Mahood Lake – Well’s Gray P.P. – Sept. 1, 2010

In real time it is almost the middle of January and we are in the middle of a stretch of very wet, depressing weather…time to go back…

September 1st found at  North Thompson P.P. just outside of Clearwater, B.C.  Went for a morning walk along the riverside trail…

had hoped to get a few good bird pictures, but failed miserably on all accounts!  I did throw this one in of a male American Redstart – just because Redstarts have been a rather elusive bird for me – remember we did see some at Writing on Stone in Alberta, back in the spring.

So, once again on the road, down highway #24 to Little Fort and then turning west up the very long, steep climb to the Cariboo Plateau.

Here is a picture taken from the rest area when you finally reach the top and it levels out.  Our destination for the day was the campground at Mahood Lake.  Mahood Lake is situated on the western side of Well’s Gray P.P. but you can’t access it, at least by vehicle, from the main body of the park…we took the turn off at Bridge Lake – after having done this route I would NOT recommend it for anyone towing anything very large or with any sort of very large motor home….65 km of rather rough, narrow, gravel and in some areas ‘dirt’ road….

this is a sample of the road…one of the better sections!

We stopped here at Drewey Lake recreation site for lunch….

there was a good size lake here…no doubt good fishing….

Finally, about 2 pm we reached our destination – this lovely little campground was virtually deserted!

picked a spot out in the open – after a couple of days of dark and rain, the sunshine was welcome!

There were plenty of birds to keep me amused.  Cedar Waxwings were very busy eating these Hawthorne berries…

Young ones as well…

Spent a lot of time trying to capture these ‘berry in beak’ pictures…

So you get another as well…

Waxwings weren’t the only birds…here a Ruby Crowned Kinglet…

Yellow rump Warbler….

Clay-coloured Sparrow….

Warbling Vireo….just to mention a few…

 

and will end with a shot of one of the prettiest spots I have ever seen!

Kane Valley photos

I had promised to post some pictures of the Kane Valley when it is not covered in snow.  I hadn’t thought it would take me quite this long to get to it but life seems to intervene with blogging sometimes.

This is the southern portion of Kane Lake.  That is Ernie and Shantz cooling off as this was taken in July on a warm sunny day.  There is a camping area on the south shore, favoured by those with horse trailers, and Harmon Lake, with it’s campground, is over there, behind those trees.

If you recall I mentioned in an earlier posting that there is a demonstration forest at Harmon lake, complete with walking trails….well this area is one of the spots those walking trails take you to.  These are wild Larkspur in flower.  I didn’t check the date, but probably in late May or June.

I had also mentioned that a couple of years ago we had spent a weekend camping  (the old fashioned way) at Upper Second Lake – the spot we stopped at for lunch on the 21st of February.  Well here is Ernie trying to figure out how to set up the new tent….

and here is what the lake looks like in early July…

there is camp – April had already discovered the sleeping bags on the air mattress so she was parked for the duration.

the lake was so inviting that we pumped up the kayak…

and I headed out. 

there were a lot of birds in the area that day, including lots of Cedar Waxwing…

a whole family of Yellow Warblers (this is daddy)….and

and the family of Spotted Sandpipers I mentioned in my previous post.

another one day trip was taken the middle of August in 2008 when we were in the middle of a heat wave….we stopped at this location (almost the same place as the picture in part one of Feb. 21, 2010) to take pictures of and report the forest fire in the distance.  The temperature was 39 degrees Celsius  – Thank Goodness for air conditioning!

now here are some wild flower shots taken that same July trip when we ‘roughed it’…

that pink stuff is ‘Sticky Geranium’ and these pictures were all taken in the vicinity of Kane Lake…

a closer look at the colourful wildflower field…

and a bit further along up on a hillside where everything was mauve….these are all later types of wildflowers…

and finally a look at the shallow lake area we stopped at on the 21st of Feb….

this is what it looks like in the summer.

Trip to Southern Alberta 2008 – Waterton - 2

On our second full day in Waterton, we woke to  nice sunshine, so decided we would take a drive south to try and find the 3rd Campground we had heard about.  Waterton National Park abuts Glacier National Park in the U.S.A., so heading south meant we’d be heading to the U.S. border…but with no plans to actually cross over…

the road quickly climbed in elevation.  The first viewpoint gave this spectacular view of the foothills and the plains beyond..

this shot shows a bit more of the flat plains…a perfect illustration of the song about Alberta that has the line “east side flat, west side vertical”….

this shot has more emphasis on the ‘vertical’…

and this one shows the terrain as you get close to the border.  We turned into the campsite we had been looking for on the Belly River – it is advertised as being ‘primitive’ which means it is more our kind of site….this day, the 30th of August, it was pretty busy and hot and dusty, but bears investigation another time, perhaps in the ‘off season’.

this was just another view, looking west towards the mountains, taken about half way back to Waterton, where we stopped at the picnic area just before the gates, to stretch our legs….

Ernie and Shantz cooling off while I poked about looking for anything interesting to photograph…

I’ve done my usual ‘filing away’ of the results, but I remembered I had seen this Hairy Woodpecker there, so went digging in my ‘bird folder’ for it.

also remembered it was alive with Cedar Waxwings and found this shot.  By this time it was getting late, but we decided to drive around the Buffalo paddock to see if we could see any Bison….

and yes, there they were, looking for all the world like they were just out there roaming over the prairies…

as long as you ignore the fence!

as we left the Buffalo Paddock, we made one more stop at a rest area located just past the paddock entrance….

where I was thrilled to find these Liatris in flower.  As a gardener I was very familiar with this interesting flower, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized our cultivated form was actually derived from a native wildflower!

Liatris were scattered all over this dry prairie…there is a good sized clump, still in full flower, in the bottom left hand corner of this picture.

Waterton is actually a fantastic place for wildflowers, in fact they have a week long Wild Flower Festival in mid June each year – something we discovered purely by accident on our second trip to Waterton, when we had actually been staying at the nearby Police Outpost Provincial Park (another fantastic small, primitive type campground), and had driven into Waterton just for the day.  For once I didn’t feel out of place parked at the side of the road, on my hands and knees taking wildflower pictures – cause everybody was doing the same thing!!!