Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

June 20, 2024

A Bear 

Back on the touristy trail this morning -- our first stop, after breakfast at McDonalds again, was the Black Eagle Falls Overlook.  This sign was on the parking lot at McDonalds.  Joe said, no wonder we get so confused.

We saw this dam and falls yesterday from the other side of the river. We could also see the bridge that we walked across here. 

We drove onto the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center next. This was one of the better museums we’ve been to.  Of course, we have a vested interest with our history of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions in Indiana. I grew up passing the Lewis and Clark Trail sign every time I went to town.  We got there just in time to see a 30-minute video of their exploration from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Then we walked the exhibits. This exploration was called the Corp of Discovery. I asked if that name was the forerunner of the Corp of Engineers, but they said they were not related.

They  had a buffalo statue just inside, so I got pictures of both sides, since they have different artwork on each side.  We still have to chase down some more of these buffalo.

Because of the 5 falls here (the Missouri River drops over 500 feet through this stretch), they had to portage their canoes 18 miles over land.  This is one of their boats.  You can see the wheels they use to "tow it" over land.

.

The Indian woman who joined them on this expedition was named Sacagawea.  One of the interns at the Museum gave a talk about her following the film.  We spent some time at this museum, and it was time for ibuprophen when we got back to the Jeep.

Our next stop was the Giant Spring State Park and Fish Hatchery which was right next door.  Over 150 million gallons of water flow from the Giant Springs everyday and cascade into the Missouri River.  T

.

This is a beautiful park and the springs are awesome. You can walk all the way around the flowing Springs.  The water is crystal clear. Over the bridge, there is a very short river that runs into the Missouri.

O

.

We walked over to the fish hatchery. There’s more of that here that we didn’t go to, but there were some beautiful rainbow trout in there, there were two orange ones and they were called albino rainbow trout.

Our next stop was the Rainbow Falls Overlook. This is the one we stopped at yesterday, but because it’s turned slightly, we couldn’t see it real well from that side.

 The water is really flowing out of the far side on this one. 

Our last stop on this road was at the Crooked Falls Overlook. We actually still got a good view of the Rainbow Falls flow from this one.

 The Crooked Falls is much smaller, and then you can see the river curving on beyond. Beyond this is the Ryan Falls that we went to yesterday, which is the Great Falls. There’s one other falls on the map named Converged Falls but since we didn’t think we wanted to go scuba diving we skipped that one. We think we’re done with the falls here now and it’s only 1:15 and we have two more days and so we’re in good shape. The one thing left on our agenda is the Charles Russell Museum and will save that for tomorrow — we have done enough walking for now.

During our lunch break at Wendy’s, we decided to make a 35-mile drive down passed Belt, Montana to the Sluice Boxes State Park (so much for our short day). We’re not sure what we’ll see there, but it gives us a another drive through the countryside which we enjoy.  And it paid off big time.  We saw our first bear!  Good thing I had my new binoculars!

I spotted the bear on the side of a ridge, then it went to the top.  No pictures, we were too busy with the binoculars.  But we got to watch it run for quite a ways.  It seemed to be chasing a big bird.  That was exciting!!  Of course, when I yelled "stop, I see something, I think it's a bear," we almost got rear-ended.  The guy driving behind did not appreciate us barely pulling off the road, and he honked at us.   I guess we need a sign on the back of theJeep that says this vehicle stops for bears because we got honked at when we pulled over suddenly barely off the road.  This picture was taken of the same ridge, just further down.  Eventually the bear ran back up to the top and out of sight, but we got to see him a lot of times. He kept running in and out through the bushes and over and behind rocks.  Joe said he saw him at least three times silhouetted.

.

We saw several snow fences on this drive and we are definitely in snow country. This area is so wide open. You can see forever until you get to the mountains which are still snow-covered.

We continued on to our state park.  

This was a very pretty drive, about especially the 10 miles on 89 before the state park. We had mountain ridges on both sides and the Belt Creek that kept cutting back-and-forth. The state park wasn’t much, just mostly a parking lot with hiking trails to the sluice boxes.  I walked over to the beginning of one trail, and I knew that wasn't for us.  I saw some comments on something later that sounded like people take canoes down to the sluice boxes on the creek.

We drove on passed the park to the dirt the gravel road up into the mountain to see if we could stir up anything else. We did stop at an overlook. We’re still in the park.

This drive brought us closer to the snowcapped mountains. A lot of the snow has disappeared, but one mountain in the background is still fully blanketed. 

While Joe was taking the picture of the snow-covered mountains from his side , I turned and looked out my side and there was a big muley deer just laying under the shade tree watching us.  Right after we took off, we found another deer out in the wide open space.

 

We think we found our summer home.  We saw a few of these old shacks back here.  We are really off the grid.

But there were also some nice properties back here.  We came upon one really pretty ranch, nice fence, nice opening, nice cattle.

The gravel road started out pretty good for about 7 miles and then it deteriorated into Joe’s kind of road for the last 12 miles.  For these 12 miles, we were probably averaging 5 to 8 miles an hour for most of it.  We entered the Lewis and Clark Forest, and that's where the road got bad.  The bear sign was right beside the forest sign.

We stopped at one point just to get out of the Jeep.  It is beautiful scenery back here.  We could imagine why someone would want to live back here, but it is a long way from anywhere.

 Once we got over the top and started down, we had fewer rocks and more mud.  We forged a few of these mud holes as we came down off the peak.  In one of them, we slid a little, but Joe said he found bottom, and that was all that mattered.

We have seen a lot of this creeping juniper while we have been here.  At the Lewis and Clark Museum, they identified a bunch of outside plants, including this one.  Usually, part of it is still green, which makes a very pretty landscaping plant.

We came back out on the highway 8 mile miles south of where we went into the Sluice Box State Park.  I was really glad to see pavement again.

We drove through the little town of Belt and fueled, then headed back to Great Falls.  We stopped at the edge of town at Panda Express for dinner.  That was 2 hour drive. 

But we did chase down one buffalo statue in town.

We got home at 5:20, exhausted.  Those long rides in the Jeep are not easy.