We take the seven mile hike in Two Medicine up to Rockwell Falls. When we get there, we have them all to ourselves.
I meet a troll guarding a bridge.
The second falls is behind the lower falls.
We take the boat one-way on the return trip over Two Medicine Lake. That cuts a mile off the return trip and obviates the need to retrace the last 2.8 miles of the South Shore trail.
Someone has lost their mom around here...we see this graffiti on road barriers all over the area.
You can tell grizzly bear ca-ca because it is full of little bells and smells like pepper spray.
You can rent canoes and kayaks at Two Medicine.
We keep hoping to see moose. So far we've seen a chipmunk and a squirrel.
In case you wondered, that's a Ho Chi Mihn t-shirt.
We spent three nights in Great Falls before driving up to Glacier National Park. Great Falls is one of our favorite places. I always have one drink in the Icehouse Bar, which prohibits colors, firearms and aggressive behavior.
We stayed in this old lodge in Many Glacier about 25 years ago. It was very cold and grizzly bears were wandering about near the lodge. The lodges in Glacier and the Canadian park in Waterton were built by the Great Northern Railroad in the 1920s as a way to encourage affluent Americans to visit the USA instead of Europe.
We're going back Sunday to ride horses up into the mountains.
We're staying in Saint Mary's at the beginning of the Going-to-the-Sun highway. Glacier is a great place to hike. Glacier has over 700 miles of hiking trails. These are well described on the internet.
The fishing here is a little confusing. No license is required within the park, but no lead can be used, only certain species can be taken and only artificial lures can be used. On Blackfoot territory, the Indians have their own rules and permits. In Montana, off the Park and off the reservation, another set of licenses and rules prevail.
Many Glacier is high on the East side of Glacier National Park. Very beautiful...
We went to Two Medicine lake today to take a ride in an 86 year old wooden tour boat and hike back to twin falls. Glacier is our favorite National Park. This is our 5th visit. The lakes and glacier scoured mountains are very impressive.
Glacier became a National Park in 1910. The Great Northern Railroad built a number of very impressive grand lodges and chalets that became park elements. Back in the day, the park was a playground for the wealthy. Tourists arrived by train and moved between lodges on horseback.
The Going-To-The-Sun Road finally got cleared of snow on July 12. It's 55 miles of spectacular road and hiking opportunities between the East and West sides of the park. It can only handle vehicles 20 feet or less in length. St. Mary's Lake at the beginning of the road on the west side has a little island called "Wild Goose Island" in honor or two wild geese who mated for life and came back to spend the summer for many years.
We see a couple of wild sheep high on the road in the middle of a road repair project.
The views on the road are spectacular.
We go back to "Many Glacier" and the old lodge and have lunch.
Unfortunately, I forget to take the camera and so I am impelled to steal pix off the internet.
Where were we? Oh! Yeah!...The North Cascades National Park. We've made several drives east and stops since then. First we camped two nights in Quisp, Washington. I liked it a lot. Hank's Grocery store had an amazing variety of stuffed elephant heads, wildebeests and gazelles on display. Apparently Hank was a member of that disappearing breed, the Great White Hunter. (Not to be confused with the Great White Hope or the Great White Shark). Quisp also had a really nice hardware store that was selling .45 caliber automatic pistols for as low as $179 with no screening process or waiting period as far as I could ascertain.
After Quisp we drove east another 200 miles and stopped in Sandpoint, Idaho. We liked the Sandpoint fairground camp sites a lot. We found the tennis courts and played two sets early on the second day. I prefer not to discuss the scores. We took a drive along a lake that got really deep 15,000 years ago. Glaciers and an ice dam were covering all the mountains up to a height of 4,500 feet. When all that suddenly melted and broke it scoured most of Eastern Washington down to bedrock.
I've been really lazy about taking pictures. I stole all these pix off the Internet. I need to ship my M-1 assault rifle back to a friend in Florida so we can go into Canada if we choose to do so.
We're just outside the Glacier National Park. It connects to the Canadian park, Waterton and forms what they call an international peace park. There is a really tough ten mile hike along Waterton lake between Waterton in Canada and a ranger station in the U.S. called Goat Haunt, Montana. The last time we hiked it we had an interesting encounter with a large and aggressive black bear,
We take the Going-To-The-Sun Highway over Logan’s Pass. The air is full of smoke. Usually the road opens about June 26th when the snowplows can clear the road.
We’ve never been here late in the summer before. With most of the snow gone, the waterfalls and rivers have greatly receded. With the poor visibility from the smoke, I don’t bother with pictures on the normally spectacular drive.
We drive by a firefighter base camp on the south side of glacier. It looks like 500 little dome tents have been erected for the firefighters.
I Google and find there are at least 20 major wildfires going on in Montana. Yellowstone down in Wyoming was closed on the east side because of a 10,000 acre fire sparked by lightning. Air quality in many Montana towns is very poor because of the fires. We feel the heat here high in the Rockies and we wonder if we’ve come south too soon.
We take a lovely 10-mile hike to a place called Grizzly Medicine Lake. The trail roughly parallels a river that runs down the valley from the lake. We find a place with a babbling brook in an alpine meadow for lunch. As we eat our peanut butter and jelly, we consider what an unlikely place this is choose to have lunch. It's a magical spot, six miles up into an uninhabited valley. Mrs. Phred takes a nap in the sun, resting her head on my soft belly.
I have a blister on my heel from the last hike, but with two pairs of socks on today, it doesn't break.
There are few people on this trail. There is a constant view of glacier carved mountains as we walk up the trail.
We got an offer on our house yesterday, printed out the PDF file, signed it and faxed it back. The closing is June 30th which means we have to get our 'stuff' out and stored by June 30th and make a trip back to Tampa, Florida rather sooner than anticipated. We knew this could happen but moving from our home of 30 years is a strange feeling. What do we care about? Books, pictures, my tools, our dive gear, an old Victrola case that reminds me of a mummy and my depression glass collection. The rest can go. Hoping for no hurricanes just now.
The last two weeks we have been hiking in the North Cascades National Park in Washington and Glacier National Park in Montana. When they put a National Park out in the middle of no place that there is always something there to see.
We find bear signs in both parks, including piles of deer bones and scattered fur.
If you go outdoors where there are bears you should wear little bells and carry pepper spray, be alert for signs of bear and be able to distinguish black bear droppings from grizzly bear droppings. Black bear droppings are smaller and full of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear droppings are full of little bells and smell like pepper spray.
The contrast in communications and connectedness between a long camping trip in 1986 and 2006 deserves some comment. In 1986 you were lucky to find a pay phone. In 2006 you may each have a cell phone, a GPS hooked to a mapping program, an IPOD, a constant wireless broadband connection to online friends and the ability to Google for infinite information. Many channels of satellite radio are available as is television by cable, satellite and antenna. Signals are everywhere.
The people you meet on the road can often be interesting. Yesterday we met a very old couple, both with arthritis and other serious medical problems who love to fish and travel continuously with no fixed home. They advise us to follow their 2-2-2 rule. Drive no more than 200 miles. Quit by 2 PM and stay at least two days before moving again. Or you may meet a blue-eyed young Mormon mechanic, a meth freak iron-worker, an albino snake breeder or a big ugly biker with earrings and a poetry book in his leather pants.
Give me a moment of breach
A second chance
To proof my existence
Let me tumble in the leaks
Though the cracks
and slants of light
- Found scrawled on the window of a long abandoned business in Butte, Montana in the cold wet drizzle of an empty street.
Butte had a long history of violent labor problems. The IWW 'wobblies' were involved in the labour disputes with Anaconda Copper and the 'Copper Bosses' and 'Copper Kings'. A book by Jarad Diamond, called Collapse, explores the failure of the Montana economy, Easter Island and other civilizations. Diamond won the Pulitzer prize for Guns, Germs and Steel.
Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel grew up in Butte. He operated a diamond drill deep in the mines and was promoted to driving a huge ore mover topside. He was fired after 'popping a wheelie' in the mover and taking out all the power to downtown Butte. Evel gained fame by making ever longer jumps over lines of parked vehicles. He broke an impressive collection of bones on dozens of different crashes. One of his most impressive jumps was over the Snake River Canyon in a jet assisted motorcycle. His drag chute deployed on the launch ramp and he ended up in the river after his main chute deployed.
