campsite quieted down very quickly.  It then rained off and on, but ended sometime before morning.  It was cloudy dull but dry as we packed up and drove towards Taber.

After fueling at Taber we tried to contact this park, but the office wasn’t open on Saturday.  We drove on to Milk River where there is a large Travel Alberta site (designed to capture Americans as they cross the border).  The young female clerk didn’t have any more luck than us, though she tried to get information about the park by Internet and phone.  The only real concern was that the park website showed the campground full.  We didn’t think that was credible at this time of year, and that it was just a reflection of the fact that the campground is not reservable after the September long weekend.

It turns out that our assumption was correct, for the park was fairly empty when we arrived here shortly after 12:30 (now this evening it isn’t more than half full).  I had some difficulty getting the trailer into the campsite, so drove around the loop a second time to change the angle at which I was approaching it, and had success on my second try.

After the trailer was set up we went for a hike along the Hoodoo trail.  We had picked up some brochures about the trail and the rock art from the campground host; however, we had a bit of trouble locating where the trail actually started.  Once we got our bearings, we followed the trail, which climbs up and down through the hoodoos, along the bank of the river.  At times the trail is steep and goes through narrow openings between the rocks, just wide enough to get through with a backpack on.  Many of the steepest parts have steps cut into the sandstone, and at one of them there was a handrail.

The battle scene

The hoodoos themselves would be a very pretty hike, but there are also a few places along the trail where you can see petroglyphs and pictographs.  At the first of these sites there are a few carvings in the sandstone about 10 feet from the ground (if there were lower carvings they would likely have been obliterated by modern graffiti artists scratching their names overtop).  The most impressive site though is the “Battle Scene” which is a very large drawing with many, many pictographs of a First Nations battle between two or more warring tribes, sometime around 1866.  The drawing shows a large number of men with guns, two camps with teepees, and two opposing forces shooting at each other.

Past this part the trail climbs up a long sloping hill to a viewpoint that overlooks the Milk River Valley and the old site of a NWMP post.  The post was set up in 1887 (on a site where the Mounties had originally arrived in 1874), and used as a border patrol post along “Police Coulee” which runs southwards and crosses over into Montana.   The post was finally abandoned in 1918.

After supper this evening we walked to the beach area on the Milk River which is very close to our campsite.  They must have a lot of trouble with beaver here, for the entire campsite is fenced, and signs along the fence remind you to close the gates to keep the beavers out of the park.

It didn’t rain overnight, so we hiked the Coulee View trail, which starts from the visitor centre, this morning.  First though we registered for the bus tour of the restricted part of the park for this afternoon.  It was a good thing that it hasn’t rained, for the clay of the coulee would be impossible if it was wet.  At several of the steeper spots they’ve put up stairs, sometimes metal grates, but the clay would still be incredibly slippery on the steep slopes.  It was much cooler as well this morning, so it was a nice hike.

I’d taken the cell phone with me, and at the top of the hills it received signal.  We were able to read and respond to a couple of emails.  I will probably hike back there tonight so that I can post this blog.

After we came down from this trail we hiked from our campsite to the Cottonwood Trail.  This is a very flat hike that forms a circle loop near the Red Deer River.  Some of the ancient cottonwoods are massive, several feet in diameter, and they are estimated to be over 200 years old.  They don’t grow very tall though, as they wouldn’t be more than 20 feet high.

At a little after 1:00 we headed up to the museum at the visitor centre which has we visited until we boarded the bus at 3:00 for the Explorers bus tour.   The bus tour wasn’t as good as I’d hoped as we had little time off the bus to view the scenery. At the four stops we did have, we spent much of the time listening to talks about the explorers, most of it information we already knew.  The third stop was good though as they have an almost intact skeleton of a duck billed dinosaur. The next stop was also good as it featured some spectacular hoodoos.

It has gotten much cooler this afternoon and a lot of cloud has rolled in. We were worried that it was going to rain as we left the roof vents open in the trailer. Fortunately it has not started yet, but it is much cooler than this morning and quite windy.

Yesterday we left Prince Albert shortly before noon, drove to Eston (which we reached around 3:30) and visited with Enid’s mother.  We took her from the Jubilee Lodge to where we had set up our trailer, and had a nice barbeque for supper.  Duane also came in, taking off some time from preparing for harvest, and we had a good visit on a beautiful evening.

This morning we stopped back at the lodge to visit for a bit, then left at very nearly 9 am.  We headed west on highway 44, which got considerably worse as we got closer to the Alberta border.  The GPS wanted to take us down highway 21, but we didn’t want to go that way, as we planned to join up with Alberta Highway 554.  That road is in very good condition, so once we reached it, travel was a lot easier.  One thing you need to be careful of on this route is to make sure you have enough fuel.  There is none between Eatonia, SK and Jenner, AB, a distance of about km.
We got to Dinosaur Provincial Park at about 1:00 pm.

As we left the highway we were worried since the park sign said the campground was full.  However, I’d checked on the Internet last night and it looked like there were many sites available.  That turned out to be the case, and they simply haven’t changed the sign since the long weekend.

After setting up the trailer we went back to the information centre.  There we got a brochure describing the short (3km) scenic drive and the hikes that depart from it.  You can’t go into much of the park without an accompanying guide, and we had missed the only guided hike today (it was departing just as we arrived).  We did hike around the badlands trails and enjoyed the scenery.  There are also two places where they have erected shelter buildings over the remains of dinosaurs that are still in the ground, so we saw those old bones.

It was very warm today.  The temperature was well over 30 C, probably close to 35.  There was a light breeze, but it felt very warm while walking in the dry heat of the badlands.  Tonight it has cooled off some, and there is a large threatening thundercloud building to the west.  The forecast is for rain showers.  If it does, we won’t be doing much hiking tomorrow on the slippery bentonite clay of the badlands.