Three Months of Bad Sledding

Try taking your sled down that "hill"!

It snowed today, and the first snowfall always makes me think of sledding. It has been said that summertime in Michigan is just three months of bad sledding, but let me tell you about the good sledding.

My sister and I started out on the "bunny hill" behind the house. We stayed outside playing nicely together (mostly, anyway) until we could no longer feel our fingers and toes. As we got older, Mom let us walk down the road a little bit to some higher hills. Maybe she got tired of us going up into the woods to get just a little higher up the hill, or perhaps it was the repeated "thumps" on the back of the house when we couldn't get stopped in time. Or maybe the final straw was when our friend went over the side of the very large pit that my dad was digging into the hillside for a root cellar. Yeah, that probably did it!

If you click on these, you can view
them full-screen.

The very best hill for sledding that I remember from childhood, though, was
across the road from our Christian day school. It was steep and smooth and had plenty of room at the bottom to squeeze every last inch of momentum out of the run. The tracks got icy with thawing and refreezing, and we built in bumps and jumps ~ we could fly! (Of course, then we had to trudge our way all the way back up to the top.)

At this point, you might be thinking, "But isn't Montana nothing but mountains? That must make for great sledding." Ah, not so, my friends, not so. The western half of the state is indeed mountainous (way too steep and rocky for safe sledding), but the eastern half is largely flat. We are considered high desert, and yes, we have cacti and rattlesnakes. The flat areas are cut through by deep coolies with steep, rocky sides, often with small creeks in the bottom. The wind doesn't help either, as it tends to clear bare patches.

No St Bernard on duty. Sled at your own risk!
 

Perhaps I have not put enough effort into finding just the right hill, or maybe some childhood memories are best left right there ~ in childhood. I think I will go make a cup of hot chocolate.

This one has no trees, rocks, drop-offs.... or slope.

 



The hill in the foreground has the right slope, but the drop-off is a killer.

 

 

Opening Day

Tomorrow is "opening day" for hunting mule deer with rifles. (More ardent sportsmen than me have been out since the first of September hunting antelope with bow and arrows.) BUT, I have decided to take the year off. Unfortunately, the sun will rise without me on one of my very favorite places in Montana ~ a place I can only go during hunting season. "But why?" you may ask.



Let me explain. Montana ranchers have partnered with the state and with hunters to control the deer populations on their properties. They allow hunters to treat their private land like "home" during the season in exchange for avoiding over-population. I have harvested two decent mulie bucks on one such property.

Yes, we found our way to the bottom of this one.

It is a tract of land that Dan and I have spent time exploring extensively. There is a deep canyon that we made our way down into, only to find that we had to climb a mini-waterfall to get back out of. An adjacent plot has a couple of coulies that had me looking back over my shoulder for a mountain lion (think Incredible Journey). Dan likes to remind me that lions pick off the stragglers. Hahaha!

Ever get the feeling you are being watched?

Perhaps my favorite thing about the place, though, is the view ~ we can see

A rainbow in a sunrise

three separate mountain ranges. Nothing beats a sunrise turning the snow-capped mountains pink!

The other special thing is the wildlife. One chilly morning, we were sitting on a rock ledge overlooking a little valley while the sun was coming up, and a porcupine waddled by about 3 feet behind us! He stopped and looked at us as if to say, "WHAT, pray tell, are you?" Down in the canyon, in the middle of the day, a little owl hooted at us from his perch. Maybe he was too drowsy to care enough to fly away. Two years ago, my dad came out from Michigan to hunt with us, and we watched a very nice buck pester a doe, who was having no part of his amorous advances. It was cool to watch in the wild what I had previously only seen on TV. And last year, there was the owl who kept hooting in the grey pre-dawn. You can't get any more "one with nature" than that.

Hmmm... I am feeling almost a little homesick. Maybe I will have to go get a license after all. A license to wander... Rifle optional. :)

Playing Downstairs

Beartooth Mountains

Bighorn Mountains

It looks a little chilly in the attic today...

As fall progresses, Old Man Winter starts closing up the "attic rooms" where we love to play. So yesterday, when we decided to go for a ride, we headed for the Pryors, which top out at only about 8,000 ft. While we were getting breakfast at Hardee's on the way out of town, Dan's co-worker drove by hauling his 4-wheeler. Knowing that the Pryors are a favorite haunt of his, we hoped that maybe we would catch up with him. (He has been riding since he was a kid, so Dan and I, being "newbies", can learn a lot from him!) We overtook him at the gas station in Bridger and we continued on to the mountains together.


Maybe not today...

Even in the Pryors, there was snow on the highest peaks, as well as drifts over some of the roads. But there are lots of trails up there, so when the one we wanted to take was impassable, we just turned around and went another way.

 

 The day was fairly warm with almost no wind, so we spent some time wandering around in a high meadow. The guys climbed up and down the rocks along the edges and I kept trying for the perfect shots of the surrounding mountains and the valley below, especially the red canyon walls.



Eventually, we meandered back to the waiting vehicles and bid Old Man Winter goodbye... (at least for now. We are going to have to give more thought to snow shoes!) 
 

All over the mountains in Montana are individual
mining claims. Most are just a pile of rocks with a
claim stake in it, but this one was a little more
interesting than that. (Yes, I DID heed the
No Trespassing sign.)










This is Where I Want to Be

From the summit of the Beartooth Pass



From the Dead Indian Pass on the Chief Joseph Hwy

As I was surviving my half-hour on the elliptical this morning, the Alabama song "Right Where I am (is Where I Wanna Be)" came up on my i-pod. While on the elliptical (or even sitting at the computer typing this) is NOT where I want to be, one line in the song describes me perfectly ~ "Each to his own, but I feel at home, standin' on this mountain high."






From the plateau above Independence

My favorite part of any drive/hike/ride is when we come out of the tree line and reach the summit. I especially love the summits where we can see mountains in every direction. I thought I would share some of my favorite mountain vistas.  



Also from Independence

 Enjoy!

Iron Mountain

Benbow Road

This was taken from the Silver Run Plateau. Unfortunately, the day we actually made it to the top of Silver Run Peak (12,500 ft), it was snowing (in August!) and we couldn't see a thing. :(

 

Storming the Castles

Not long after we moved to Montana, we drove over the Castle Mountains in a Dodge Omni. Yeah... Not our smartest move ever, but we were new to Montana and new to mountains. Obviously, we lived to tell the tale ~ probably because God sometimes chooses to protect us from our own stupidity. ANYWAY, Friday afternoon, we returned to the Castles for the first time since that trip, but this time we took the atv's. We were too late in the season to go over the mountains, but we had a blast playing in well over a foot of snow! The views of the surrounding mountains were breathtaking.

The Crazy Mountains from the Castles

It was a tight squeeze!

 Saturday morning, we headed to "the range next door" ~ the Little Belts. It turned out to be a beautiful day to ride, and the trail recommended to us  was gorgeous! It wound its way through open aspen-filled meadows and shady, thick pine forests. The best part of the whole ride, though, was a stretch called Haymaker Narrows. The trail and the creek bottom braided their way through towering rock spires. Not a ride I would attempt during the spring run-off!



I saw something on Saturday that I have never seen in the wild before. I am fairly certain that I saw the back half of a wolverine! I gave half a second's thought to jumping off the machine to give chase, but then I remembered that a)wolverines have a notorious reputation for a very nasty disposition, and b)Dan had the camera anyway. Since he hadn't seen it and hadn't stopped, I continued on my merry way.


We ate our lunch on an outcropping overlooking the whole valley. We could see the Crazies, the Beartooth-Absoroka Range, and even the Pryors. The wind was a bit chilly, but the view more than made up for it. But, unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so we made our way back to the truck and called it a day.

P.S. We learned something on this trip: Perhaps there IS a time to stay on the paved road! My poor baby! :(

Michigan on my Mind

I hope that in light of today's government shutdown that this post does not seem frivolous. But, just maybe, you need to read something positive as much as I need to write it...



I absolutely LOVE fall! I love hoodies and crackling candles; a blustery, cloudy day spent in my jammies; and a hot bowl of chili or stew with fresh-from-the-oven biscuits.


In my "What Makes Me..." page (see sidebar), I mentioned that I am a Michigan transplant. While there is no denying the breath-taking beauty of afternoon sun on golden aspens, I sometimes still find myself a little homesick for Michigan's flamboyant color display. She decks herself in colors ranging from delicate peach and pink all the way to flaming tangerine, burgundy, and red.


The other thing about Michigan fall that I miss is apples, especially apple cider. Apples are to Michigan what corn, wheat, and sugar beets are to Montana. One just can't go very far without driving by an orchard. And in the fall, they all sell freshly squeezed apple cider. Mom always bought (or made) some, and if we were particularly good and helpful children, it wasn't too hard to talk her into making doughnuts to go with our cider. THAT, my friends, is a Michigan fall.