Day 70 Tuesday August 23, 2016 Beaverhead N.F., Madison
River CG, site 9, day 1
282 towing miles 9.9 mpg
We slept in this morning at Quartz Flats Campground. Our bodies still think it’s Pacific
Time. We made coffee and took it with us
and wolfed down a blueberry muffin while waiting for the coffee. We were out of there by 08:30. On the way out
we took some pictures of the sign and the tunnel under I-90 that joins the two
loops of the campground.
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| This big culvert is under I-90. It connects the westbound campground with the eastbound campground. |
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| Grabbed a picture of the campground sign on the way out. |
Our destination for the day was a campground that I’ve known
about for 20 years, but never stayed there, but always wanted to. It is right on the Madison River about half
way between Ennis and West Yellowstone, Montana. It is close to the section I usually fish on the
Madison River. In the recent past, when
I drive out here, we’ve stayed at Baker’s Hole campground just south of West
Yellowstone and I would commute the 35 miles each way to fish here. This campground is right there.
Most of the trip was on I-90 across western Montana through
Missoula and Butte and then dropped down on a scenic back road, MT-389, to US
287 into Ennis. Here’s some scenery
along the way.
Ennis is a big fly fishing home base for the Madison
River. We wanted to stop there to get a
Montana fishing license, but there was nowhere to park with a trailer that we
could find. We also needed an ATM to get
some cash. We pulled into a drive up ATM
(with the trailer attached) and it was out of service. But Marsha took this photo of a mule deer
standing across the street while I was messing around with the ATM.
We looked for a spot to park on a side street and found
another ATM. But I couldn’t park
there. We gave up driving around and
moved on another 32 miles on US-287 to the Madison River Recreation Area, which
includes the Madison River campground.
There are only 10 sites here and two were occupied. We got site 9 which I think is the best. We arrived at 14:00. Nice breeze, not too hot, low humidity,
shaded by spruce trees, and the sound of the river nearby. Was a great site and Marsha was happy. She was about to be a fly-fishing widow for about
4 hours per day over the next few days.
Here’s our campsite at Madison River Campground.
There is a private RV Park ½ mile down the road with a fly
shop. I stopped in there to see if I
could get a Montana fishing license. They
said I could. Non-resident licenses were
$60 for 10 days or $90 for whole season.
I got the seasonal.
Cooked a couple of steaks and baked potatoes on the
grill. Both were undercooked. My grilling Karma has not been good lately.
I sat out the evening at the campsite and decided to go fishing
tomorrow.
Day 71
Wednesday, August 24, 2018 Beaverhead N.F., Madison River CG, site 9, day 2
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0 towing miles
Woke up to a 42o morning. Needed the furnace and
coffee to warm up. Worked on blogs,
waiting for morning sun to heat up a little.
In the meantime, some black angus cows walked down the road and one even
came into the campsite.
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| Taken out the window, next to the dinette. |
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| Right out the front door. |
This isn’t unusual around here to see cows wandering around
freely.
We eventually were able to cook breakfast outside. We made
our new specialty from the Roughwood Café in Nenana, AK known as Jose
Stacked. Came out good. This will be a camping staple for us from now
on along with my bacon, egg, and cheese grilled sandwiches.
Today is the first day in quite a few where we weren’t
traveling, so we could take our time and relax today. It’s only 62o today with a very
high winds. Had to wear layers to take
out the chill.
Got my fishing stuff ready and drove about a mile up the
river to my bluff I park at and walked an additional ½ mile to my spot at the
cliff face. The wind was howling and
casting was almost impossible. I did
manage to catch a 13” brown trout on the same Adams fly I caught all those
graylings on at the Tangle River in Alaska.
I got nothing the rest of the day.
Fished for three hours. Or I
should say, tried to fish. The wind made
it extremely difficult.
After returning to camp, took a ride down one of the many
National Forest Roads in the area. The
one we took followed the West Fork of the Madison River. Had some nice scenery and I took a picture.
And I laughed when I saw this:
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This is a cattle guard with a bypass around it. I can't figure out
why there is a bypass. Do they want the cows to go through
and not stop at the cattle guard? The bypass did have
a cable that could be put across it to close it down.
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Was 35ooutside this morning, coldest morning of
the trip so far. But we’ll see lower
than that over the next few weeks in Yellowstone. Stayed inside with our coffee with the
furnace running. Was able to post the
Meziadin Lake blog for August 18th.
Got a little behind because of the lack of data signal in Canada. Should be able to get caught up here. Have 4G LTE.
We took a ride into West Yellowstone, MT. Took Marsha to the Three Bears Restaurant for
breakfast. Had other errands to do. Marsha needed to find a pharmacy to get some
eye drops for allergies, I needed a hardware store to get a pin and clevis for
the hinge on my Weber Q grill. We
stopped for some groceries, firewood, ice and gassed up the truck. I got to go play at Bud Lillie’s fly shop
while Marsha visited the quilt shop across the street.
To get to West Yellowstone from our Madison River
campground, we drive on US-287 to US-191.
Then south 6 miles to West Yellowstone.
As soon as we left the campground we could see smoky haze in the
east. It got worse as we got closer to
West Yellowstone. We stopped at the
Baker’s Hole campground where we are going to stay in a few days and where
we’ve stayed in the past, just to see how full it was and how smoky. It was smoky, but we felt we could live with
it. All the electric sites were taken,
but there were a few non-electric available.
But it was 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning and some campers may not have
checked out yet. The smoke was worse in
West Yellowstone, but seemed to have cleared up a bit after we ate breakfast. There are quite a few wildfires in the area,
including Yellowstone National Park.
Got back at campground around noon. Got fishing stuff ready to go fishing. Parked on bluff and walked the sagebrush
meadow to my usual spot.  |
| Taken from the bluff. Below is the sagebrush meadow. The row of spruce trees is the edge of the river. |
Followed the river back down and got another rainbow at the
bend by the highway. (I don’t expect you
to know where I mean). This was on my
secret Adams. It was a 15” (actual
measurement) rainbow. I have a picture
this time.
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A beautiful 15" rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).
No fish were harmed in the making of this photograph.
It got to swim another day.
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Day 73 Friday August 26, 2019 Beaverhead N.F., Madison River CG, site 9, day 4
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Not as cold
as yesterday, but enough for some morning heat and coffee inside. Posted the Stewart-Hyder blog which is the
one where we ended up at the Cassiar RV Park on August 19th.
After that I
dress up in my uniform and walked to the river to see what I could do. I caught a small rainbow on a nymph, but
nothing else in the ½ hour I fished.
Drove up the road to another turnoff and tried again. Nothing.
Gave up and went to the bluff.
But I didn’t do the ½ half mile walk to the normal spot. I walked directly to the river from the bluff
and then walked upstream to where the river bends away from the road. I used all kinds of different dry flies with
no hits except a couple of hits on the Michigan hopper. Caught no fish.
When I got
back, I took Marsha to the Grizzly Bar & Grill. This place has a lot of sentimental value to
me. It is right across the river from
our campsite, but we have to drive about a mile down the road to cross the
river and get back up to the highway.
When I came out here in the 90’s with my Traverse City buddies, we would
fish the Madison River where I fish it now and go to the Grizzly Bar &
Grill when we got off the water. It is
always full of fly fisherman and locals.
Great food. It is a little more
pricey now, but was a great experience.
I hadn’t been in there for about 15 years. I had the tenderloin special as described in
the photo shown below.
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This is not the Grizzly Bar & Grill, but the shed next to it that the
sign is mounted to. I wish we had taken pictures
of the interior and exterior. It has very rustic décor.
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This is interesting, This is actually a cell tower that
happened to be next to the Grizzly Bar. It is disguised as a tree.
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Day 74
Saturday August 27, 2016 Beaverhead N.F., Madison River CG, site 9, day 5
0 towing miles
Was going to
make a morning coffee fire but it was too cold to sit out. Worked on the blog draft and pictures for the
Glennwood RV “Back to USA” post.
We took a
trip to Ennis, MT today. Picked up some
groceries. You readers are probably
wondering why it appears that we grocery shop almost every day. We have a small refrigerator and limited
pantry space, so we can’t stock up too far ahead. And we need to use up what we got quickly
before it perishes so it’s hard to not be running out of something every
day. Sometimes critical stuff like
bread, other times not so critical like Triscuit crackers.
We needed to
fill one of the 20 lb. propane bottles that feed the camper, but being a Saturday, the two propane
places in town closed at noon. I saw a
True Value hardware store and stopped in the see if I could replace my blown up
fire lighter that was refillable and had a flexible nozzle. Still can’t find one.
North of
Ennis, there is a dam across Bear Trap Canyon which backs up the waters of the
Madison River into a large lake called Ennis Lake. We took a ride to some boat launch sites on
the lake and took a road, if you want to call it that, into Bear Trap Canyon to
see the dam and what the fishing below the dam would be like. We were on a one lane road with shear rock on
one side going up and on the other side going down into the reservoir. There was berely room for one car. At some locations, two could pass, if you
pulled in your mirrors. There were some
wide areas to wait for others to pass at some locations, and at others, someone
would have to back up until a spot in the road was wide enough for two cars to
pass. There were 5 mph speed limits on
some of the corners. It was quite an
adventure.
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| Ennis Lake |
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| Entrance to Bear Trap Canyon |
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| Entering canyon downstream from the lake. |
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| The narrow road. |
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| The road near rock outcropping. |
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| One of the 90 degree corners at 5 mph |
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| The dam. Penstock in foreground. |
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The penstock. This is about a mile long. We couldn't follow it
all the way because the road to the powerhouse was blocked except for employees.
(pictures are out of order)
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| Road below the dam |
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| More road below the dam. |
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| The dam. Much smaller than I expected. |
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| A shot of the canyon above the dam. |
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| Another shot of the canyon above the dam. |
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| Ennis Lake |
Back in
Ennis had a nice lunch at a place on the main drag named the Gravel Bar &
Grill. Excellent lunch. Had pastrami sandwich. Every bar and grill type place in Montana has
pastrami sandwich on the menu. This was
common where I grew up back east, but it is hard to find anywhere in Michigan
or anywhere else we hang out. Why it’s popular
in Montana, I don’t know, but it was good.
Marsha had a Mexican burger which was a burger with pepper jack cheese
and guacamole. We see these on Montana
menus too.
Wandered
through a few fly shops and asked about Madison River access in the Ennis area
and they mentioned the Montana Fish & Game access at the bridge, just
before coming into town. I’ve also heard
that from others I have run into on the river where I’ve been fishing. Will try here next time.
Marsha went
to the local yarn shop but didn’t see anything that interested her.
Back at
camp, fished the Madison River at this location for the last time of the
trip. Parked on the bluff like I usually
do and walked across the meadow to my spot.
I didn’t walk up from there, but followed the river downstream and
fished the likely spots. Caught a small
brown trout on my Adams fly, but finally lost it in a streamside willow, the fly, not the fish.
That ended
my fishing adventures on the Madison River in the Hucthin’s Bridge area.
No cow
pictures today. But I have one of an
osprey nest.
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| This nest was at the south end of Ennis Lake. They are erected all over the Madison River system. The platforms. The birds build the nests. There is one on the bluff I park on. I took photos of it last year. |
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