Pandemic Diaries - Year 2, Road Trip to Arizona Part II

26 October 2021

I explained in my last blog that we drove from Bellingham, Washington, to Tucson, Arizona, where we will winter over.  Or winter.  Or spend the winter.  Regional differences and slightly different meanings, but yes, we'll be here until next spring.

The drive across Washington was pretty basic - we drove south on Interstate 5 (I-5) to a bit north of Seattle, took I-405 around to the east side of Lake Washington, and headed east on I-90.  We spent two days in Yakima, then headed east again.  Central and Eastern Washington are basically considered high desert.  The Cascade Mountains create the very green and wet environment of Western Washington, but they also cause the region east of the mountains to be in a rain shadow, and therefore a desert region.  We stopped at a few rest areas, and I took some photos to show how really dry and almost arid this part of the state can get.

 

We continued on I-90 across the northern panhandle of Idaho, and didn't really stop until we were in Montana.  The area around Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, looks lovely, but it's always rather crowded with vacationers so we always drive on through.  Northern Idaho is very hilly and green, more like western Washington, as we begin the climb up to the Rocky Mountains in Montana.  And western Montana is also full of huge evergreen trees, hills, lakes, rivers.

We stopped at a rest area that had really interesting info signs as well as lovely views of the river and hills beyond.  One sign focused on the bald eagle, which was once an endangered species but now, due to conservation efforts and habitat protection, the eagles have made a comeback in Montana; the nesting sites have increased from about 17 sites in 1980 to over 300 sites today.  One nesting area was visible from this scenic rest area, but I didn't see any eagles nearby.

 

The second sign gave all kinds of information about the geology of this area.  About 15,000 years ago, during the most recent ice age, a huge glacier moved down from British Columbia, Canada, and blocked the Clark Fork River in northern Idaho.  This ice dam created the largest glacial lake known to have ever existed, Glacial Lake Missoula.  The body of was was comparable to the size of Lake Ontario today!  This backed-up water eventually broke through the ice dam and the huge amount of water rushed toward the Pacific Ocean, triggering epic floods that scarred the landscape especially of eastern Washington.

 

Additionally, this ancient lake refilled and emptied seasonally for the next 2000 or so years, and evidence of the changing shorelines can still be seen as one drives across the region. 

It really was interesting, and explained part of why eastern Washington is so flat and barren!

We spent a day in Missoula so I could drive north and visit what was previously called the National Bison Range, established in 1908 and once part of the National Wildlife Refuge System.  In 2020, the US Congress returned the Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nations, the people who originally inhabited this region and who have their own cultural traditions and interactions with the bison.

 

I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce the names of the Native American nations that make up this confederation, but one sign included Séliš (the people we call Salish), Q´lispé, and Ksanka people as the stewards of the Bison Range.  (Q´lispé really shouldn't be an apostrophe before the L, it's more of an accent mark over the L.  But my keyboard is limited in what I can do with it.)

 

Anyway, the National Bison Range was originally established to provide a refuge for the bison in western Montana, and the current Bison Range carries on that mission and tradition.

The bison here at the Bison Range are descended from a free-ranging Reservation herd started by tribal members in the 1800s, when plains bison were near extinction.  A Pend d'Oreille man, Little Falcon Robe, travelled to the northern Great Plains and returned to his home on the Reservation here with a group of bison calves.  Their descendants live at the Bison Range today.  There are currently between 350-400 bison here at the Range, and an estimated 500,000 bison on public and private land in the US today.

There was the usual information about bison being large animals up to 2000 pounds (900 kg!), able to run as fast as 30 mph (almost 50 mph), and able to jump as high as 4 or 5 feet (1.3 to 1.6 meters).  That for our safety, we should remain in our cars, and only walk on designated trails.

I paid my entrance fee at the visitor's center, received a lovely day pass to hang on the rearview mirror (though I just put it on the dashboard, I find things hanging from the mirror are very distracting), and asked about the two drives.  The longer drive is the Mountain Drive, which begins as a one-way drive and skirts the foothills to the mountains on the northern border of the range.  This drive then meets up with the Grasslands Drive, which is a two-way drive.  But since the Mountain Drive is one-way, those driving on the Grasslands Drive need to turn around and return the same way they came.

Turned out the best chance of seeing bison is on the Grasslands Drive, so I headed off that way.  Of course, I'm not good at following directions, and the woman who gave me directions had me quite confused, so I got totally lost and ended up at the picnic grounds below the entire range.  I met a friendly family group who tried to help me, but they were equally confused by my map and my directions.  So I went back to the visitor's center, and the woman gave me very exact directions, and I headed off on the Grasslands route.

The scenery was beautiful - all fields and gentle slopes of golden wheat and amber grain.  Tiny flowers in the grasses alongside the road.  Dark green conifers on the taller hills beyond the grassy areas.  Dotted random trees and bushes, some craggy rocky outcroppings.  Stark but beautiful, with clouds scudding by overhead because it was a windy day.

 

Well, the bison were way up on the hills of the grasslands region.  Too far for good photos, but they're the little dark dots up on the flattish areas of the long hills.  They weren't close enough to the road for personal photos, but at least they were somewhat visible.  It was a little disappointing, but, well, free range animals are just that, free to range wherever they want.  As much as I like to see them close up, they have no obligation to do so.  They also have little desire to meet me in person, no matter how much I'd like to think that they know I'm their friend, and they would be my friend if they met me.  (Really, I do know how unrealistic that thought is.)

I did see quite a few pronghorn antelope, the females mostly nibbling grass or using the longer grass as camouflage.  There were also small groups of female elk and deer trotting around.  If you look closely at some of the photos, you can see a somewhat blurry deer or elk in there.

One male pronghorn did come by near enough for a few decent photos.  He really was majestic, listening for any danger, trying to protect his herd of females, as they walked through the tall grasses.

Clouds kept blowing through, and the wind started picking up.  When I finished the Grasslands Drive, I could see rain approaching from the west, so it seemed like a good time to drive back to Missoula.  

It was absolutely worth this little side trip, even though I didn't get to see any of my bison friends close up and personal.  Some enlarged photos, and there are larger versions of the maps showing our general route.