Into the Mountains

Day Three

We woke up at 6 am to a torrential rain. Perfect! Here we are at Glacier National Park and it’s raining. We went back to sleep. A couple hours later, blue sky (well with some clouds), and sunshine. Time to check out of the inn and see about getting a campsite. We hoped that our plan of getting to the campground mid-morning on a Sunday would prove to be a good time to get us a nice campsite without a reservation. We were relieved when that proved to be true. We had our pick of a number of sites in a campground that later in the day was completely full.

We decided to drive over the continental divide on a road known as the “Going to the Sun Highway.” As we started up, we found the highway was lined with these amazing meadows filled with blooming wildflowers. We stopped a number of times to look more closely at the many different types of flowers and drink in the sights of these magnificent mountains. Of course, we did take some photos. (Don’t worry, we won’t ask to show you all the vacation photos we are taking!)

What we didn’t appreciate was the many cars, filled parking lots, and the lines of traffic as we came back east after driving to the west entrance of the park. The western side of the Going to the Sun Highway seems to hang on the cliffs as it works its way down, sheer cliff on one side and a little stone wall before the cliff continues down for a thousand feet. It was safe enough, but no room to pass the cars with drivers terrified of the confined space. A winter avalanche had taken out a stretch of the little wall and we could see the construction set to resume on Monday to fix it. All the visitor center parking lots were full as were the parking for a couple of shorter hikes we considered. We decided to just drive and enjoy the amazing scenery. Overall, we were glad we chose to make the drive on Sunday.

The evening took us to one of the beautiful old lodges in the park, Many Glaciers Lodge which was built in the 1920’s. This was built by the Northern Pacific Railroad to attract American’s to come visit “The American Alps”. We saw a wonderful evening show by Jack Gladstone, a Blackfeet Indian, doing stories and music from his life, the history of the Indian People here, as well as other commentaries on life. He was a fine performer and has been performing in this area for the past 25 years and was part of a group of Blackfeet people to start a long-lived series in the park of Native American Voices.

We spent our first night actually sleeping in the minivan in Dick’s design of a sleeping area under the platform. We were both surprised at how warm we stayed and we were highly relieved to be warm and dry when we got another couple of big storms in the night.

Day Four

Sunshine in the morning. Yay! After the night’s rain, the morning dawned beautifully and after a little fog bank passed through the campground, there was lots of sunshine. We were discovering how close to the weather we would be staying throughout this trip. This was a great day to get out and finally do some hiking.

As we were packing up for the day, we met a really great couple, the Smiths, who are our campground volunteer hosts. They have been instrumental in working through the bureaucratic system and getting bear boxes (food storage containers) installed in our campground and elsewhere in the park. These are great for storing our food and keeping it safe from the increasingly smart bears who would LOVE to eat the contents of our cooler or any random food we might have around. This includes food that is in sealed cans. We are used to bear safety from camping in several California national parks. The Smiths had many fine stories to tell us of what it took to get these boxes installed, especially when they found that many of the boxes were sitting in storage rather than being used. God bless wonderful people who know how to make things happen. The Smiths, he was retired from GM, lived in Indiana for most of the year but were spending their fourth summer in a trailer in a campground in Glacier being of service to the campers. It seemed that just to accent their love of animals, a mule deer doe walked through our campsite before our conversation ended.

The highlight of this day was spending over five hours hiking on the Highline trail, starting from Logan’s Pass at the top of the Going to the Sun Highway. We soon saw both Pikas and Columbian Ground Squirrels. Most of the trail is on a steep slope, while about two hundred yards are on a ledge cut into a sheer cliff. Part of this trail is called the garden wall and it lived up to its name, a continuous carpet of a wide variety of wild flowers. We didn’t photograph every one of them but we tried. We kept discovering new ones we had not seen earlier or ever before. There were more than 20 different varieties. After slow progress, because of all the stops, on the way out we were about to turn around at the 3 1/2 mile point when Dick caught sight of a mountain goat coming down the trail in the opposite direction. It passed several people as they stepped aside before leaving the trail just before he got to us. He was hungry and had particular types of flowers in mind, Indian Paintbrush and Columbine. He walked past all the other flowers to get to clumps of his favorites. For the next 20 minutes, he munched his way along just below the path while a growing group of hikers watched. Then he climbed back onto the path and headed in the direction we wanted to go. With the goat in the lead, the parade began. Patti was next and then Dick, followed by hikers whose numbers continued to grow, eventually about ten in all. We were walking at a “goat’s pace.” We would see hikers coming our way and waved them to the side. They sat down next to the path or stepped aside and the goat walked right by them. Everyone was thrilled. After over a half mile of this, the goat again left the path and started digging in the soil and eating what he found. We guess it was a mineral lick. We took that moment to slide on by him so we could continue our hike.

Dick had another really fun chance encounter, when we passed a family, the young boy in the lead was singing, including a little yodeling. When Dick commented to one of the adults that this was the type of place that would cause one to sing, the man replied, “Well, it’s in their blood. These guys are Van Traps [as in from the Sound of Music].” The grandfather of this family was Kurt Von Trap, the youngest of the Van Trap children. The uncle had two of the girls yodel, too, and quite a discussion ensued about the family’s lodge in Stowe, VT. Dick had visited there several years ago and this was a great hit to the girls. The girl’s father was quick to smile as he passed but much less interested in the conversation than the others. Dick wished them an enjoyable hike and moved on.

With the close encounter with the mountain goat, we thought our time with the big animals was over but suddenly, we were waved to the side of the path. Looking further ahead we could see a large Mountain Sheep ram headed our way, again using the path. He rushed by us and soon was followed by another. Our cameras were clicking as fast as we could shoot them. When we continued into a sheer cliff area of the trail, we found that two other sheep had been frightened and had climbed up on a higher ledge. We stopped to take more photos and then could see the rams were getting quite agitated. We moved on to let them get down, stopping a good distance away so we could watch. But, of course, others kept coming down the trail and stopped to look at the sheep. Finally, there was a break and the two animals quickly descended and scampered away.

That evening we returned to our campsite, fixed a good meal and then Dick set up a big storage battery to provide extra power to the computer. By the light of a lantern, he downloaded photos from our digital cameras and worked on the blog. It is a different world for camping in 2009!

It had been a beautiful day in paradise!