GLACIER TRIP

I am living the dream... I am getting paid to learn and play.

Rachael and I just returned from a five day adventure to Glacier National Park. Of course, it was amazing! This blog feels like a display of how great my life is... I'm not trying to brag but I'm having a really great summer!

We drove through Helena and Great Falls and made our way up to the East Glacier entrance. There is a famous 52 mile long road, Going-to-the-Sun Road, that bisects Glacier into North and South halves. It passes through mountains and is very narrow. The road has been closed since last Fall due to a land slide/snow and they have been working nonstop to get it open by the summer tourist season, aiming for July 1st. Currently, you can go in 14 mi in the East and about 30 in the West. The East side was gorgeous! The color of the water is unbeatable. We camped out at the Rising Sun campground on Saturday night. I made some chicken noodle soup that Paul gave us for dinner. We went to a Ranger program focused on wolves and how society views them. Very interesting!

Let's see... on Sunday morning I got up and went to a church service in the campground. It was a non-denominational Christian service led by three college guys that are working there for the summer. I was impressed. Next, we went to Sun Point. It's this incredible spot on St. Mary Lake where the water is turquois and there are mountains everywhere. We did a 6 mile hike with a few waterfalls along the way. We saw Baring Falls, St. Mary's Falls, and Virginia Falls. The last one was incredibly surreal because the sun was shining in a way that made it hard to look straight at it and it was misty so it felt as if we were in the waterfall. Since the Going-to-the-Sun road was still out of service we drove back out into the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and around the park (a 4 hour drive) to get into West Glacier. By the time we got there we were ready for some dinner so I cooked up some cheesy spaghetti and we ate it with asiago cheese crackers. (Thanks Paul!) We camped out at Avalanche and went to another ranger led talk; nocturnal animals.

Monday morning we got up and did a morning hike to Avalanche Lake. At the base there is a trail called the Trail of the Cedars that displays old-growth Cedars and the Avalanche Gorge cuts through under a bridge. The Avalanche Lake trail is extremely mystical because it follows the narrow slot gorge on the left and the right is a forrest covered in moss and huge stones. In the afternoon we went to an intern led hike to Rocky Point on Lake McDonald. The intern was an retired woman that decided she wanted to become a park ranger. It was her first guided hike and it was focused on forest fires. We walked through an area that was hit by the "Robert Fire" of 2003. She explained the role that forest fires play in the ecosystem and why we need them. We learned a lot about lodge-pole pines and larches, two of the trees that were hit the hardest by this fire. She also taught us about methods that they use to control fire, which sometimes require fires to be purposely lit! We picked fresh huckleberries along the trail- delicious! We camped out at Avalanche again tonight.

Tuesday was our most difficult hiking day. We did a 7.6 mile trail to Trout Lake and back. It was 2.3 miles uphill followed by 1.5 downhill; vice versa for the way back to the car. We were burning by the time we got to the lake but we were pleasantly surprised by a group of campers that had a fire going and offered us all the s'mores we could eat. They even filtered some more water for us for our way back! A lot of the trail was also in a burned area but often that presents us with very unique wildflowers. On Tuesday night we decided to be true "tourons" (a nickname that locals give to all of the tourist/morons that visit the parks each year). We went to Lake McDonal lodge and bought drinks and dinner and sat on the porch in rocking chairs facing the spectacular lake. It was not a bad way to relax and I can see the appeal that the lodge has for most people. We camped at Apgar.

Fourth of July was mostly a traveling day for us. We got up and hiked into Apgar village for a few postcards and souveniers. For breakfast we drove an hour to Kalispell and wandered around town in hopes of finding some good, cheap breakfast. After about an hour we came across a grocery store/restaurant that was packed full of locals. We had 5.00 omlettes and made our way out of town. For miles we drove along Flathead Lake on the Flathead Indian Reservation. It was stunning! I need to find a friend with a boat... It was a deep blue and surrounded by mountains and rolling hills. Everyone was on it for the 4th so there were sailboats, motorboats, and swimming kids galore. It looked like a lot of fun, but we kept driving. We drove through Missoula, Bozeman's rival. It was a nice town but nothing can compare to our little paradise here in Bozeman. For the 4th, Rachael and I decided to pamper ourselves. We were tired after a long trip home so we took showers (for the first time in 5 days), went out to dinner, and drove through town to see fireworks in every direction. Although the Arch makes a great background for fireworks at home in St. Louis, the mountains are pretty magnificant too!