Blue Goose ~ Day 22

June 22, 2014 ~ Glasgow, MT to Lewiston, MT

The town was sleeping on this Sunday morning; even McDonald's didn't open for an hour ,so I got a bag of powdered mini donuts and coffee at a gas station after brushing my teeth. I kept adding products to make the coffee palatable…sugar, cream and then more of each. And throughout the day I ate the whole bag of 24 donuts. Yeah, pathetic, but I whenever I got the slightest hunger signal I reached into the open bag. I almost threw them out the window and should have, but they were much more tasty than I expected. 

My destination was Bowdoin NWR. I turned off US 2 on what I thought was a shorter route. I’ve done this several times and never quite remember which road I need, but with the iPhone I can easily find exactly where I am. I spent the first 90 minutes poking along the gravel roads before even getting into Bowdoin and immediately saw a Burrowing Owl on a fence post, utterly still and coolly staring back at me.

Burrowing Owl - near Bowdoin MWR - MT

And soon saw many more birds, including a Wilson’s Snipe, also perched and seemingly not bothered by my proximity. Then was a nondescript grayish-brown bird with big eyes that puzzled me until I saw two more cooperatively plucking grit in the road and realized they were Sprague Pipits, the skylarking bird of Lostwood that is seldom seen, though common in this part of the country. Pete Dunne says: “Uncommon, geographically restricted, habitat-specific, skulking, and really hard to find.” This was my second life bird of this trip. I figured the rest of the day would just be the frosting.

There was a large snake in the grass at the Visitor Center. I keep trying to develop a better attitude about snakes but have made no progress in that regard. Two gentlemen with binoculars were in a car in the parking lot looking at the trees around the center and, though they hadn’t seen it, thought it was probably a “bull snake.” I, of course, thought “rattler.”

Bowdoin was a refuge I visited for the first time with Maria, hoping for a Black-necked Stilt, and she almost immediately spotted one for me. We had left Ginny and Adam to hang around the
VC while we drove the 15-mile auto route through grasslands, along the shore of Lake Bowdoin and then through marshes, seeing most of the same birds I saw today. I thought of her with the sort of sad sweetness that comes over me with memories like this. The best bird I saw was a single Long-billed Curlew, but there were also many Marbled Godwits, one White-face Ibis, Wilson’s Phalaropes, Vesper, Grasshopper and Savannah Sparrows, a few BN Stilts, an American Avocet, ducks and grebes.... In the wetlands, the Marsh Wrens were very loudly scolding me as I drove by, sounding as though they were two feet away, but I didn’t see them and didn't wait for them to pop up. Or perhaps they were just singing on this fine June morning. I also saw my daily Common Yellowthroat. 

In Malta, I headed southeast to what is often referred to as the “jewel” in the NWR system, the Charles M. Russell NWR. I was starting to see blue-grey mountain ranges in the distance and, for a while, I skirted the Little Rockies, leaving ranch lands for modest hills and different flora, including evergreens. The refuge is huge - more than a million acres on both side of the Missouri River - 150 canoe miles, from the free-flowing upper part to the gigantic river / reservoir created by the Fort Peck Dam in the 1930s in eastern Montana. Ivan Doig's novel Bucking the Sun is a great story about the building of this gigantic dam. 

CMR NWR was stunning - much more beautiful than I expected. There was a sweet fragrance in the air as I drove through a landscape of yellow sweet clover, juniper and sage.

Charles M. Russell NWR - MT

Lewis and Clark traveled the Missouri so there were several informative signs, describing in their own words pretty much what I was seeing. Two-thirds of the auto route is high above the river and one-third in the bottoms where cottonwood fluff filled the air as it gently floated around. I just googled this and discovered that it is cottonwood seeds, and the fluff factor helps them float into habitat well away from the parent trees, since the cottonwood needs full sun to grow. The seeds "can't live in their own shade." Sort of like some kids. 

I continued through beautiful scenic country through the Judith Basin to Lewiston where I happened upon a local "Rest Area - Welcome Overnighters" on the top of the hill just west of town. What a sweet surprise. It is supported by local service organizations and businesses and donations from travelers. I drove through, saw a gentleman in a camp chair outside his RV reading, decided this was my kind of place, found a site under a tree. There were even clean and heated bathrooms. 

I spent the next hour looking throughout my entire van for the cable I needed to download photos from the new Canon to my computer. I did eventually find it, got settled with a glass of wine and spent two hours downloading and editing photos and writing. 

It got cold enough during the night that even under two blankets I was chilly when I woke up at 0445 as the temperature was in the 40s. I have a third blanket tucked under the cot that I can use if needed....or I may buy a good down sleeping bag and lighten my load. Too much stuff.....which made looking for the cable a process of removing and repacking just about everything in the van. In general though, other than always moving bags from one place to another, the cot has been just what I expected. I could put up the tent, but why??? when the process of getting the cot out of the car, setting up the tent and taking it down in any but totally perfect conditions is too much fuss. However, I do have that option. Also buying an ultra light-weight, high tech backpacker's cot is an option down the road.