Although there was lots of color yesterday, pink was the predominant color of the day. Lynn, Mary, Gail and I, all headed over to the Two Medicine area of the Park and hiked up the Cobalt Lake trail. It started out with sweet forest pink:
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| Pipsissiwa; Prince's Pine; Chimaphila umbellata |
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| Pink Pyrola or Wintergreen |
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| Mary and Lynn enjoying the waterfall on the way up. |
After a steep, sweaty climb through a fairly humid forest (by Montana standards), we got up to a beautiful cascading creek coming from Cobalt Lake. Lynn was taking us to her favorite Monkeyflower spot, and hoped to see them all along the creek. They were there, but mostly still in bud.
We continued up along the creek and through meadows of paintbrush that were breath-taking.
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| Mount Rockwell at the head of this sub-alpine valley. |
Then we came to the most amazing sight--a football field size meadow of solid pink Monkeyflower! I've never seen so many in one mass before. It was like a river of Monkeyflower flowing down the meadow!
It is hard to capture the immense scope of what we saw, especially with the bright sun washing out the color a little bit. It really was beyond breath-taking; stunning...magnificent...incredible...then it got better!
Further up the meadow (marshy and fed by a spring, not the creek) the flowers included lavender Alpine Willow-herb, yellow Arrow-leaf Groundsel, and Pink Spirea with the Monkeyflower.
It was an eye-popping day! Here are a few more of my flower favorites:
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| Yellow Monkeyflower and Alpine Willowherb |
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| Mossy rocks at the head of the seep and meadow. |
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| Garden color: Monkeyflower, Valerian, Paintbrush, Arnica, Groundsel. |
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| Mary and Gail enjoying the garden |
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| Lynn is in flower-heaven! |
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| Renegade Fleabane vying for attention amid all the other glories! |
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