The Last Best Place

It was almost 100 degrees when we landed at SLC, so we held out little hope of relief from the Florida head we had endured in August. But our luck was about to change, beginning with randomly running into our friend and colleague from MN and NZ, Loree, at the airport. 

It was still sweltering when we pulled up the driveway in Warm Springs. . . but what a driveway!

Even better, a cool front came through, and brought Autumn with it. And Fall means migration, so we loaded the spotting scope into Babe and drove one whole mile to the Arco ponds, where we saw buffleheads, horned grebe, blue teal, common and hooded mergs, goldeneye, scaup, gadwall, wigeon and redheads. Oh yeah, we also saw a herd of 200 elk on the hills just behind.

One of our favorite local trails is Lost Creek, which closes during the winter, which is too bad because it would be an absolutely amazing backcountry ski--last winter, we drove out to it the night before the park closed and saw mountain lion tracks.

Another favorite is Thomson Park in Butte, which is an absolute gem. We were accompanied by our friend, Milan, on the 7 mile hike to Blacktail. Below is the view from the Beaver Ponds trail lookout back towards Mt. Haggin.

 

Venturing back across the Great Divide, we visited Lewis & Clark Caverns Park, where we saw two new birds, Townsend's warbler and Cassin's vireo. The photo below was taken from Greer Gulch lookingsothwest towards the Jefferson River valley and Tobacco Root mountains.