Monday, August 11, 2008

Across the Rockies

Several weeks ago I left Sheldon to drive to my next job in Montana. I did not have a single road map of any of the states I was driving through, but thanks to my sheldon coworkers I did know the location of many of the hot springs and taco trucks in Idaho. So I packed my car... and a house wren flew into it and got stuck. After extracting the bird, I started heading through the vast expanse of sagebrush in southeast Oregon. There was a scary moment when I drove my car off the road in a really remote area of Oregon (60 mile dirt road, no cars seen for hours) but I managed to get back on the road. Below - what passes for a state highway in northern Nevada.


In Idaho the sagebrush steppe was replaced by forest, and lovely as the sagebrush is, going into the trees felt like going home. I camped under the ponderosas by rivers, found natural hotsprings to swim in, and hiked some in the Sawtooth Range.


I made it to Montana, crossed the continental divide several times, and am now in Glacier National Park, working on a fisheries project. I live in a little cabin on Quartz Lake, a six mile hike in.