Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Area

We stopped at the southern end of Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Area near Stevensville Montana to take a lunch break and walk the trails. We only went a short ways on the lower loop as the trail was quite flooded, then went around the upper loop for a total of 1.5 miles. We saw and heard quite a few birds. View where we sat on benches for a lunch break

blurry zoom of some red colored water birds

Great view of the snow capped Bitterroot Mountains across a very full Bitterroot River

zoom of some of those peaks

Where we found the trail flooded and turned around

In the middle of a meadow in the forest along the upper loop, we saw a very large tom turkey, here is my blurry zoom

Blodgett Canyon Overlook

We drove to the Canyon Creek Trailhead in the Bitterroot National Forest to hike the Blodgett Canyon Overlook Trail. This was 3 miles round trip with 500 ft of gain. Besides the spectacular view at the overlook, we saw many wildflowers in bloom along the way. Photo of a rainbow in Blodgett Canyon as seen from the Overlook

The first half mile of the trail is the steepest part, going up by boulders and meadows in the forest. Some of the views along the way up

we saw lots of clematis in bloom today on the upper portion of the trail. The views we saw up at the Blodgett Canyon Overlook, started out in the mist, then began to clear up while we were there.

On our way back down the trail we had views of snowy hills across and up Canyon Creek

some of the wildflowers we saw in bloom along the trail this morning: