Trip to Red Rocks & Elk Lake

We just returned from a 2-day trip to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. This is our third trip in three summers to this beautiful spot located in the Centenniel Valley south of Ennis, MT and west of Yellowstone.

The refuge was established in 1935, originally to protect the endangered trumpeter swan, but it is now home to hundreds of species of birds as well as other wildlife, including coyote (pictured below), bear, moose, antelope, deer and wolves.

We found this coyote wandering through a field of Rocky Mountain Iris. I had never seen this wildflower in Montana before. They tend to bloom earlier in the spring, but we are having such a late spring this year that the timing was just perfect this year and I was thrilled to see these beautiful flowers in abundance.

The magnificent trumpeter swan are here year-round and we found them at Shambo Pond, swimming as a pair.

Martha and Jim have been with us on each of the three trips. Jim's knowledge of birds makes the trip so much fun. He can spot and identify most of the birds we see. I personally had 43 species on my list of sightings when we left the refuge.

We spent two nights in the VERY remote Elk Lake Resort. It's so remote that their supplies are delivered 20 miles away and the innkeepers, Lorena and Craig, drive to meet the truck once a week.

The resort is self-sustaining with generators powered by solar and propane, water pumped from Elk Lake and trash burned in an incinerator. The accomodations are a series of cabins and one 5-bedroom bunkhouse. We had the bunkhouse all to ourselves - and no, we weren't on bunks. Two of the bedrooms had kingsize beds!! And, real flushies! So, we were remote but not deprived.

Lorena is an excellent cook and we ate our breakfasts and dinners there - salmon & spinach quiche and homemade cinnamon rolls topped with lemon frosting for breakfast, and shrimp scampi for dinner along with a wine selection that suited us just fine.

As they say at Elk Lake, it is located "one mile from heaven." All I can say is that heaven can't be more beautiful than this place. This scenery makes me look like a professional photographer, which I certainly am not - but it's really impossible to take a bad photograph!!

We are back in Big Sky - more later.