Exploring the Alluvial Fan and Old Fall River Road

The first time I headed up to Alpine Visitor Center in Rocky Mountain National Park, I let my GPS guide me up the highway.  There I learned about the Old Fall River Road. It was opened in 1920 and was the first auto route to allow access to the Alpine area of Rocky Mountain National Park. The road is very narrow, with LOTS of switchbacks -  in one place three levels are stacked on top of each other, steep slopes - up to 16% and tight curves. I watched one pickup have to back up to make the tight curve.

You can only access the road from Hwy 34 and can only travel it in a northwest direction, going from a valley up to the Alpine Visitor Center. I found the road itself, extremely peaceful and scenic. I took advantage of most of the pull outs  to get out and see details not visible from the car. And of course, I took pictures at those stops.

My first stop on the way to the one-way dirt road, was the East Alluvial Fan Parking lot.  From there I followed the 0.15 mile trail through various sizes of rocks, along with some trees and shrubs before I reached the Alluvial Fan left from the huge flood of July  15, 1982, when Lawn Lake broke through the terminal moraine, which had held the lake since the last ice age, 10000 years ago, broke lose,  releasing 29 million gallons of water which carried huge rocks, some the size of autos, to the valley below.

I climbed the easy trail and then did a little rock hopping as I moved around to find the best pictures. I also did it again with Jerry and Julie and added in a few from that trip.

The Park is in the process of making this trail accessible

Looking across the rocks to the far view

Waterfall on Roaring River

A panoramic showing the bridge on the left end and the falls in the upper right

My favorite closeup of the falls

I loved this little flower against the tan rocks - even though it is near the end of blooming

There were at least two different 4-wheel tours going on

My f

My first pullover gave me a change to look back over a spectacular valley

I stopped several times to take pictures of this little creek.  Here I could not back up enough
 to get all of this house-sized boulder

We hiked up the little creek to another lovely waterfalls on the second visit. 

I took this picture from a long ways back to get in the beautiful waterfall

This is the area where several switch backs are stacked on top of each other - I could only get the bo

I was in the pullout at the edge of the switchback when this truck came up.  It had to back up to make the turn. 

The higher I got, the more kinds of wildflowers there were. At the top, the plants
 have 6-12 weeks to sprout, grow, blossom, and make seeds. 

This looked like water erosion, probably from the up to thirty feet of snow

Another wonderful view, near the top of this world

In the alpine fields below the Alpine Visitor Center - at top right

I had to take this panoramic from the back deck of the visitor center.  

This altitude is not livable in winter. Guess they have HUGE winds if they need all this to keep the roof attached

I took the Trail Ridge Road back to camp.  It is the highest paved road in the United States. Clouds were adding to the already specular scenery.

The colors of the hills and clouds blew me away - this back on the Trail Ridge Road,
considered on of the top scenic drives in Colorado

I did this again with friends, Jerry and Julie. We got to see several elk just below the visitor center.

Three bull elk just before the rut 

Bull elk by Julie -  he crossed the road in front of us and she was able to jump out of the car
and run up a little hill to catch him

If you are in the Rocky Mountains National Park and can't hike, or even if you can, this is a wonderful hike in a car.  And there are several trails off it.  I did it on a Sunday and found lots of traffic but still felt alone with nature, at least until I reached the last bit of alpine fields that were full of visitors.

Looking Back at 2014: Adventures with Old and New Friends

This has been the best year for meeting new friends. I met six precious new friends this year. I also had some great visits from old friends.

The new year found me working at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.   Cindy, the manager of the Visitor Center and keeper of the web page and Facebook entries, started inviting me to go on photographic excursions.  She even invited me to join her at Crystal River to swim with the manatees. When her back gave her serious trouble,  I mowed her yard. By the time I left we were friends.  She worked at Dinosaur National Monument this summer and I visited her on my way south. I keep up  with her via her blog and Facebook.

Cindy setting up in the boneyard at Jekyll Island

Cindy and me as I was leaving Dinosaur Park

I was working the desk one day when a lady called with questions about paddling and camping in the refuge.  She had a bubbly personality and really intrigued me when she told me she and her Dad were planning to do the last section of the Suwannee  river.  I immediately asked her to be a guest blogger and write about her experience since I knew I would not get to go this time.

Later we met after she invited me to join her on a camping trip on the Altamaha River.  Then she invited me to stay with her as I was leaving Oke and do another paddle. I rushed to pack so I could leave a day early and spend two nights and a day with her. Now Julie and I are keeping up via Facebook until we met again - which I expect will be next winter.

Starting out on a camping trip with Julie

Landing our the sand bar we camped on

Me on South Fork. a stream near Julie's house

Julie on same trip

I met another lady, Laurel, while running the Visitor Center. That evening I went out on the tour boat and met up with her again.  We are both birders and photographers and bonded over the consistently wrong bird identification by our tour guide.  Then she invited me to visit her in Edisto Island, SC and took me paddling, birding, and beach walking.  Of course we each took several hundred pictures and enjoyed seeing a slide show of our best ones before I left. She was definitely a lady with the energy to almost wear me out!  I THINK I'm going to get her to come visit me this spring so I can show her migration in Texas  - and send her on a paddle or two with my friends, since my shoulder won't be ready to paddle yet.

Laurel in one of her pair of kayaks on one of two paddles we did

A new local volunteer came to work at Okefenokee.  We only got to work together a couple of days but found we loved each other and had hilarious times working as wandering docents together. I'm hoping to see Barbara over and over since she and her husband are looking forward to becoming resident volunteers as soon as they sell their house.

Barbara saving a turtle nest  - I stole this from her Facebook timeline. 

I talked to a couple several times while working in the Visitor Center.  They were from Wisconsin and Mary was an avid birder and photographer.  One morning I went birding before going to work and ran into her.  We spent several hours together, both before and during my "work" as a wandering docent,  and now keep up via Facebook. I'm trying to convince her to make a small detour and come visit me on her way back to Georgia for the winter.

Mary and me - I had to pick up a truck and "work" and she followed me around to each photo stop

And I had a few visitors.  Pat, an old friend and paddling buddy came over to paddle in the swamp and also on St. Mary's river. We had a great week of paddling together.

Pat and I leaving our first shelter in Okefenokee - I proved it's
possible to leap into the canoe and look like I was paddling in
the 10 seconds before the camera snapped the picture - see we are still
tied up - only took about 5 tries.

Kyle worked with me at National Bison Range. Of the three of us who shared the bunkhouse, I was the only one with a car, so I took the guys with me to shop and sometimes to play. I also taught them both to drive a standard. Kyle and his girlfriend, Sylvie, were going to school in Jackson, Florida, so came up and spent a day with me.

Kyle and Sylvie on a tour boat at Okefenokee

Another pair of friends came, with friends of their own, to paddle in the swamp and ate supper with me.

Anita on the left and Bill on the right with the friends they are about to paddle
off into the swamp with 

I left Okefenokee to head to Galveston to visit several doctors before going up to Montana.  I had to stop to visit one of my oldest friends - both in age and in years of friendship - Hulin. He is a fantastic cook and made me crawfish etouffee, one of my favorite dishes.   I earlier had come back from Okefenokee NWR during the New Year Holidays to help celebrate his 90th birthday.

Hulin and his crawfish etouffee 

The last big trip I did before starting ny northward migration was my annual pilgrimage to South Llano River State Park to celebrate birds and paddling in the midst of friends from across Texas.  We had a  small group this year, compared to some years but I thought it was just the right size.

Most of the group supper bunch

Winnie always brings me my old white water kayak I gave her

This is the paddle on the lower part of the river

Several weeks after I got to Red Rock Lakes, new volunteers showed up with THREE boats on top of their truck.  As soon as I ascertained that there were  only two of them, I invited myself on all their future paddles. (That was about three sentences past saying hello.)  Both Chari and Steve are fantastic photographers, and. love hiking, paddling, and birding. They are WAY more into living completely in the moment than I've been able to achieve.  We had lots of fun adventures together and I keep up with them via Chari's blog.

Chari trying to photograph an eagle on Elk Lake

Chari on our Summer Soltice Walk

Steve photographing an unoccupied golden eagle nest

My friend, Teri, who I met when we both were volunteers  at Malheur NWR, came to visit me and also took me on the Centennial Valley Raptor Count. We drove over 100 miles and found some great birds. We also visited the Bear and Wolf Center in West Yellowstone.

Teri on the bear sofa in the gift shop of the Bear and Wolf Center

My friend, Natalie,  also visited me and had some good times with Chari and Steve. She had her own boat because she was on the way to a week of rivers in the Grand Tetons. So we took her paddling on the one day they and I shared off. We also visited Quake Lake and learned all about the horrible earthquake near Yellowstone.

Natalie and Cheri on Henry's Fork of the Snake River

And when I saw that Guy and Trisha were coming to Yellowstone, I talked them into driving about another 30 miles and visiting me an afternoon and night.  We had a great time birding and then we shared supper at their campsite.  They tried fishing before they left, but were unsuccessful.

Trish, me and Gay at Lower Red Rock Lake

I also went to the Rocky Mountain National Park for a long weekend, since it was only 600 miles away, to have a quick visit with my friend Carole. She lives in Houston and we have a mutual friend who invited her to join us for a week of camping and hiking in Yellowstone a few years ago.  She is a volunteer at Rocky Mountain NP.

Carol on a hike on the Ute Trail

About ten days after this trip, it was time to pack up and move to the National Bison Range.  I dropped off my stuff and then Justin, an intern working there. took me to Missoula to catch a plane to Ottawa to visit my daughter Karen and son-in-law, Francesco for several days.  The kids took me a few places and gave me a bus ticket to travel around Ottawa and Gatineau.  On one weekend, we visited a huge park and demonstration garden.  The other weekend, we visited Montreal Botanical Garden, the Insectarium, and the Olympic Tower.

The kids in  the funicular going up the Olympic Tower to the Observatory

Karen in the demonstration garden in Ottawa

And after I got to National Bison Range in September, another Texas/Montana friend, Kathy, came to spend a few days.  Both of us are birders and we had a lovely visit to Lee Metcalf NWR, one of the best birding areas in the Missoula area.  We were supposed to meet up at Caddo Lake but she got detained in Montana by a misbehaving central heater.  Hopefully I'll get down to visit my Corpus Christi friends in late January or February and see her then.

Kathy looking at ducks

So I was blessed all year with friends old and new. It really is true that, if you adopt a travelling life, you get to keep your old friends, but will also find lots more of the kind of people you enjoy the most.

A Hike in the Land Above the Trees

Warning: Another long post - but it took me about six hours to experience it - I did edit it down a lot. 

My hostess, Carol, a volunteer at Rocky Mountain National Park, had a list of possible things I'd like to do in my rushed trip to visit her.  I chose a hike over a paddle because I wanted to get to see more of the landscape and unique plants and animals. Carol suggested that we hike the portion of the Ute Trail which runs from the Alpine Visitor Center down to the Continental Divide.  And we could do it as an easy, mostly downhill hike of only four miles, if we ran a shuttle.  We would be hiking across tundra, through an alpine meadow, then down into a conifer forest, another good thing, because we would at least be in the forest if we got an afternoon thunderstorm. Carole was being very careful since two visitors have recently died after being struck by lightning in two separate incidents. 

View from near the beginning of the trail across from the Alpine Visitor Center

The portion of the Ute trail we hiked starts at 11,796 feet drops down from tundra grasslands into alpine meadows and finally through a spruce forest to Milner Pass, which is at10,759 feet.  It gives long views to the Never Summer Mountain Range and, about a mile into the hike, down the glacier-gouged walls of Forest Canyon and the headwaters of the Big Thompson River.  The trail ends at the Milner Pass in the Continental Divide.  Poudre Lake is just north of Milner Pass and is the headwaters of Cache La Poudre which drains into the Missouri River and eventually the Mississippi, before reaching the Gulf of Mexico.  The waters draining from the south side of Milner form Beaver Creek which drains into the the Colorado River, then runs through the Grand Canyon and into the Gulf of California.

Carol carefully, unsuccessfully searching for white tailed ptarmigan.

We did find a few tundra willows with catkins still on them - a favorite food of ptarmigan.

From the trailhead, we had long views of the valley and the Never Summer Mountains.  The ground looked plain with a few rocks scattered about. But soon we were seeing many kinds of wildflowers. The alpine flowers survive harsh conditions to bloom a few weeks each summer. Most of them take two to seven or more years to get big enough to have the energy to bloom.  So even though we are allowed to walk on the tundra here, I was careful to not step on flowers. Carol patiently waited while I took all the pictures I wanted - over 200.

One of the three kinds of alpine clover

Pretty flowers - know them?

Moss campion - can take up to ten years to reach blooming size

 Carol knows a lot about the geology of the area because she helps babysit visitors on a geology tour as one of her volunteer jobs.  One of the things she showed me was how the soil is slumping in this area. The soils are on unstable rocks that start sliding downhill, causing cracks.  They often end up in piles, making dams. I think a rock layer under the soil is eroding, causing a more stable rock layer on top of it to slide down. 

An example of slumping along the trail

We saw some wildlife.  The most animals we saw were elk.  We passed a huge herd of resting female elk with their calves. We also spent a lot of time watching a few pikas along the trail. And we were amazed to see robins at such a high elevation - over 10,000 feet.  

Some of a huge herd of female elk and babies

Close up view of one of the elk

A young lark sparrow

Another really interesting thing about the alpine areas were krumholz.  This is what the stunted, twisted trees are called. I think we were seeing Engelmann spruce. At these high altitudes, they are buffeted by high winds and eventually get all bent over and stunted.  Any part of them that isn't under the snow cover gets frozen, leaving dead branches. They cannot make pine cones, and only reproduce by underground roots which sprout new growth. 

A krumholz 

 

The same species of tree further down the trail.  I think this is Engelmann spruce.

Carol looking down Forest Canyon

The day got cloudier and the clouds grew darker shortly after we broke for a snack. We started actually hiking to be sure and at least be down in the tall trees before any lightening arrived. But I had to stop and take another picture of the Never Summer Mountains in the beautiful light.

My favorite view of the Never Summer Range - taken at our lunch stop

Soon we were hiking though the forest and looking over a steep bluff to the valley below.

A  mule deer resting near the trail in the forest

Just before we arrived at Milner Pass, we came to a beautiful spire of rocks.  We enjoyed watching another pika haul off a huge piece of a plant to start it drying for its winter food.  Then we found an amazing Indian paintbrush plant that was blooming a beautiful shade of pink.

Fun almost done - by Carole

Some of the beautiful rock formations near the end of our hike

Tall bluebells in the rock spires

The first pink-blooming Indian paint brush either of us have ever seen

And the lagniappe of our hike occurred as we drove up to retrieve Carol's car.  We got to see a small heard of bull elk grazing near the road.  And as we came back down, she again pulled off at the parking lot for the Continental Divide.  There she showed me a big horned ewe and her kid, who were at the top of a rocky mountain there. 

A few of a small heard of bull elk

My only sighting of big horned sheep