My wife Jana and I finally made it to Salmon on our third attempt. We try to take a trip to this same canyon every year, because of the cool things we see there. The canyon follows the Salmon River so the scenery is awesome. There are old abondoned buildings, mines, hyroglyphs, and an abundance of wildlife. If you think Yellowstone is cool you have to hit Salmon in the Springtime.
We left on 4-15 at about 11:00 a.m. Salmon is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Rigby and the canyon we go up is another 22 miles North of that. On our way there we saw quite a few pronghorn antelope. A couple of miles before Gilmore Summit we finally saw some that were close enough to the road to get pictures of. These two bucks are pretty nice especially the one on the right.
Two pronghorn antelope bucks.
We also saw quite a few whitetail deer between Leadore and Salmon. When we arrived in Salmon we ate lunch and then went and looked at some of the houses in Salmon, just for fun. We left Salmon about 2:30 p.m. and on our way we saw a herd of over 100 elk feeding on a hillside. We wanted to get closer to take pictures, but the only road that came close enough was a private road. We continued on to the canyon, and stopped at the first camp ground in the canyon to kill some time. After killing some time, we continued on up the canyon, the first thing we saw were some mule deer does and fawns about 50 yards off the road. We took pictures and continued our journey. Then we ran into a band of bighorn ewes and lambs and got a few pictures. Here is a picture of one of the ewes, she was only 5 yards off the road.
Bighorn sheep ewe.
As we continued down the canyon we saw common mergansers, bald eagles, and even a snow goose hanging out with a couple of canada geese. The canyon is so steep though that you get neck strain from looking up the steep sides. There was wildlife everywhere we continued to see mule deer and bighorns along the canyon.
Another bighorn ewe in a different band.
A mule deer fawn trying to hide.
We stopped to get a picture of an old cabin on the other side of the river and noticed a lone deer standing on the other side of the river as well. We took some pictures and noticed he had little nobs on his head. If you look closely you can see them.
Mule deer buck with new antler growth.
As I mentioned above there are a lot of old buildings and mines along the river. My wife is obsessed with the old abandoned buildings. She contemplated swimming the river just to go see one. Anyway we did get some pictures of some of the buildings and a mine along the river.
Abandoned cabin and out buildings.
Abandoned mine across the river.
Sign for the abandoned mine.
All along the river we were seeing deer, elk, bighorns, geese, chukars, and bald eagles. If you like viewing wildlife you have got to go to Salmon in the springtime. The weather was awesome as well in the low 60's. Salmon is a little lower in elevation then Rigby, thus most of the mountains around the canyon were bare of snow.
A beautiful mule deer fawn.
A herd of elk across the river.
A couple more bighorns on the side of the road.
The whole time I was up there I wanted to see a huge bighorn ram, unfortanately that didn't happen. That doesn't mean we didn't see any rams it was just that they were not huge. We came upon a band of about 10 bighorns that had three young rams in it. We got pictures and video of these youngsters. They were posturing to the ewes like it was mating season, it was pretty cool.
Two of the young bighorn rams mentioned above.
One of the whitetail does.
On the way out of the canyon we decided we should get a few shots of ourselves, we had plenty of widlife. It was crazy we saw probably over 300 elk, 100 mule deer, 40-50 bighorns, 30 whitetails, 30 pronghorn, and 1 moose, not to mention all the cool birds we saw. I would challenge anyone to see that much in one day going to Yellowstone. Altogether we had a great time and I can wait to go back next year.
Jana and I with the Salmon River in the background.
