I am very pleased to announce that one of my encaustic pieces was accepted into the 2016 National Juried Photo Encaustic Exhibition at the Sage Gallery in Portland, Oregon! It was a very competitive field with over 500 entries and only 27 selected for the show. If you are in the Portland area this month, I hope you can find time to see the show.
We left the Big Hole Battlefield and stopped at Jackson (home of Bubba the nearly fifteen year old basset hound at Rose’s Cantina) before our final destination – Bannack.
Bannack was Montana’s first territorial capital and the site of Montana’s first major gold strike. You just imagine its wild and woolly history. It is now a well-preserved ghost town along Grasshopper Creek with over sixty buildings to explore. Being a holiday weekend we found the parking lot to be quite full. However it never seemed crowded while we strolled through the town and poked around in the old buildings. Many visitors brought dogs. Not us. Mary and I took many photos and Ken enjoyed learning to pan for gold along with a bunch of kids. Volunteers were leading tours and demonstrating gold mining and performing music of the era.
In Montana, we stayed with friends in the Bitterroot Valley. They welcomed us with good food and hot showers! Sky and I got to do one day of agility (where she earned her first NADAC title) and the next day Mary took us on a big field trip! Our first stop was the Big Hole Battlefield National Historic Park.
Big Hole is the site of the biggest battle between the Nez Perce Indians and the US government. It is a sad and beautiful place. The Indians, native to the areas of SE Washington and Idaho, had camped there to regroup in a camas meadow along the stream before traveling to Canada where they hoped to escape. An attack in the wee hours of the morning left many dead. After burying their family members, the people continued to try to get to Canada but they were caught at Bear Paw and forced to reservations in Oklahoma. Later their Chief, Joseph, and some of his followers were sent to the Colville reservation in north central Washington where he died and was buried in Nespelem.
We left Lost Lake and drove east and south to explore the St Joe River watershed in north Idaho. We’d never visited that area before and were not sure where we were going to stay. Fortunately we found a very pleasant campground about ten miles out of St Maries and settled in for the night. It was unusual for a US Forest Service campground because it wasn’t in the forest. It was in a meadow of tall grass that was mowed for the camping areas. The river is wide and slow there, not the mountain stream that we were expecting. Across the river there was an active logging unit with folks starting work early in the morning. We discovered that the logging industry is still very active in this part of Idaho and we saw and heard many log trucks coming and going starting before five am!
The next day we explored Marble Creek – an area that once held millions of board feet of white pine trees. The history of the area was fraught with danger in the form of terribly hard work and sometimes criminal activities in order to take over the prime old growth forests. They are still logging there although most of the white pine is gone due to harvest and disease. Much of the drainage is now in a mixed stand of second growth. We were surprised with the diversity of the forest and rate at which trees grow there. We read that north Idaho gets on average, 45 inches of rain a year! That’s a lot compared to our paltry 12 or 15 inches of rain per year. No wonder the forest was so dense.
We drove on upstream to Avery which was a very busy railroad town for many years. The electrified Milwaukie train had a major stop there. We traveled up the North Fork of the St Joe following the route of the train tracks through several tunnels and across one old steel trestle. It is amazing to think of these huge projects that were accomplished in the 1800’s!
The next day we headed to Montana via Forest Road 50 along the St Joe and Gold Creek. When the asphalt ended we had left Idaho.
I’ve been visiting Lost Lake for nearly twenty years now. From the first time, I remember the loons. It was news to me that there were Common Loons in Washington. And then I realized that they were nesting here too!
Lost Lake is a small lake so it only hosts one nesting pair. There are a few other lakes in eastern Okanogan County and also in Ferry County that support a small population of nesting loons. Loons face many obstacles to raising their babies. Both parents take turns on the nest so the eggs (often there are two) are never left exposed. Predators that could take them include Bald Eagles, Common Ravens and otters. After they hatch and the young birds are on the water, the parents are constantly wary of attacks from the air and the water. An eagle can easily take a young loon from the water’s surface.
Loons aren’t the only birds at Lost Lake but they might be the most charismatic. Lots of people fish there in non-motorized boats so the birds are accustomed to boats and will approach fairly close. They are especially interested in the anglers. I find that if I sit quietly in my kayak, the birds will come close and offer great looks. Not that close though. These photos were mostly made with a 600 mm lens. The forest bird photos were made with a much shorter lens.
Spotted Sandpipers are a real joy to watch. They trot along logs and sticks on the water, bobbing their tails up and down and issuing their calls when they fly to the next lot. There are lots of swallows around the lake, taking advantage of many of the cavities in the trees for nesting sites.
My Everyday Photos 