Tag: Osprey

A Trip to Northern Idaho – Part 2

by Michael

Our second adventure day was to see another mountain, this time east of Coeur d’Alene named Silver Mountain. Unfortunately, we got there and it was just like Wally World, closed. They weren’t opening the gondola rides up the mountain until the next weekend, after we were to leave. Oh well, time to improvise another adventure.

On our way to Silver Mountain, we passed Old Mission State Park, so we decided to stop and see what it was all about. This was a mission that was set up to minister to the local Native Americans in the area. This is noted as being the oldest building in Idaho, being built between 1850 and 1853 by Roman Catholic missionaries and members of the Coeur d’Alene tribe. The Sacred Heart Mission served the local community for many years and featured the chapel, the priests’ home, and a school. The school burned down in 2011.

Sacred Heart Chapel

Next door to the chapel was the house in which the priests lived. While certainly sparse by today’s standards, 150 years ago, I bet this was living pretty well. Here is a 360 view of inside the clergy house.

Back outside, being from Texas, we found it interesting that there were blue bonnets growing here on the grounds. I guess they were trying hard to make this place feel closer to heaven. 🙂

Blue bonnets in Idaho? Who knew?

After spending the day looking for adventure, we had dinner and parted with our friend Janice for the day. I then decided to hop onto Facebook and see if there were any local birding spots. I got a reply from someone connected with the Coeur d’Alene Audubon Society who recommended we try Fernan Lake. We decide that would be our first stop of the day tomorrow prior to picking up Janice. You see, we love Janice, but she’s just not into birds. 🙂

The next day we do just that. After waking up and eating breakfast, we head out to Frenan Lake to see what it is all about. We were not disappointed. While there is public access at various points around the lake, it is also surrounded by houses and private property. Some of the houses were pretty amazing.

Houses overlooking lake Fernan

We found at the south end of the lake, one of the occupants was an osprey. It was there nearly every day, just waiting for us to catch it and take its photo. Karen got this one.

Osprey on branch

Spend enough time watching an osprey around water and sooner or later it is going to get something to eat. It apparently caught this small fish around the corner because I did not witness the catch, but it did honor us with this fly-by.

Osprey with lunch

There were also several families of Canadian geese in the lake. We saw groups of just a few to one with about 15 little ones in tow. This is one of the families of medium size.

Canadian geese family

And what kind of birding place at a lake would it be without an appearance of a great blue heron! These huge majestic birds make flying look easy. I mean if these huge lanky things can fly, why can’t I?

GBH fly-by

Near the north end of the lake is a patch of water plants with beautiful yellow flowers. It was a very peaceful spot to relax before heading out on another day of adventure in Idaho.

Water flower

And that ends part 2 of our Idaho adventure! Say tuned for part 3!

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

The Wyoming Adventure Day 5

by Mike

Day 5: I can’t believe I’m still alive after all the walking we did today. Walking isn’t exactly the right term for it though. Walking is what you do around the block, what we did today is much different. Up mountains and down mountains, but the pay off was worth it. We saw some really beautiful scenery.

The day started off easy enough. We didn’t get up early today because we wanted to go over to the Teton Village and ride the tram there up to the top of Rendezvous Mountain. It was a very scenic view on the way up, and once there, I got yet a different view of the peak of the Grand Teton.

Cloudy Teton Peak

One of the other things to see here is the area where the parasail flyers launch. The wind coming up the side of the mountain was so strong, all they had to do was unfurl their chutes and away they went. Karen and I briefly considered taking their tandem rides, but, well, you know, I had all that camera equipment and everything, so we decided just watch this time.

Parasail

After watching them, we hiked about a half mile down the mountain in order to see the sights in the Granite Canyon below. It was nothing spectacular, but the thing about hiking down the mountain a half mile is that you then have to hike back up that same half mile. Oh, and did I mention that we are now at 10,450 feet, the temperature was 42 degrees, and the wind was blowing at about 20mph. To say that we are not acclimated to this sort of this is an understatement. But we survived the stairs at Yellowstone so we figured this wouldn’t kill us either. 🙂

Back Up The Hill

After catching our breath and drinking a bottle of water, we rode the tram back to the bottom and took off for a drive. We wanted to drive over the Teton Pass and see what Idaho looked like. At the top of the pass, we had to stop and take a picture at the “famous” Jackson Hole sign. More running for me as I set the timer and then tried to look natural in the picture while out of breath!

Jackson Hole Sign

Well, Idaho (at least the part right here) isn’t too impressive. We’ll have to try a different part of the state another time. I’ve heard parts of it are very pretty.

After crossing back into Wyoming hear Wilson, WY, I spotted the nest of a couple of Osprey. After getting out the “big lens” I realized that one of them had caught something and was eating it. The other one I guess was standing guard because it seemed to be yelling at me to “move along…nothing to see here.”

Osprey Nest

At this point in our day, we were just driving around. We took the Wilson/Moose Road, which by a stroke of luck just happens to connect Wilson Wy to Moose Wy. You’d think they planned it that way or something. 🙂 This is a less traveled road in the area and parts of it are even unpaved. But then a sign caught my eye: “Death Canyon”! You know I had to check that out.

We drove toward the area and came upon a sign that said “4 wheel drive recommended”. Well, I’m in a rented Nissan Accura and it has 4 wheels so I figure we’re good. We continue on through the pot holes and make it to the trail head. We met a couple walking back and asked them what was up ahead and they tell us that there is a beautiful view of a lake and it’s well worth the hike. It’s only 1.6 miles. We can do that, so we load up the camera gear and take off. They forgot to tell us that it was 1.6 miles ALL UP HILL!

Path to Lake

The path was nice though and after about 45 minutes we arrived at the lookout. They were right. A very nice view of Lake Phelps from 7200 feet.

Lake Phelps

The best thing about a 1.6 mile hike up hill is that the return trip is all downhill. We made it back to the car in about 30 minutes, headed into town for dinner, a shower, and began the process or copying out pictures over to the laptop. I noticed that we’re up to 72gigs of pictures. RAW format really eats up the space, but it sure makes editing easy. I’m sure once we get home a lot of these will get weeded out as dups or out of focus or just “what was that” shots.

Tomorrow, another try at a sunrise shot. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we’ll have a clear shot at the mountains. Until then, I’m exhausted and am heading to bed!