Henry's Lake SP, ID - Aug 2007

We arrived at Henry's Lake State Park, Idaho on a Saturday and the campground was nearly full, so we planted for one night in a site at the back of the campground without much of a view. On Sunday all the weekenders went home and we moved to a new site that had a lovely view of the lake and the Centennial Mountains. We had planned to stay for a few days and ended up staying over two weeks. The park is about 15 miles west of the town of West Yellowstone, MT. The campground is located on the eastern shore of Henry's Lake and is in a high desert setting -- around 6,500' elevation and with an arid climate, so there is lots of sagebrush. The area had experienced a pretty severe drought during the summer as well as unusually high temps, so most of the grass and plants were very dry and parched.

During our two weeks here, we went through sunny and hot (near 90°) weather, cold (low of 40°) weather and also several thunderstorms with very high winds, lightening and rain. The lightening sparked dozens of fires in the tri-state area (Montana, Idaho and Wyoming) and we experienced several days of very thick smoke in the air. Here's the same view as in the above photo on the worst of the smoke-filled days. Most of the time however, the winds kept the smoke away and we had nice views.

Our first night at the park gave us a very colorful sunset. Every evening we sat outside and watched as the sun dipped behind the mountains and the glow reflected off the water. Even though the smoke from all the nearby fires made for hazy days, it also made almost every sunrise and sunset very colorful.

Henry's Lake is a haven for fisherman (of all kinds!) Every morning there were at least six boats out on our little cove and the same number of pelicans. On weekends, the number of boats tripled. I thought this photo was a good depiction of two, very different, methods of fishing! This was on a smoke-filled day -- hence the haze in the air.

Another picture of one of the pelicans on a smoke-filled sunrise. The marshy end of the cove near the campground was filled with an assortment of water fowl and supposedly an occasional moose. We took long walks every day around the marsh in hopes of spotting a moose, but never did see one.

There were several varieties of wildflowers blooming in the park. This was one of my favorites called Elkweed (aka Deer Ears because of their large, soft and fuzzy leaves.) I think it's very tropical looking for a desert setting. They can grow as large as 5 - 6 feet in height. The stalk spurts up very quickly and then the flower spike begins to bloom with tiny yellow flowers. The flowers wilt in a couple of days, so I had to find a plant that had all the stalks in bloom at once.

One of the trails in the park was closed the day after we arrived because some hikers were approached by a black bear and, when the hikers tried to scare it away, it charged them. Black bears are normally shy, but since this one was apparently used to people, the park rangers closed the trail and posted this sign at the trailhead.

Just one more pretty sunset at Henry's Lake.