Montana - Day 1 - Idaho to Missoula

Missoula KOA, Missoula

Monday, 1 August 2022

As you can see on the map, almost all of today's drive was in Idaho, with only about the last 50 miles or so actually in Montana.  In essence, Idaho is getting an extra day in its month, while Montana will be robbed of one.  Not that I think either of them cares.

Google said today's drive would be longer than 3 hours, which of course means at least 5, maybe 6 hours for me.  Because I figured I'd be crossing into Mountain Time in Montana, I decided to set my clocks before I left Idaho, so my 7:14 departure time was actually 8:14 - not as early a start as I'd wanted, but I figured it was early enough.

today's route

I passed the turn for "Heart of the Monster" site, which is apparently part of the Nez Perce National Historic Park.  I'd never heard of this place so wasn't prepared to take a side trip, especially given the long drive I knew was ahead of me.  But now that I've looked it up, I'm sorry I missed it.  This site is at the heart of the creation story of the Nez Perce, and it's a story unlike any I've ever heard.  You can read the National Park Service's version at this link.   https://www.nps.gov/heart-of-the-monster

A highway sign warned me of "Winding Road Next 99 Miles."  That's a really long distance for a highway warning sign to cover, but I'd done a little homework and already knew to expect a curvy mountain road, including switchbacks, all the way to Montana.

Almost immediately, I began to see that we were driving alongside a river, and it took a long time before I figured out it was the Wild and Scenic Lochsa River.  That word means "rough water" in the Nez Perce language, and I saw a lot of agitation in the water.  We stopped at a pullout area, and I took these photos of the river and vicinity.

looking downriver

Note the little waterfall coming in on the other bank.
It's not as obvious in the photo as it was to me there,
but there's a lot of agitation underneath the water.

looking upriver

These historical markers were at that site.

Meriweather Lewis wrote it was the Expedition's "inexpressible joy"
to have struggled through the Bitterroot Mountains and been
rewarded with a "large tract of Praire country" where they could
hope to find food and easier going.

The photos above show some of that primitive land,
mentioned in this sign, across the river.

This is a pretty river and made a good companion to the drive.  It's also apparently good for fishing; there were lots of pullouts being used by fishers, and one of them was standing in the river with the water up to the top of his waders.  So it's deeper, at least in some places, than it looks.

The road, however, was a different matter.  A sign told me to "Watch For Rock Next 60 Miles," once again a long distance for a highway warning sign.  And just beyond that another sign warned of "Double S-Curves (the symbol, not the words) Next 77 Miles."  Well, they'd already said the road would be winding, so this didn't change anything.

I was surprised to find so many bicyclists along the road - 2 clumps of 2 riders and 2 clumps of 3, fortunately all going the other direction.

Idaho has posted a lot of signs saying slow drivers must use marked turnouts, then doesn't give any advance notice that a turnout is coming up.  I ended up passing several that I couldn't use only because I couldn't slow down enough in the space available.  Frustrating, I'm sure, for the people behind me.

This is one of 2 pedestrian bridges over the river that I passed. 
It's made of wood and anchored by serious cables, one of which
I was standing next to when I took this shot.

After the road did a lot of climbing I reached Lolo Pass, on the boundary between Idaho and Montana.  I had to figure out the name of the pass for myself because nobody seemed to want to tell me - even though there was a rest area here that had exhibits for both states.  I was ready to take a break, and while we were still driving in, the first thing I saw were lots of these:

This guy was looking straight at me, but was too used to tourists to be fazed.

This is the same guy.  He wasn't even running away - just casually
walking off the path.

Luckily, one of the exhibits answered the question there was no ranger around for me to ask: 

I looked up the difference between ground squirrels and gophers, because they look alike and act alike to me.  But those who know these things say they don't act alike; gophers prefer to spend most of their time underground and eat the underground roots of plants; ground squirrels spend most of their time on top of the ground and eat the plants themselves, rather than their roots.  

While I was at it, I looked up prairie dogs, which also look like these critters to me, and I learned that prairie dogs and ground squirrels often live in the same territory and eat the same diets.  But prairie dogs can be twice as big as ground squirrels and are known to kill them to protect their territory.  Which I wouldn't think was a concern here because this seriously mountainous area doesn't look like prairie dog heaven to me.  A sign on the visitor center said we're at 5,225' elevation.

There were several exhibits here about the Nez Perce, who traveled through this pass while running from the US Army, which intended to either round them up in reservations or kill them, and didn't seem to care which.

This marks a National Historic Trail and it says:
On July 23, 1877, approximately 750 members of the Nez Perce Nation
 with over 2,000 horses crossed Lolo Pass to escape the pursuing U.S. Army. 
Leaving their homeland behind, they followed this trail across the Bitterrroot
Mountains in an attempt to find peace by joining with traditional allies to the east.

This sign has a lot of information, and I've enlarged part of it below.

They also had an exhibit about how the government woke up to the issue of effects on the environment of earlier development, beginning right here.

details of this sign enlarged below

This is the "wetland to your right" today.

I'd barely left the parking lot when I came to this sign, which is unique among the welcome-to-our-state signs I've seen.

And, as you can see, I was now in Montana.

Montana - my 41st state

Besides this sign, there was other reading material as soon as I'd entered Montana.  One said "Motorcycle Advisory - Use Caution Next 32 Miles."  Another said "Truckers - Sharp Curves - Advise 25 mph Next 4 Miles."  Then a sign for a 60 mph speed zone (25 mph vs 60 mph - huh?).  And then a sign telling me when I saw white markers like these - † - they represented fatalities and were maintained by the American Legion of Montana.  And I did see those markers along this road.  Anyway, all those signs made me take this downhill section cautiously, though it turned out not to be nearly as bad as they'd warned.

Beginning in Idaho and then continuing here in Montana (nature not recognizing state boundaries) I was seeing some odd rocks.  I stopped at Lolo Hot Springs to take this photo:

These smooth rock formations are so different from the rugged shapes most common here.  And the rocks in this photo aren't nearly as smooth as many I saw that I couldn't stop for a photo of.

Like Idaho, Montana has a lot of pullouts with informational markers, and I stopped for these two.

details enlarged below

details enlarged below

I passed meadows of grass so high it was nearly to the top of the cows' legs.  I passed a sign warning of a moose crossing area.  I saw a herd of animals in a fenced meadow, and my best guess is that they were female elk.  I thought they were bigger than deer and I didn't see any obvious antlers, but I suppose they could also have been mule deer which seem a lot more likely to be inside a fence than elk of any sex.  No signs to tell me.

I passed the Fort Fizzle Historic Site and was curious about the name.  It turns out the name meant something: the result of the US Army's "attempt" to stop the Nez Perce from crossing into Montana.  There's an interesting account of that fiasco at this Wikipedia page.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Ft-Fizzle-MT

I came to the town of Lolo, though there was no sign to tell me that's where I was, and then to Missoula, where there was a sign.

Driving to the KOA, which was in town, I passed commercially-sized fields of corn and squash, leading me to conclude that even a city of 73,500 people can still be rural in Montana.