On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Albatrossity
In late June we visited my youngest daughter at her field site in northern Montana. She is a research ecologist at the Smithsonian Institute, working on the restoration of American prairies. The site is isolated, and simultaneously humbling and amazing. If you like wide open spaces, this is indeed the place. Our travels, towing a teardrop trailer that we just picked up in January of this year, took us through some other gorgeous country as well. Here are some images of some of those places, critters, and vistas.
Our first night was in north central Nebraska, at a recreation area that had only three sites, but we were also the only folks there for the night. We did see some kayakers on the lake; otherwise we had it to ourselves (and the Dickcissels, Sedge Wrens, Catbirds and Meadowlarks). Here is a look at the lake, as the solstitial sun sets on the Nebraska Sandhills.
Night 2 was in Montana, at another recreation area near Miles City. We did not realize that “recreation area” was a synonym for “someplace to go shoot your guns at the canyon walls after you get off work”, but fortunately that activity was brief, ending before sunset. The campsite was in a patch of Sego Lilies (aka Nuttall’s Mariposa Lily, Calochortus nuttallii). I found out later that this is the state flower of Utah. Good choice, Utahans!
The true highlight of this site, however, was a male Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena) singing and displaying in our side canyon. I don’t get to see this species often enough, and the light was perfect, so you get two pictures of this guy. Here’s the first one.
And here is the second, in full song. The camera picked up a lot of wind noise, but you can even hear him above that in this short video clip.
Night 3 was at Buffalo Camp on the Montana short-grass prairie. My daughter had a nice trailer there (with her two cats), we had a teardrop trailer (no cats). As we headed down the road from Malta MT to this site, we encountered some rain, and that rain can turn those roads into impassable gumbo. We got lucky and made it to camp, then watched this rainbow off to the east. The Big Sky motto is not just a motto; I couldn’t fit this rainbow in a single frame with the wide-angle lens I had.
But the telephoto allowed me to get a different perspective on the rainbow. There may have been gold at the end of that, but the roads were impassable for the evening and we never found out!
Meanwhile, off to the west, this scene was unfolding.
Our campsite was bustling with birdlife the next morning. The songs of Western Meadowlarks, Eastern Kingbirds, and Common Nighthawks, accompanied our first breakfast that day. And this Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus) was bustling around our trailer, looking to feed her fledglings a nice beakful o’bugs. Meanwhile, another Lark Sparrow was singing lustily nearby, hoping to father another brood of babies before summers end.
After searching a bit, I found the Lark Sparrow nest, right at the edge of the gravel at our trailer site. It was empty, but since I had seen a fledgling the day before, I suspect it was only recently abandoned.
Lark Buntings (Calamospiza melanocorys) were another common sight on those short-grass prairies. So the last bird for today is this male, surveying his domain from an equally common sight, a wheeled hay rake.
Betty Cracker
Beautiful! That Lark Sparrow’s beak capacity is impressive!
How do you like the teardrop trailer? My husband and I have talked about getting one.
Van Buren
Very nice. I want to go visit someplace where the birds and the wind are the noisiest things.
raven
Holy smokes!
Liminal Owl
Beautiful. The Lazuli Bunting!
I once followed a rainbow to the end. Or tried. It appeared in my neighborhood, when I lived in California, and I walked and walked… and it kept receding, until suddenly there was no trace of it.
Clearly a metaphor for something, but I’m not sure what.
P Thomas
Picture of teardrop, please! I have a 2017 Tab.
Don
Simply, Oh Wow.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: I , too, am curious as to how well/liked these are, I am getting older and would like to “camp” without sleeping on the ground.
SteveinPHX
Beautiful photographs, as usual. I, too, am curious about tear drops trailers.
Betty
Oh, that Lazuli Bunting! How lucky to get pictures and his music.
JeanneT
That lazuli bunting, how beautiful! Also, I would love to hear more about your daughter’s work on the prairie AND about your teardrop set up – it’s a tempting idea to travel around with a real mattress but a small footprint.
Albatrossity
@Betty Cracker: The trailer is a fine thing. As others have noted, it is great for those of us who have no desire to sleep on the ground again! It is also good for getting food ready; you can have most of an actual kitchen, a decent stove, a fridge or mega ice-chest, and best of all, a flat surface at a reasonable height for prep. Finally, it is small enough that you don’t fear taking it on roads that are, um, less than ideal for travel with most trailers.
I don’t have a picture of it in MT, and it is currently in CO, with Elizabeth and a merry band of women hikers, who do a trip there every summer and who call themselves the X-Chromosome EXcursionists. But you can see some generic pics at the Colorado Teardrops website; it is their Canyonland model.
Apparently demand for these things skyrocketed in the pandemic, but that also meant that there are now lots of places manufacturing them to increase the supply. So there is probably one somewhere near you, but we certainly can recommend the Colorado Teardrops folks. They are professionals and very easy to work with for folks who are trailer novices like us! As you can imagine, there are lots of options and customizations that require decisions to be made, and they made sure that we were fully informed about all of them.
eclare
Beautiful rainbow!
Kevin
Great pictures. I love Montana. I have been stalking Bean trailers on Instagram. I would love to get one and do a slow cross country road trip spending a lot of time out west.
WaterGirl
So much color in the buntings. Just stunning!
Also, I keep forgetting to mention to everyone that all of Albatrossity’s On the Road posts have an “Albatrossity” tag. So if you click on that in any post, it will give you all of Albatrossity’s OTR posts.
JanieM
Other people got here before me, but I’ll say it anyhow: Wow. Beautiful country, beautiful pictures.
frosty
Great shots, as usual. I love the sunset, we saw ones like that in Arizona; we don’t get them in the east. Maybe it’s the humidity but it’s definitely too many trees in the way.
Teardrops are a great way to camp and sleep off the ground. We skipped that phase though and started with the smallest pop-up Coleman made, a hand-me-down from my in-laws. As our boys grew we upsized to a larger pop-up, then as we started making too many trips to the bathhouse in the middle of the night we got a hard-sided trailer with a bathroom. We upsized from that twice and we’ve topped out at a 27-footer. Big enough that we spent five months in it each of the last two years with no divorce!
GSV Sleeper Service
Yeah, I grew up near Miles City, and my wife’s family is from Malta – beautiful country, glad you got such great pictures :)
Betty Cracker
@Albatrossity: Thank you! That’s a nice trailer. I think a tear-drop or pop-up would do for us too. I don’t want to spend a lot of time inside; I just don’t want to sleep on the ground either! :)
J R in WV
Thanks for the great pics! We had a 29-foot trailer with a slide that lived in my cousin’s back yard as a dorm for the crew I took west to build our place out there. Wife and I stayed in it several times also too, Enough to learn that I didn’t want to be on the road with it, so sold it right after the building crew was no longer scheduled to go west. Too much can do wrong on a travel trailer, and you can’t get parts at a regular yard, they use all kinds of non-standard sizes of faucets, valves, etc.
Sold the second day it was formally for sale.
Wife isn’t crazy about camping, prefers being able to hit a nice restaurant when on tour. My dad wasn’t into camping either, wanted ice cubes for his Vodka & Tonic before dinner each night. I can cook pretty good meals over a fire, but we gave up backpacking when I started having back troubles 35 years ago.
prostratedragon
Lazuli bunting truly an august thing!
Dan B
All those interesting birds – a good reason to restore prairies!
And Calochortus! Gorgeous. I’ve not overwintered one in Seattle. Not for wanting to.
Kelly
We have an A frame hard sided pop up trailer. Fairly easy to pull. About 5.5 feet tall folded, 8 feet of headroom in the center opened. A little too wide and tall to see around. I may put a wireless camera on the back.
Miss Bianca
You photos are always so magnificent, but for some reason the one of the Lazuli Bunting just singing its little heart out is particularly slaying me at the moment.
UncleEbeneezer
Lovely photos. Prairies are so pretty, though incredibly boring to drive through :p
For anyone interested in some good videos, Joey Coconato’s YouTube page MyOwnFrontier has some really gorgeous videos from Montana including Glacier, Bob Marshall Wilderness and Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. His videos are 1-2 hours long and usually cover several days of backcountry with some really amazing scenery.
GSV Sleeper Service
@Dan B: the American Prairie Reserve wants to return a big chunk of eastern Montana to it’s original state – locals aren’t happy about it, but it really needs to be done, and since it’s all being done by private citizens buying the land first, well, that’s just the free market in action, right?
Steve from Mendocino
You do take lovely landscapes!
StringOnAStick
All gorgeous photos and the best one I’ve ever seen of a Mariposa Lily, one of my favourite wildflowers. I’ve recently read that they are impossible to successfully cultivate; I’d love to have one in the yard. Oh well, finding them in the wild is always so special.
Albatrossity
@GSV Sleeper Service: Yes, we saw a number of signs indicating local opposition to American Prairie; many of them had the interesting slogan “Save the Cowboy!” Since the bison (and the Lakota) were there long before the cowboy culture, that struck me as short-sighted, to say the least.
But as you say, it is free enterprise at work. Willing sellers and willing buyers, aided and and abetted by climate change (another example of free enterprise, alas). Last year’s drought in that part of the country put a lot of ranchers deeper into debt, and more ranches went on the market. It doesn’t look good for the cowboy…
@Steve from Mendocino: Thanks! It really helps when the landscapes are lovely already. As a friend of mine says, if you want better pictures, put yourself in front of better subjects!
BigJimSlade
Lovely pictures! Of course the Lazuli Bunting is great, and I like how you can see the texture in the petals of the Mariposa Lily – that’s always a goal for me when taking flower pictures.
Yutsano
The lazuli bunting singing opera is such a *chef’s kiss* picture.
mvr
These are nice photos as usual. I’ve been wanting to get back to Montana and particularly Glacier Park. Making plans to do it next summer as a side-trip from Yellowstone. It looks like it will be camping because the affordable rooms in the park are all gone. I’m still OK sleeping on the ground, but I did buy a book on building a teardrop trailer and have a yen to try it. So thanks for that info too!
I once spent a very long time trying to hitchhike out of Miles City where I had spent the night. My most vivid memory of it of a creek with banks lined with junk cars on both sides iirc. Somehow the shooting at the Canyon walls seems of a piece with that, though I bet those cars have by now (45 years later) been removed.
I’ve always been puzzled why the sky should seem bigger in Montana. I know they have large prairies but so do other states. In principle the sky should be largest from a high point surrounded by lower points. Does Montana just have more of those not obstructed by trees?
Thanks for doing this ongoing series!
Albatrossity
@mvr: Our neighbor down the street must have purchased the same book, or else he watched a boatload of YouTube videos, because he recently built a teardrop trailer. I’d ask him how that worked out, but he then quit his job here and took one in California. The trailer went with him, not quite finished, but good enough to sleep in, I suspect.
Re the sky in Montana, i have no idea either. Some places just have memorable skies and horizons. New Mexico, at least for me, is just as amazing sky-wise, but it is different from Montana. New Mexico air and sky is more luminous, perhaps. But until you see that sky in Montana, you really can’t picture it. There is a lovely passage in Great Plains, an older book by Ian Frazier (and well worth reading, despite its age), that sums this up pretty well.
sab
You guys on the prairies have the best birds and the best sunrises amd sunsets.
When I moved back to heavily wooded NE Ohio, it was kind of a wrenching experience to realize no more panoramic sunset skies. Just little peeps of bright colors through the trees.
mvr
@Albatrossity: Yes, I do agree about the magnificence of the Montana sky. In fact also the light in general is different (even than Wyoming which is also mountains and high plains but not as far North which may explain the difference). I still have a mental image of the evening sun on the rusted car bodies along the creek I mentioned upthread.
I think there are interesting differences in natural light in different places that really add to the look of a place, especially natural places. When I moved to Portland Oregon in the mid-70s (before they blew up the “have a nice visit sign at the border” to indicate they wanted immigrants from other states) the quality of light really blew me away. I moved out there with my partner at the time who was an artist and her being so tuned in to lighting really helped me see things.
If your neighbor read a book about building teardrops it might well have been the same one since I don’t think there are that many. There have however been magazine articles in the likes of Popular Mechanics since the 40s along with plans you could send for. Nowadays there are tons of websites. I’ve been scoping out the shapes as some are more like teardrops than others. There is an interesting interplay between how much leg room you can get yourself in the bed and how the cabin is shaped.
To be honest, this particular project is in line behind a Kayak I hope to build and float from my cabin in the mountains of Wyoming to my home in Lincoln. And that one is going to have to wait a while behind some other projects.
Thanks again!
Albatrossity
@mvr:
“A week ago it was the mountains I thought the most wonderful, and today it’s the plains. I guess it’s the feeling of bigness in both that carries me away.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe