That's the best part of the story but it all starts with our usual ' go find the coldest most uncomfortable place in our part of Montana ' and go there for sun up to see the scenes. They don't call it Freeze Out Lake for nothing. And this year we hit it on the best date yet with 50,000 birds which is not really a lot but because of the unusual dry spell and low water Lakes all the birds were in one place,,,,our place.
The beautiful alpenglow at sunrise . The birds are all on the distant lake but are so loud they seem closer. Some lift off and others don't. When they do fly some go northeast some southwest, there's a certain mystery to it all. As I fiddled to get one more jacket on a group of a thousand or so surprised us by flying directly over us. You could feel and hear their wings.
So, the coffee gets cold, the birds are off to the fields to eat . MP and I are out for our first ever edition of back roads of Montana. The night before as were eating steak and burgers at John Henry's in Choteau Montana we chatted locals up who were full of advice being obvious to them we were visitors. This wonderfully humorous woman who had 20 years in Choteau told us all the low water was a real problem for the birders and the she told us of Arod Lakes Migratory bird preserve which was 'only' 30 miles away and being smaller but deeper was chock full of birds.....But...what she didn't tell us was this.
Arod Lakes is smack dab in the middle of page 49 of our
All Roads of Montana atlas.These farm roads must all be on section lines as they're everywhere, wash board and NO people. In 30 miles of it we came across 0ne truck. You kinda zig zag your way to where you're going. We started out on road # 21 and ended up on road # 29....One good thing is that with this dry land extensive farming there is little terrain to be in the way and we had cell service the entire way which was good because without Google maps at work for us I'd have been a bit nervous....we'd pull up to one of the many intersections , it was only funny once when I asked MP if the road was clear her way.
So we arrive. There's nobody there. Nobody around . No farms in sight . We felt like we were the only ones that had ever been there except maybe for the guy who shot up the place. We found a vault toilet on the far side of the lake with a one lane muddy road to it that was on top of a worn our earthen damn that looked to be falling apart...MP reminded me that the car is a S.U.V. after all.....the lake area and a view on down the road.
I wasn't looking forward to returning the way we had come, my kidneys couldn't handle it. So we went into executive session and decided to ask Google to take us to Conrad instead of Choteau and Walla it came back with directions and only 15 miles of gravel....and along the way we saw the most interesting things...A pheasant ran across in front of us with his head down like pheasants do and low and behold the next farm we came to said 'Running Pheasant Ranch. And one of his neighbors was spreading the word.
We saw antelope before we even left home. The thousands of Geese and Swans . Then we heard and saw Sandhill cranes jillions of ducks. We quit counting the deer but we easily saw 2 to 300.
So, our first post Mexico adventure is in the books and Montana adventures await. They're kinda funny in this State. they don't like new people and they talk of ' Montana values ' I'm still chewing on that one and I'll let you know when I decide what that means . But if anybody ever grinds me about being new here I'm gonna tell em two things...my parents are buried at Fort Harrison Veterans Cemetery and I've been to Arod Lakes..." have you" ?
New song to arrive soooooooon.
