Into the Montana Wilderness

Dad says that wilderness is a place that used to be everywhere before there were so many humans. It’s where humans don’t live and rarely mess up the place like they do in cities. Some wilderness allows humans to visit but under strict rules of behavior. They have to behave just like us dogs do!

So Dad said we were going to drive into some wilderness today. That sounded fun to me. I was expecting to see a lot of animals that live where humans don’t. I love to smell and see non-human animals. It’s good for my soul.

We drove to a place Dad called Gravelly Range in the State humans call Montana. First we drove for a long time along a highway that follows this long river Dad said humans call the Madison River. There were men standing along the river with those long poles with strings attached to the ends that they dangle in the water hoping to attract fish. I stuck my head out the window of the Jeep and let the smells of the countryside fill my nose. Cows dominated the smellscape, but I did smell some Elk, Moose and even some coyotes and bears. But alas, I didn’t see them along the highway. I did see the cows and I barked at them to keep them away from us.

We crossed the Madison River on our way to the wilderness.

We turned off the highway and drove over a bridge to cross the Madison River. Dad stopped to point his black box at the river and I felt the fresh spray of the water hit me in the face. I liked that. We climbed a hill and were soon on a bumpy road up a road named Johnny Ridge road. There were lots of wildflowers and lots of trees along the road. We stopped and Dad took my photo next to what he called Wild Blue Flax wildflowers. I don’t mind since he always gives me a treat when I’ve posed for him. It’s boring, but I like helping Dad with his pointing box.

Dad paid me to pose in the Wild Blue Flax wildflower patch. We stopped a lot!

Dad stopped a lot of times and almost every time he let me jump out and sniff around. Dad just lay on the ground with his black box pointing at flowers and I had all the fun running around and smelling things. Once, I knew that a skunk had been there recently. (That’s not hard to know!) I also smelled a bear but he wasn’t close by so I didn’t tell Dad about it. It gets him too excited. Dad said there were lots of beautiful flowers. You remember that one flower is about the same to me as another, but Dad gets his jollies shaken with each different flower he sees. However, there was one flower that had a very strong smell that I remember. Dad called it Hooker’s Onion.

This Hooker's Onion smelled really strong. Normally, I'm not interested in wildflowers.

We drove over really rough rocks and I bounced around in the Jeep. I hit my head once on the top, but it didn’t hurt me. I was kinda fun as I put my head out of the jeep to look around. Once we got near the top of the road I saw snow. It was the middle of July and there was snow on the ridge. I love snow. I was born in a place with lots of snow, so I miss it. Dad said that was quite a view, with blue sky, snow, green grass and finally yellow wildflowers.

I was happy to see some snow up here. I missed the snow. It's in the middle of summer.

We turned onto Gravelly Range Ridge Road (according to Dad’s expert sense of geography) and soon were on a wider less bumpy dirt road. There were views of mountains and fields of wildflowers and lots of animal smells everywhere. We stopped many times and I could look over the valleys to see the whole world from up here. There were fields that I could run and jump and smell. It was lots of fun up here.

We got to the top of Gravelly Range road and you could see forever or at least to Black Butte mountain.

Dad said the yellow flowers were called Old Man of the Mountain. They didn't look like humans to me!

The most common wildflower up here Dad called Old Man of the Mountain. They were all over the place and Dad pointed his black box at me when I was standing in them. Dad said they were yellow and resembled sunflowers with a big eye in the middle of each flower. Another very common one was called Sky Pilot. Dad said enjoyed the combination of the purple and the yellow everywhere he looked around him.

I got to see a lot of wilderness from the Jeep window along Gravelly Range Ridge Road.

We stopped to eat at Black Butte. There was even snow there.

We stopped to eat lunch next to a big rock growing out of the ground. Dad said it was called Black Butte and that it was the insides of an ancient volcano that once spit hot rocks from the Earth. Wow, I’m glad I wasn’t here then!

I could get out and run around and look into the valleys below. It was fun.

We drove for almost 60 miles along the ridge of this mountain range. We saw about 2 other humans, so I guess it qualifies as wilderness. There were a lots of small birds and Dad saw a red-tailed hawk too. We didn’t see any bears, but we did see some antelopes and deer. In fact, once two of them were eating together. Dad says that’s pretty rare to see them together. I didn’t even scare them away and Dad pointed his black box at them.

We saw deer and antelope grazing together on our way home.

We turned off the ridge road and went down into the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge (whew, that’s a lot to type!) and followed a sandy road home. We stopped once in this large field with millions of wildflowers called the Lupine. Dad and I saw an Antelope and Dad pointed his black box at it.

Pronghorn was grazing in a field of purple Lupine wildflowers.

It was a nice day, but a long one. Dad said we drove 145 miles and it took us 11 hours to do that! I was tired of jumping in and out of the Jeep all day, but it was worth it. All the smells and the images will keep me busy dreaming outside the motorhome for days.

Arf

Reggie

Here's a map and virtual tour of the Gravelly Range Ridge Road that Dad made.