The longest three mile trail in Montana (Part 4)

This will be the last post in this series: after all, how much can be said about a three mile trail?
The Clark Fork of the Columbia River flows in a northwesterly direction for about three hundred miles from its source in the Deerlodge National Forest at the Continental Divide near the town of Butte Montana [...]

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Still don’t like that name!

Vetch. Somehow it seems unjust for a very pretty flower to have such a name. I greatly prefer calling it “Wild Pea”. Oh, well… it doesn’t seem to mind.
American vetch, vicia americana
The blossoms

A stalk of blossoms

A hillside of WIld peas (with the Coeur d’Alene mountains as a backdrop).

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The longest three mile trail in Montana (Part 3)

Here are some of the flowers growing along the upper part of trail 205 ( 3,500 ft to 5,000 ft).
Red clover

Miner’s lettuce, claytonia perfoliata

Tolmie star-tulip

Tolmie star-tulips

A hillside of Blue-eyed Marys

A ridgetop covered with Arrowleaf Balsamroot

Very colorful Tolmies

Yellow Indian Paintbrush

Lupine

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Patrick’s Creek

This small meadow is along the lower end of Patrick’s Creek not far from where it flows into the Clark Fork River as the big river takes a short journey of twenty miles due east through the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of western Montana before turning sharply to the left and resuming its northward flow toward [...]

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The longest three mile trail in Montana (Part 2)

Here are some of the flowers which grow along the lower part of trail 205. (Yes, I do favor the Harebells: I see so few of them and those only in this general area of the Coeur d’Alene Mountains.)
Harebells, campanula rotundifolia

Unknown

Unknown

Orange Honeysuckle, lonicera ciliosa

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The longest three mile trail in Montana (Part 1)

It began yesterday and will continue tomorrow (at least the posting part of it).
It’s time to replenish the firewood supply for winter and we’ve been working quite diligently on doing just that. Early yesterday morning I tackled the job of splitting and stacking the last of the wood my son and I have hauled down [...]

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–or–

Finally, we had a day with no rain: that called for a leisurely stroll up towards the Cherry Peak area. The trail there is on what was an old road from the trail head and so it’s quite wide for a trail and has a rather regular incline to it making it pretty easy hiking [...]

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Early winter

There was a snow storm in western Montana yesterday and we’re planning a wood cutting trip this weekend, and so I made a brief exploratory trip to Siegel pass today with the Jeep to see if the road was passable (and to get a few shots of wildflowers). It was passable after I removed three [...]

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Finally, Cherry Peak

Yesterday a short drive in the Jeep enabled me to find out that the road to one of my favorite trailheads is now passable, and so today I had to see how far up the trail itself I could go before being stopped by the snow. As it turned out, about 3 miles, but far [...]

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Calypso

It has only been a few years since I first saw one of these, but now spring just wouldn’t be the same for me without them.
The Calypso orchid or Fairyslipper (Calypso bulbosa).

To be able to grow at all, Calypso orchids need a particular mycorrhizal fungus in the soil to provide sugars and minerals necessary for [...]

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