Gibson Park Great Falls Montana.

Not to long ago I took my camera along for my walk down to Gibson park and got some nice fall pictures around the park. Posting a few here. The picture of the Pelicans was not taken at the park but just a short distance away near the Giant Springs State Park. It has taken me so long to get this post done that all those beautiful leaves are long gone and the trees are now the barenaked trees. I will be posting more pictures of the park and pictures from all around Great Falls to my web site at http://www.layz1.com or to my facebook page in the near future. I am now four months into my third year as a Montana resident and I must say I couldn't be happier about my decision to move here. I believe even more now if that is possible then I did two years ago that Montana is the place to be. With winter fast approaching here in Great Falls I am looking forward to a few trips to Yellowstone National Park with the first one coming early November. I hope to find most of the park open to vehicle traffic I will need good weather for that to happen it is already snowed in the higher elevation, but I have not heard anything about the roads being shutdown yet. I am hoping to see and hear the battle of the bighorns as they try to impress potential mates, they should be in the rutting season late October early November. If I get lucky and get some good pictures you will be able to see them on my web page soon after the trip. My time on the computer is up and I am all out of quarters so it is time for me to say this is me saying goodbye to you till whenever.

The falls of Great Falls Montana.

Been six months since I posted to this blog guess I'm getting laze in my old age. Usually I would post pictures from Yellowstone or Glacier National Park but not today, today I am posting a few pictures of the falls near Great Falls. This past June I went over to take a look at Rainbow and Crocked Falls just outside of Great Falls Montana. I could not have picked a better time it has been a wet spring and along with the snow melt it was a great time to get some pictures of the falls. The dam was allowing more water to go over the falls then I have seen in my two years here in Great falls. As you can see from one of the pictures the two falls are not very far apart and the water flow is controlled by one dam called Rainbow Falls Dam. This is about all I have to write at this so it is time for me to say "this is me saying goodbye to you till whenever."

Yellowstone's Lamar Valley

Christmas in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley.

Over the holidays I took a four day trip to Yellowstone's Lamar Valley. It was a great trip with four day of fantastic weather. It started out a bit chilly each morning but thanks to nothing but sunshine each day warmed up quickly. Clouds were rare if not nonexistent for the whole trip. Each day went from below zero in the morning to about twenty five degrees every afternoon and not a bit of wind. Not one to go winter camping I spent my nights at the Super 8 Motel in Gardiner Montana. They have great off season prices, it only cost $42 per night and you are less then a half a mile from the entrance to Yellowstone Park. However if you are into winter camping you can stay at the Mammoth Campground for $14 per night, they have heated restrooms with running water all winter. I am already planing another trip here in early March and will stay at the Super 8 and yet another trip in April when I will stay at the Mammoth Campground for four or five days. June July and August my focus will turn to the less crowded and cheaper to visit Glacier National Park. The cheaper part being once you get to Glacier you can park you car and use the free shuttle service to anywhere in the park. On the other hand when you are at Yellowstone there are over 300 miles of road to drive and driving them gives you your best chance of seeing wildlife. The road through Lamar Valley alone is 108 miles round trip and you use a lot of gas at 30MPH and less looking for wolves, elk. grizzlies and other wildlife. I posted a few pictures I took in Yellowstone Lamar Valley. Too see more pictures go to my web site layz1.com
This is me saying goodbye to you till whenever.

My first trip to yellowstone National Park.

In September I had the chance to spend four days camping at Mammoth Hot springs Campground. And what a great trip it was. The first thing you notice at Yellowstone is there is something big going on beneath your feet, it might be two or more miles down but you can still feel it. As you walk around almost anywhere in the park you can feel the ground vibrate or quiver under your feet. At night when I went into the tent for some sleep even know I use an air mattress I could still feel the vibration all night long. You are after all sleeping in a volcanoes caldera or creator. What surprised me most was the only place I didn't feel the earth move, so to speak, was at and around Old Faithful. Go Figure. I saw plenty of bison and female elk but the bull elk sightings were few and far between. I only saw three in four days. However they easy to hear at night they seemed to be bugling going on in every direction all night long. One right around my tent about three in the morning. He moved on after about ten minutes allowing me to get back to sleep. The only thing that could have made the night better would have been wolves howling in the background. Unfortunately that didn't happen on this trip but maybe on the next one, I am a patient man I can wait. I am posting a picture of Old Faithful and one of the few bull elks that I saw on this trip. If you want to see more of the pictures I took on this trip go to my web site layz1.com

This is me saying goodbye to you till whenever.

My first camping trip to Glacier National Park

It has been awhile since I posted to this blog. I have been pretty busy checking out more of Montana, even got in a little camping at Glacier National Park, a great six day event. Took a few short hikes and drove the Going To The Sun Road. Didn't get to see much of the scenery, it is a twisty curvy road with a steep drop off on the right side, some places have nothing to stop you from going off the edge and a ledge wall on the left side so they have no place to go if you end up on there side of the road, as I did one time while trying to do some rubber necking. I ended up coming face to face with a very angry female park ranger.. So you really can't take your eyes off the road I recommend you take the shuttle as I ended up doing, that way you get to see all the fantastic scenery. You can get off the shuttle at many places to take pictures and catch the next shuttle to continue your journey they come along about every 15 minutes. The two pictures I posted were taken on the Going To The Sun Road in Logan Pass.
You can see more pictures from this trip by going to my web site layz1.com
This is me saying goodbye to you till whenever.

Vacant lot, Critters and Critter Babies

As Paul Harvey would say now the rest of the story. Your favorite curmudgeon the Layz1 went walking around my new home town Great Falls Montana the other day and while walking by a vacant lot, I spied with my little eye a number of little creatures running around the lot. These creatures were some type of ground squirrel, just what flavor of ground squirrel I'm not sure. The ones I saw were very young probably out of the borrows for only the second or third time in there young lives. Mom and dad were not very good parents at the first sign of danger they went under ground leaving the young above ground to fend for themselves. They knew enough to get close to the borrow entrance but stayed above ground unless you walked towards them then they would scamper down the hole quicker then a hic-cup. They look bigger in the pictures then they really are, they are about the size of a week old kitten or a bit smaller. As cute as these little guys are you would not want them in your lawn that is for sure. They can turn even a small lawn into a twenty hole golf course in a heartbeat. The adults are only out of the borrows early morning and the evening hours they don't care for the heat of mid day, but the young are out all day long. Now that you know all you need to know about ground squirrels, and the fact that I am not paid by the word it is time for me to say goodbye to you till whenever.

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Another Great North Woods post already.

Will wonders never cease less then a month an another post. Layz1 the Great Falls Montana curmudgeon is working himself to death. I don't think I can keep up this hectic pace for very long I am after all four years older then dirt. The reason for the quick post is mostly because the weather here in Great Falls has not been very good the last five or six days and cabin fever is raring it ugly head and bitting me in the butt, and it has quite a target there. We have another small spring snow storm on the way to Great Falls for Thursday and Friday one to three inches of snow expected with temperatures ten to twenty degrees below normal till Sunday when we get back to the fifty's. However fear not this curmudgeon has learned to accept things that he can not change, so I shall survive. Now enough ranting it is time to post some of the pictures I took a few weeks ago.
I took these pictures on Bellview Road in Choteau Montana. The pictures are of two livestock guard dogs guarding a group of old goats in a large field. They will heard the goats away from trouble and sacrifice their lives to protect the heard even if it means going up against a grizzly or a pack of wolves. Wish I could have one of these dogs in my apartment this old goat would like that kind of protection

This is me saying goodbye to you till whenever.

To Layz1's web page.