Empty Byway #4: Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, Montana

 

At southwest Montana’s Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, the shallow waters of Upper and Lower Red Rock Lakes and Swan Lake, along with adjacent marshlands, provide a home for a proliferation of birds and wildlife. The preserve is nestled between the Gravelly Range to the north and the spectacular Centennial Mountains on the south.

The 40,000-acre refuge was created primarily to provide sanctuary for the trumpeter swan, which in the 1930s was in danger of extinction. The bird’s population had dwindled to fewer than 100 individuals in the tri-state Montana-Idaho-Wyoming region by the end of the Great Depression, while only a few other remnant populations remained in Canada and Alaska. Happily, today the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem claims some 500 resident swans, and the influx of migratory birds from the north brings the number to several thousand in winter. 

Moose are year-round residents of the refuge, and deer, elk, and pronghorn are common in the snowless months. The bird life rivals that of nearly any place in the Rocky Mountain West: No fewer than 258 species can be seen at one time of the year or another, including bald eagles, avocets, long-billed curlews, great blue herons, sandhill cranes, white pelicans, tundra swans, and twenty-three species of ducks and geese. Migratory birds by the thousands appear during the spring and fall.

The impressive, snow-white trumpeters (watch this to see and hear why they're called that) are immense birds, measuring up to four feet from beak to toe and eight feet from wing tip to wing tip, and weighing as much as thirty pounds. And they’re hungry big birds with phenomenal metabolisms: It’s common for an adult to eat up to twenty pounds of wet herbage in a day’s time. 

To experience this isolated piece of country is well worth the trouble of getting there. The outpost of Lakeview—population ten—stands sentinel over the wetlands, and the refuge headquarters is found there. Lakeview is midway along the 60-mile gravel road connecting I–15 at Monida and Highway 87 west of West Yellowstone. The road is generally not passable by automobile until mid-May and is usually snowed in again by early November. 

The mountain bike is a good way to get there; in fact, the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route runs right through Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. 

From my journal, June 2002

Awakening at Upper Lake Campground in Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in mid-June is a bit like greeting the day on Montana’s version of a Tarzan movie set, considering all the noise the local critters make.

It started when it was still dark and starry with the resonant hoot of a great gray owl and two choruses of coyotes yipping, yammering, and squealing back and forth. From my tent it sounded like a demonstration of stereo speakers: One bunch of coyotes over there to the west; the other clearly off in another direction, somewhere to the southeast in the foothills of the Centennial Range.

With the first hint of light in the eastern sky, the Canada geese began honking, followed by the deeper and louder honking of trumpeter swans. Then ducks—hundreds of them, maybe thousands—began chiming in with their variously timbred quacking. Finally, dozens of songbirds added their melodic two cents’ worth to the mix. It all coalesced into a cacophony that was terribly dissonant if I tried to separate the sounds but marvelously musical if I just took it in as a whole. I’ve never heard anything quite like it anywhere else.

Adapted from Montana: Off the Beaten Path, 8th edition

Empty Byway #3: Blacktail Plateau Drive, Yellowstone National Park

The one-way west-to-east gravel road known as the Blacktail Plateau Drive is a terrific place to get away from the heavier Mammoth-to-Tower traffic in Yellowstone and experience a slice of the national park seen by a relative handful of visitors. About seven miles in length, it also makes a great mountain-bike ride.

The first part of the outing, through meadows and scattered forest, is pleasant. But the final couple of miles are nothing short of stupendous, as you look far out over the gash of the Yellowstone River canyon and the surrounding mountains. (Nervous drivers might get a little shaky on this section.)

Make the drive in July, and you'll be flamblastulated by the wildflower displays. (I made that word up, because I couldn't find an existing word that would do the colorful show justice.)

 The chances of spotting wildlife are good, too, from elk to pronghorn to grizzly bears.

Adapted from the travel app Yellowstone Hotspots, available at the iTunes Store and Google Play.

Empty Byway #2: The Katy Trail, Missouri

 

Not a highway, but a long, skinny state park, running 225 miles from St. Charles to Clinton, Missouri. 

Often regarded as the crown jewel of North American rail-trail projects, the KatyTrail follows a former route of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad – the MK&T, or Katy for short – between St. Charles and Sedalia, Missouri. (The Union Pacific Railroad contributed the southwesternmost portion, between Sedalia and Clinton.) A quiet artery, the Katy Trail transports non-motorized travelers through the heart of the Show-Me State. On a grander scale, the riverside portions of the trail between St. Charles and Boonville serve as components of a pair of trails that are national in scope: the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail and the coast-to-coast American DiscoveryTrail. 

The trail travels through dense hardwood forests, wetlands, sheltered valleys, manipulated pasturelands and crop fields, and occasional patches of restored tallgrass prairie. Redbud and a host of spring wildflowers bid colorful adieu to the drab days of winter, while autumn explodes into a multi-colored confusion of shrubs and hardwoods, highlighted with the flaming reds of sugar maples. 

From St. Charles, located just across the Missouri River from St. Louis, to New Franklin, a distance of nearly 150 miles, the trail more or less hugs the northern bank of the Missouri. At New Franklin it veers south to cross the river into Boonville, then departs the Missouri, bearing southwest through sun-drenched prairie-turned-farmland. Although very long, the trail is only a few feet wide, so leaving the right-of-way often means trespassing.

Some avid bicyclists tackle the entire trail over a period of four or five days, usually staying at indoors accommodations. More common are day trips, either out and back on the trail, out on the trail and returning via shuttle, or a loop fashioned by riding a portion of the Katy Trail and adjacent low-traffic roads. Road bikes are suitable for the surface of finely crushed limestone, although many riders prefer the added comfort of a hybrid or mountain bike. Likewise, most of the gently graded route is negotiable by those in wheelchairs.

As good a place as any to hit the trail is Rocheport, an attractive burg containing numerous bed-and-breakfast inns and pre-Civil War homes. To find the trailhead, turn south off Third Street onto Pike Street and go two blocks. From the parking area ride east on the trail as it squeezes between marshlands to your right and timbered bluffs on the left. Soon you’ll come in beside the Missouri River – wide, deep, brown, log-hauling, and twirling with whirlpools.

As you leave the hum of the high interstate bridge behind, the unsurprising sight of scores of swallows darting in and out of their bluffside shelters is accompanied by a less expected vision: that of the occasional Canada goose roosting on a rock ledge. Look for red-headed woodpeckers and other birds in the huge cottonwood snags in a slough between milepost 177 and 176. Also keep an eye out for browsing cottontails and for deer tracks in the soft sand along the margins of the trail.

Deep, steep drainage ravines can be seen on private lands to the north, if you can manage to peer through the dense veil of vegetation. A couple of miles after passing a marker commemorating the Lewis and Clark campsite of June 6, 1804, you’ll note the MKT Nature and Fitness Trail, a 9-mile spur that leads into the heart of the city of Columbia. At 8.5 miles cumulative, you’ll reach the trailhead of McBaine. To make for an out-and-back trip of 20 miles even, continue for another 1.5 miles, first passing through open fields where gorgeous spreads of spiderwort, with its three violet-blue petals and bright yellow stamens, rival the electrifying brilliance of an indigo bunting flashing past. At the turnaround, near the next series of sycamore-smothered bluffs, watch for blue herons standing tall in the wetlands between river and trail.   

Back in Rocheport, check out the old railroad tunnel on the trail just to the west of where you started, then stand awhile on the adjacent bridge spanning Moniteau Creek. Peer down, and sooner or later you’ll see a red-eared slider come bobbing slowly downstream on a log.

Empty Byway #1: Mesa Falls Scenic Byway, Idaho

 

The southern end of the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway begins at the eastern outskirts of Ashton, Idaho. It's a great road to explore by bicycle, although you might want to consider driving the first few miles. You'll pass through a gorgeous piece of rolling farm country, with the high Teton Range prominently visible to the southeast, before descending into the gash of Three Rivers Canyon and coming to mile-high Warm River Campground, a splendid place to set up a base camp.

The gently flowing water of the spring-fed Warm River isn't exactly warm, remaining at about 52 degrees Fahrenheit the year around. Here you can fish for trout, float your tube, or bike and hike to your heart's content. It's such a pretty spot, accompanied by the soothing sound of mountain water not long out of the heart of Yellowstone National Park's Cascade Corner. Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring with a grill (just thinking about it, I can smell those hotdogs sizzling over a lodgepole-pine flame). Additional amenities include drinking water and vault toilets.

The campground serves as the southern terminus of a rail-trail tracing the Union Pacific route that delivered turn-of-the-20th-century tourists to West Yellowstone, Montana. Be sure to bike or hike up its dirt/gravel surface for at least the first 3 miles, to check out the exterior of a 1907 tunnel (closed to entry at latest report). The higher you go, the more stunning become the views down on the Warm River Canyon.

From the campground you'll climb to the Bear Gulch Trailhead. Park here if you have cycling in mind. Pedal the 20 miles to the U.S. Highway 20 junction and back, and you'll have enjoyed the sound and sensation--the soundsation?--of 40 miles of silky smooth asphalt humming beneath your tires. (If you'd rather run than ride, be aware that the popular Mesa Falls Marathon--and Half Marathon and 10K--take place annually along the byway on a Saturday in late August.) 

Along the way, you'll pass Lower and Upper Mesa Falls. The Henry's Fork, fabled among fly fishers, is widely known as a placid, relatively flat river. But it's nothing like that at the falls, where gravity sees to it that the river storms, froths, roars, plummets, and splashes off the rim of the Henry's Fork Caldera, which erupted into existence, geologists say, approximately 1.3 million years ago. 

The nearby Big Falls Inn, a gorgeous structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, through the decades has served as a stage stop and hotel, cafe, saloon, general store, dance hall, Boy Scouts dining hall, and gathering place for the police force of Fremont County, Idaho. Today it's a visitor center, replete with videos, mounted game trophies, interpretive exhibits, and a sales outlet for books and maps.

Just across U.S. Highway 20 from the byway's northern terminus is Harriman State Park, home to the historic Railroad Ranch. The ranch originated in 1902 with the creation of the Island Park Land and Cattle Company. Most shareholders in the ranch were with the Oregon Short Line, the Union Pacific Railroad subsidiary that laid the tracks early on from Ashton to West Yellowstone. In 1908, Edward R. Harriman, chairman of the U.P., purchased a share in the ranch--hence the name of the state park. 

So mellow is the Henry's Fork current in Harriman that the river appears to be a lake.

That's just the beginning of the history, which you'll learn a lot more about if you visit. What is more important, perhaps, is that Harriman State Park is rather like a miniature Yellowstone National Park, minus the crowds. At hand are outstanding hiking, mountain biking, wildlife viewing, picnicking, lodging in old cabins, yurt camping, horseback riding, and more--including groomed cross-country ski trails in winter.

All in all, this place is a gem that should not be missed. Empty trails, empty byways.

Adapted from the travel app Yellowstone Hotspots, available at the iTunes Store and Google Play.