Tag: Magpie

A Trip to Northern Idaho – Part 8

by Michael

Our last day of adventure in Idaho started out as another chilly and wet morning. Wanting to give a new place a try, Karen and I started out on the river bank behind the University of Idaho, Coeur d’Alene. It was also windy. There were a lot of little chicks there and these two appear to be siblings, with one giving the other what-for.

I’m going to tell mom!

After not much going on there we headed back to the hotel to warm up a bit before heading over to pick up Janice. Out the window I happened to notice a magpie. I’ve been hunting for one of these the entire trip. They are like the common grackle here in Texas, usually everywhere, until you want to get a photo of one. This was the best I could do, through the dirty glass of my hotel window, but I can say I got one.

Magpie through a window

We headed north once more, looking for anything interesting. We headed up towards Newport and then over to Priest River. By then it was time for lunch. We stopped at a place called the Village Kitchen. Now, I had been craving an old-fashioned open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy for some time and the first thing I noticed on the menu was just that. I was all in. The guy running the place looked more like a surfer from California than an Idaho mountain dude, but he was nice, and his jokes were great. Lunch came, and the food was excellent!

I’m glad we tipped well here!

As we were leaving I asked the guy if he knew of any cool waterfalls in the area. He gave me directions to some up around Priest Lake so we headed off in that direction. I found it on the map and plugged it into my GPS. We drove for a while, beautiful country, but when we got there we found the road blocked off with no idea how far it was to the actual waterfalls. I listened but did not hear the sound of rushing water anywhere.

We left, with me debating in my mind if we left without giving the place a fair shot but when we stopped for gas, I did some more quick googling and found that were were other falls not too far from where we were. We continued on and without seeing any signs, ended up on an old dirt forestry service road. After a few miles of my traveling companions questioning my sanity and directional ability, we arrived at a sign indicating the Roosevelt Grove of Ancient Cedars. The average age of the trees here is 800 years with some being 2000-3000 years old! Imaging being among living trees that were around while Jesus walked the earth!

Also at this place is Granite Falls. Another beautiful set of waterfalls for us to explore and photograph. Karen captured this of me while I was setting up for my first set of photos of the falls.

The intrepid photographer

As you can see from this photograph, the water from these falls are blasting down the mountain. No way I’m getting in those waters, but the rocks are slippery. I’m glad my shoes had good grips on the soles.

Granite Falls – Lower

Once again, while I was looking at the big picture, Karen was able to filter out the noise and notice the small beauty in the place. I really need to take a lesson from her on how to slow down and notice things.

Small beauty

After my initial shots I moved back to get more of the river that flows from the falls. I was able to carefully move out a little into the rocks in the river, but again was being very careful not to slip and get washed away.

Roaring river

And of course, we were finally in a spot were we could actually stand in some snow. After traveling all the way from Texas to see snow, we weren’t going to pass up the opportunity to stand in it and take a photo!

As we were leaving I noticed a sign pointing to another set of falls, but our time for this trip was up. As we arrived back at the blacktop, Karen had me stop so she could take a photo of the road lined with these huge trees. This is our path back home and our good-bye, at least for now, to Idaho.

It was a beautiful trip. Got to spend some quality time with our friend Janice, and got to see and photograph some beautiful scenery. I hope you enjoyed tagging along with us, even if this these posts come 3 months later. Maybe they provided some relief from the heat we are enduring right now here in Texas.

Until the next adventure,

Michael
Sharing God’s Creation, One Click at a Time

All words and photos copyright 2019 MHampton Photography
Equipment used: Canon 5DS-R, Canon 1DX II, Canon T6S, and various Canon lenses and Insta360 One X

Yellowstone: Day Four

by Mike

 Day four begins slow.  Being worn out from the previous days, and with the beginnings of a head cold, we sleep in a bit and get a bit of a later start.  As usual, we meet the elk in Mammoth as we enter the park, but today there is a twist.  Apparently one of them has made friends with a magpie.  We watch as they seemingly “play” for several minutes.  It occasionally looks like the magpie is whispering in the elk’s ear.  It was amusing, but we move on.

 Since we got a late start, and being a little disappointed with the wildlife turnout over the first three days, we decide that today we would do the “tourist” thing and check out the features of the park, and if we happen to see wildlife, so much the better.  As we head south from Mammoth, the features begin to show themselves in very dramatic ways.  The steam coming from this river, combined with the smell of sulfur lets us know that this is not your normal river.  In fact, when you pull over and look, there are areas where the water is bubbling.  I never got a straight answer if the water was actually boiling or if the bubbles was just gas escaping, but I wasn’t going to stick my hand in to find out.

 Our first stop was at the Norris Geyser Basin.  There is a boardwalk there where you can walk out over the basin and smell the sulfur first hand.  What a treat (note sarcasm)!  It really is pretty cool to be this close to the exit ports of a live super-volcano when you really think about it though.  Like I told my friends back home before we came, if it goes off while we’re there, don’t worry about us cause we won’t have time to care.

 After leaving Norris, we come across this beautiful elk displaying his rack which begged me for a picture.  I know I have some relatives who are hunters who are wishing they had THEIR equipment right about now.  These truly are magnificent beasts!

 A little further down the road we catch this small, multi-colored geyser.  Again, note the steam coming from the water.  Very hot.  Do not touch!  Very pretty though.

 Next stop is a place called “Artist Paint Pots” which are essentially “boiling” mud pits and holes with colorful deposits around them.  The surprising thing to me was how much plant life there is that actually survives around these things.  I would have expected the toxicity of the ground to be prohibitive to such growth.  Guess that explains why I am not a botanist.

 And no trip to the Artist Paint Pots would be complete without the requisite “boiling mud” photo.  Karen caught this one at just the right time!

 After making the climb to the top of the paint pot area, we were admiring the view when a kind passer-by offered to take our picture.  So we handed him one of Karen’s cameras and I must say, it turned out pretty good!  Thank you kind stranger!

 Down the road from the paint pots we came upon Gibbon Falls.  This is yet another of the Yellowstone waterfalls which are literally right off the roadway.  But as each of them have their own character, more pictures must be taken.  Something about the roar of the water just puts me in a mood, a very good mood.

 From there, we continued along the Grand Loop road, around the southern part of the park, and then turning north, we passed by the West Thumb of Lake Yellowstone.  There Karen caught this photo of the small island with the single tree.  It looks so lonely out there, but also very peaceful.  Of course, the mountains in the background don’t hurt either.

 A little further up on the West Thumb, we spotted this elk, just standing out in the water.  Not really sure what she was doing, but it gave me another chance to pull out the 600mm lens so I stopped.  I carried that thing all the way up here and I’m going to use it!  At one point she looked over her shoulder at me and I snapped…the picture that is.

 We continued on and crossed over the Fishing Bridge area and out to Mary Bay.  By now the sun was beginning to get low in the sky and clouds were building.  Kare caught this magnificent shot of the cloudy reflections in the water.

 And as the geese begin flying home, we also headed back to Gardiner for the evening.

Since my main goal for this trip was wildlife, I was beginning to feel a tad disappointed, but at the same time, I truly enjoyed being here nonetheless.  This is a beautiful place, with or without wildlife.  Once more, we are thankful for the things we saw.  Time to rest up for day 5.  It will prove to be a very exciting day!

Yellowstone: Day Two

by Mike

Day two started out in a magnificent manner!  I stepped out of our residence to this view!  Snow capped mountains right out the front door!  What’s not to love about that!  Gardiner is a very small town right at the north entrance of Yellowstone.  I’m told that the actual population of the town is somewhere around 800 people, but obviously, the number of visitors, especially in the summer months, is much higher.  The size of the town is perfect for its location, nestled in a small valley surrounded by the wonderful mountains!

We get a somewhat early start to the day, still recovering from our normal work-life and travel.  One of the places I wanted to visit is a trail over the Blacktail Plateau.  It is known to have copious amounts of wildlife, so we’re really hoping to see and photograph them.  However, this trip, it seems that about the only wildlife to be seen there is this herd of bison grazing in the fields.  Still, any chance to interact (even from the car) with a beast powerful enough to leap it’s 2,000+ pound body over a fence, is a chance not to be missed.  While these animals appear to be very docile, their looks can be deceiving.  In fact. more people are injured each year by bison than pretty much any other creature in the park.

Also, the safety of being in the car, give a great chance for those up-close shots that really accentuates the power of this beautiful animal.

One of the things Karen and I were really hoping to see this trip was snow, and we were not disappointed this day!  It wasn’t much, but coming from Texas where we just suffered through a record-breaking summer of heat, any change was appreciated.  Most mornings started out in the teens and twenties, which really didn’t bother us in the least.

After leaving the Blacktail Plateau, we headed to the Lamar Valley, known for wolf and bear sightings.  These are two animals we seem to always miss out on when we travel.  We are really hoping to get to see them this time.

On our way to the valley, we spot this lone elk in a field at the Roosevelt Junction.  This is another of the creatures which is numerous in Yellowstone.  The males, with their proud antlers always look so majestic.  This one was alone and we just couldn’t pass by the opportunity to capture a few memories of his image.

Once in the Lamar Valley, we traveled up and down the road with no luck.  Normally you can tell if there is wildlife (wolves in particular) in the area because there will be many people pulled off the road with spotting scopes and cameras.  Nothing was to be seen today though.  But even with this bit if disappointment, we were still privy to the wonderful mountain views from the valley!  It just doesn’t get much better than this.

After driving through the Lamar Valley a few times, we come across a guy and his dog Jake, (yes, I rememberd the dogs name and not the guy) and have an opportunity to chat with him for a while.  While talking, he casually asks, “Do you want to see some wolves?”  Well DUH!  He tells us that the Blacktail pack have been spotted over near Elk Creek.  That’s near the exit of the Blacktail Plateau Trail we were on earlier.  That’s all we need to hear and we are off, after we thank him for the information of course.

We arrive, and sure enough, there are all the wolf-watchers with the scopes and cameras set up.  We finally get a spot to park, and I grab the big lens and hike up to where they are.  Then I ask, “Where are they?”  I’m pointed to these little black and gray dots way out in a field!  Well, that’s even too far for my 600mm lens.  Disappointment sets in for a second, then someone says, “Listen!  The wolves are howling!”  How cool is that!  If you have never heard that sound in real life, you really should get to some day.  It is amazing!

But the adventure here isn’t over yet.  A couple of the wolves decide to come closer and cross over the road.  Still a ways off from where I am, but at least I can get a “I saw them” shot and crop it enough to tell they are wolves and not just dots.

Giddy with excitement, we leave the Blacktail pack and begin heading back toward the area of our home-base.  On the way, we spot a herd of Elk on the side of a hill, all grazing together.  We hike the trail at the bottom of the hill and are able to get a few shots.  The male elk was higher on the hill watching over his herd, taking a very masculine pose with his big rack and one of his ladies.  This situation just begged for a photo, so I obliged.

After leaving the elk, we stop off at Udine Falls, which is right off the roadway.  When out photographing areas, it is hard to grow tired of waterfalls, especially when they are surrounded by wilderness.  Waterfalls have that combination of power and beauty that just makes one feel right about the day.

Okay, for those that live in the area, the magpie is a nasty bird.  They are compared to our grackles here in Texas.  But for those of us who don’t live there, this is very pretty bird!  Very basic black and white color scheme just draws my attention.  I thikn I’d trade our grackles for the prettier magpie any day!

One of the craziest areas of the park is the town of Mammoth.  This is the area where the army set  up Fort Yellowstone when they were in charge of the park before the creation of the National Park Service.  This town almost always has wildlife roaming around the buildings.  Usually it is the resident heard of elk, but this day, we spotted this coyote roaming around like he was looking for something.  He didn’t seem to worried about us, as he gave us a single glance and then went about his business of sniffing out whatever he was looking for.

And the aforementioned elk.  This one caught our attention as it appeared he was about to bugle to his harem.  We paused, took pictures, but nothing ever came out of his mouth.  A silent bugle.  That was a big strange, but as you are about to see, strange is relative in this place.

As we get back into Gardiner, the strangeness steps up a notch.  There are elk everywhere.  We see them in people’s front yards and as I look across the river to the hotel there, I see elk, not just in the surrounding yard, but actually right outside the first floor rooms!  It made me wonder if when you check in they ask questions such as, “Smoking or non-smoking?  Elk or no elk?”

Bottom line: This is a very cool place, especially if you like close interactions with wildlife.  Today will not be our last interactions for sure, and the best is yet to come.

Day two comes to a close and we are thankful for all we have seen!