Lubec Ridge: Visit #1

Lubec Ridge is just south of Highway 2, before you get to East Glacier.  It gets fairly good sun exposure, so a lot of the area is free of snow and the wildflowers bloom a little earlier here.   It's a beautiful spot for Lynn and I to explore for wildflowers when we can't get up into the mountains.  Our view was stunning:  the snowy peaks of the southern end of Glacier Park.  It was a typical spring-in-Montana day with clouds and sunshine playing tag, chilly temperatures, but fairly calm--which is significant when you are on the east side of the mountains!

Calf Robe Mountain

Summit Peak

Warren and 2 friends were back-country skiing across these mountains and on over to Two Medicine Lake.  The plan was for us to drive on over there and pick them up, and then eat dinner at Serranos in East Glacier for part of my birthday celebration!

We weren't too hopeful about finding much in the way of flowers, and had some back-up plans.  But to our surprise there were lots of lovelies to find and potential ones to see next weekend!  The first flowers to greet us were Rocky Mountain Douglasia:

Very similar to moss Campion, this grows in mossy clumps and was scattered all over the rocky ground like splatters of pink paint!  We also saw lots of buds and foliage getting ready to bloom:  Pasqueflower, Shooting Stars, Buttercups, Penstemon, and some Saxifrage:

I don't know what kind of shrub this is.

These are last years Kinnikinnick berries.

This is Comb Draba, just starting.  Next week we'll see clumps of pink and yellow!

But the other star of the show is called Wyoming Kittentails.  We saw them at every stage, from bud to developed pollen head.  Lots of buds coming, so we plan to come back!

Well those would be a hard act to follow, but we had a visit from a little bluebird while we were eating our lunch, and he perched on these old logs for a long time so that I could get his photo!  He wasn't this close, the photo is taken on a pretty high zoom.

Lynn had me sit down by a clump of Douglasia to take a photo--the pink matched my raincoat!

Then I realized this crazy lime green moss we kept seeing matched her green jacket!  We really are flower-nerds!

We arrived at Two Medicine Lake just after the guys got there, and marveled at how good our timing all worked out.  They had had a good day as well.  Warren didn't take many photos on the trek; he was working too hard.  But these give you an idea of what it looked like.

Two Medicine Lake and Mount Sinopah

All in all a wonderful day outside, with promises of more wildflower beauty to come!  The title of this post has a deliberate #1 in it, because there will be #2, #3 and maybe more!!