This has been a really odd fall in Island Park. Last year we experienced a change in colors that was almost indescribable. It started with the trees in September and continued with the ground cover all the way to November. As you drove around it was almost as if the forest was ablaze with all the red, yellow and orange color.
But it hasn’t been that way this year! An early HARD frost (temperatures below zero) in September froze things just like they were. There was no additional change in color. Everything just froze hard and died. Leaves have been ripped from the trees by the pounding of wet, heavy snow coming almost daily. Sure, it gets up to the thirties and forties during the day to melt the snow, but the early signs of winter keep on punishing what’s left of the leaves and ground cover.
But the good news in all this is, the national weather service says this winter is supposed to be warmer and drier than usual. Hmmmm. It’s rained or snowed almost every day in September and October. There have been many days that have been 25 degrees below what we would normally expect for this time of year. There has really been no fall this year (traditionally the most beautiful time to be in Island Park.) We jumped right from summer to winter.
I guess that’s just global warming at work for us. And praise Allah we’ve had it. I can’t imagine where we’d have been this year without it.
You know, a lot of people would say this year’s gardening efforts were wasted. I know of many people who got little to no produce from their gardens. But there is more than food that comes from the attempt to grow a garden and this year may have been an especially good teacher.
It seems our neighbors to the north are about fed up with the noise, pollution, road degradation and danger of big trucks and are actively pursuing an ordinance preventing them from driving on their roads. Residents of the Madison River Valley from West Yellowstone to Ennis (and from Henry’s Lake to Ennis) have asked the Montana Governor, Attorney General, and Department of Transportation to consider legislation banning the trucks from highway 87 and 287.
If you haven’t been in Harriman in the fall, you haven’t been to Harriman. The park is beautiful as the colors start to change and the elk start to bugle. It’s like stepping back in time about 3,000 years. The sounds are prehistoric.
Yellowstone National Park had a banner year this year with over 2.3 million visitors. With the price of gas being down and people travelling closer to home, the park enjoyed a daily influx of roughly 26,000 people. If you propose an average of 3 people per vehicle, that’s about 8,600 cars per day (which didn’t have near the apparent impact on animals and the environment that 300 snowmobiles would.) Multiply that by $25 per car, and we’re talking over $200,000 per day in park entry fee revenues. That would be the reason they don’t dare limit the number of cars each day like they do snowmobiles.
With summer coming to a close and the fall chill in the air, an otherwise pretty bleak real estate season is drawing its last breaths as well. Sales were slow this summer as the economy put a damper on second homes, and people who really wanted to sell are faced with carrying their properties for another year.
You know, we always complain about bad service when someone doesn’t treat us right, but we don’t always talk about the good service we receive. So in the interest of keeping the playing field level, I want to report some examples of great service.
If you love Island Park, and I know you do or you wouldn’t be reading this, consider volunteering for one of the many cleanup opportunities in the area. The Henry’s Fork Foundation just sponsored a cleanup of the stretch of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake that runs through Island Park and they did a tremendous work. Cleaning up both in and around the river made a better situation for everyone.
Island Park has been a winter playground for more years than snowmobiles have been around. It is a mecca for snowmobilers all around the country. In spite of the claims on the Utah license plates, Idaho has the best snowmobiling snow that ever fell on a mountain (hence all the Utah license plates here in the winter.)
