Enjoyed visiting Farragut State Park in Idaho. In 2009 when I passed through the area it was full. It’s located along the southwest border of Lake Pend Oreille, 20 miles north of Coeur D’Alene. There is a beautiful mixed conifer forrest with trails all over the place. Many intersect, so you can design your own hike. Most are fairly level, which I appreciated. The park also has a number of campgrounds, so you can choose hookups or no hookups. Now is a good time, at least mid-week, for people like me to visit. Would not want to come when it’s full (of kids…ok, I admit it).

The weather has continued to alternate between the 60′s & 70′s and cold spells with rain and snow in the mountains. There is some flooding in flood plain areas in Idaho.

Birds and squirrels are the main wildlife here. They say “Don’t feed the bears” on their handout map, but they are rarely seen. They don’t have bear proof trash cans. Mountain goats are on the opposite side of the lake. If you go out on a boat, they are supposed to be tame around people.

Above pictures: a pine grosbeak, like I saw in New Mexico. It was near the visitor center where there are trees and bird feeders. The picture below it is a gray jay near my campsite. Only the second time I’ve seen one.

Above, western bluebirds, the female with an insect in it’s beak. Below, a red-breasted nuthatch.

A Columbian ground squirrel. They were all over the campground I was in. They don’t seem to have many predators here. (update) Talked with camp host who said eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrals, and coyotes do hunt these guys.

Just saw a few deer. Think road kill and hunters probably keep their numbers down.

Below, a trail near my campsite and Lake Pend Oreille.

Drove UT 191 through Monument Valley and Blanding, Utah. Monument Valley makes me think of Thelma and Louise. Know John Ford made a lot of western’s here too.

The village of Mexican Hat’s name is based on the rock formation on the left side of the picture. There is a rv park in town with great views and hookups.

Valley of the Gods. There is a dirt road that goes through it. Didn’t drive it this visit.

Gooseneck State Park near Mexican Hat. It is a viewpoint of the formation created by the San Juan River seen above. Morning would have been a better time to get a picture, but late afternoon had to do.

Took the time to visit Natural Bridges National Monument. It’s a beautiful park with a scenic drive that allows you to see it’s three rock bridges. The top picture above is of Sipapu Bridge. The picture below it is of Owachomo Bridge. It looks to be the most fragile one. My eyes showed my age, as it was hard for me to find Owachomo Bridge. Some young European tourists came up and found it right away.

There are trails through the park and a small campground (for small rv’s).

Utah 95, that goes by Natural Bridges National Monument, is a scenic byway. In the center of the top picture you see the where the highway goes through a long rocky ridge. The picture under it is the passage as you go through it on the way to the Monument.

Stayed at a campground in the Manti-LaSal National Forest above the town of Blanding. At 7,100 feet, in a juniper and pinyon pine forest, it was a lot cooler than Monument Valley and Mexican Hat. There were lots of birds too. Below is a scrub jay that just pulled some kind of treat from the pine tree, a pine nut? A large flock of pinyon jays flew through the campground in the late afternoon. They were too fast for me to get a picture.

The bottom picture is of a Clark’s nutcracker.

Stayed a few days at a Dixie National Forest Campground at Duck Creek. It’s along another scenic route, Highway 14, in Utah, 28 miles from Cedar City and 8,600 feet in elevation. Found it good for bird watching.

Above, a black-eyed junco subspecie. It hopped up to me while I was sitting outside as the sun was going down.

Northern flicker

A black-capped chickadee by a pine cone that a squirrel had knocked off a spruce tree that morning.

Got so many stellar jay pictures, it was hard to choose which one to show.

At times there were 6-12 least chipmunks (top picture) around my campsite. They have a nervous run and stop action. They would often stop and look at me, as if they were trying to see if I were a friend or foe. Most of the time I’d stamp my feet and shoo them away. They are so small, I was afraid they would try and get into my trailer. There was only one of the squirrels shown in the second picture. It was the one who knocked the pine cones down from the trees in the morning. It also jumped and held onto the middle of my screen door several times, I think when it smelled food.

Drove into Cedar City one day to get supplies from their Walmart. On the way, came across a huge number of sheep coming over a hill and crossing the highway. There was no sheepherder or dogs in sight. Tourists, like me, stopped to watch. Locals slowly drove through the sheep to continue on their business. After around 20 minutes, a sheepherder on a horse and his two dogs appeared and directed the sheep back across the highway and over the hill.

Below, Navajo Lake around 5 miles from Duck Creek. Utah also has trees dying from beetle damage.

Have been in Lolo National Forest for most of the past few weeks. Highway 12 goes up to Lolo Pass, where you enter Idaho and the Clearwater National Forest. In Idaho it’s called the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway. This is the route Lewis and Clark, and Indians long before them, used.

Above, two gray jays. The first ones I’ve ever seen. They are very elusive and were in my campsite area only a few minutes.

Highway 12 follows along a number or streams and rivers. I saw lots of  stellar jays while driving, but only a few in my campground.

A kestral in farmland in the town of Lolo.

A blue-grouse (I think) seen along a forest service road.

A red-breasted nuthatch (top) and a red crossbill (lower).

A red squirrel that buries nuts that bears often dig up. It, like many of the birds, is not interested in handouts from humans. They generally run and jump quickly away from you.

There were a huge number of these moths (?) flying around one campground for a few days.

Above, an adult and fledgling yellow-rumped warblers. They were seen near Big Sky in the Gallatin National Forest.

Made one quick trip to Spokane, Washington, to get my trailer serviced. Was surprised to see a pair of marmots in the industrial area.

Stayed at Black Rock Campground in Yucca Valley for a few days. Not sure when the next time I will be in the area during the prime winter, early spring time frame, so wanted to take advantage of it. This campground has great Verizon evdo coverage. Not sure when I’ve had a faster internet connection.

Ten miles south of the campground is Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. It is on an earthquake fault where a spring comes to the surface for a short distance. It is just beautiful and worth a visit. Their land borders on Joshua Tree National Park and is managed by the BLM. They have a goal of making a large corridor for wildlife, so they are not boxed into a small area surrounded by developed areas.

Talk about developed areas, houses have been built right up to Black Rock Campground. So glad Joshua Tree National Park has their land. Otherwise, you know houses would have been built all the way through the park and up to the hilltops.

An antelope ground squirrel.  Have wanted to get a picture of one of these small squirrels for a long time. This guy had a burrow under a yucca plant next to my campsite.

Black tailed jackrabbit.

Cactus wren

Male and female Gambel’s quail

Scrub jay. Also saw a large flock of pinyon jays. They are the only jay that travels in a flock. Didn’t get a picture. Drats!!

A titmouse, either a juniper or oak titmouse, not sure which.

Noticed that it became very quiet after around 3:00 pm most days. That must be predator time. A coyote walked through my camp one day during this time.

Stayed at Salt Creek Campground on the Salton Sea prior to coming to Joshua Tree National Park. Not many pelicans there yet. There is a 10-15 degree temperature difference between the Salton Sea area and Black Rock Campground at 4,000 feet elevation.

The Salineño Bird Refuge (aka USFWS Kepler Tract) is next to the Rio Grande River a few miles from Falcon Dam. There is a caretaker on site who puts out food for the birds. It is a place where you can see three different orioles at the same site.

Above, an male altamira oriole on the left, and a female hooded oriole on the right. The altamira orioles are the largest of the orioles.

Male hooded oriole

Male, juvenile hooded oriole.

Audubon’s oriole with a mealworm.

The altamira oriole on the left kept hissing at the great kiskadee on the right, until the kiskadee responded.

One green jay try’s a mealworm, while the other one sticks to peanuts. Mealworms have to be a rare treat. The kiskadees were really going after them. They have never seemed interested in the regular bird food I put out.

Random musings: The central Rio Grande Valley between the towns of Weslaco and Mission seems like a unique mix of people. You have a large population of winter Texans, mostly older and white, and a large population of young hispanics. A lot of the winter Texans come from midwest farming states. Many of the rv parks offer a lot of social activities. I talked to a man when I took my truck in for an oil change who has been coming here for 20 years. He and his wife love to dance, and there are lots of dances here. He also has a mobile home in Maine. They spend summers in Maine and winters in Texas and fly between the two sites.

The rv park I stayed at in Alamo charges around $2,000 for 6 months occupancy and 6 months storage. If you put a mobile home on the site, you are kind of stuck, as it is not easy to move a mobile home. The man I talked to said he owned the land his home is on, but that is probably rare.

Heard a lot of sirens this visit, at least one every 2 or 3 hours. All I saw were ambulances, no police cars. This may reflect on the large number of older people here and some large hospitals in the area.

Below, an orange-crowned warbler and a singing black-crested titmouse at the Frontera Audubon site.

I have been in Klamath, California for almost a week. An rv park along the Klamath River, not more than a mile east of the picture above, offers a great price for Escapee members, just for the month of May. I could not afford to stay here otherwise. Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, just a few miles south, has a maximum trailer length of 24 feet at their campground. So, I could not stay there even if I wanted to.

Young male Roosevelt Elk in the rain in the Elk Prairie area next to Prairie Creek Redwood State Park campground and picnic area. The Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway goes through the park with places to pull over to watch the elk. The parkway is a scenic alternative to the #101. You can get back on the #101 at both ends of it. Besides elk watching, there are parking areas for a lot of trails that go through the redwood groves.

Roosevelt elk heading for Gold Bluff Beach which is part of the park. The road to the beach, Davison Road, is similar to Howland Hill Road, in that it’s a rough one lane road. Trailers are not allowed on it. There are trails to the beach from the park campground.

Trail through the Lady Bird Johnson redwood grove.

Don’t make a good bird go bad is a campaign seen in a lot of the coastal redwood areas. The goal is to get people to stop feeding Steller’s Jay’s and ravens, either directly or by leaving trash that they can get food from. Marbled murrelets hunt for food in the ocean, but fly inland to nest in old-growth trees. Jays, ravens and crows flying through to get food from humans, fly over the murrelets nests and will eat the eggs while the murrelets are out hunting for food.

The jay below was going up to cars at The Big Tree parking lot. This is probably the most popular stopping place for people driving through the area.

Moved a little south to Bullards State Park in Bandon, Oregon. It is really nice staying at the Oregon coast state campgrounds this time of year—there are no crowds. The downside is, it’s cold! The temps are in the 50-60′s during the day, but the wind chill makes it feel a lot colder.

There are two chestnut-backed chickadees (bird shown above) working on enlarging a hole in a tree for a nest across from where I’m camped. For such a small bird with a small beak, they are really working hard.

Cranberries are the main crop grown in the area.

New River is managed by the BLM as an area of critical environmental concern. The river is “new” because it was formed around 120 years ago. It runs parallel to the ocean. There is a beautiful circular trail that takes you through woods, wetlands, and dunes. Dry sandy areas and the dunes are off limits in the summer to protect snowy plover nesting sites.

Saw the azalea below growing wild on the New River trail.

Below, Steller’s jay and a spotted tohee.