We sure have had a couple of exciting days here on the east side of Glacier! We’re staying in St. Mary, with our campsite on a ridge that overlooks both St. Mary and Lower St. Mary Lakes. We’re a quarter-mile from the park entrance. (This pic to the left is the view out of the windshield of Mom and Dad's RV.)July 10: Yesterday we moved camp and arrived on the east
side around 1:30, and by 3:00, we were already out on the trail again. Liz was kind enough to stay at the campers with Kieran and Izzie while they napped (a decision she would come to regret), and Jerry, Kathy, Alex, Gabe and I headed into the park. We left from Sun Point at St. Mary’s Lake and departed on what Mom told us was a 3-mile hike. But she forgot to mention it was three miles each way!
The hike was a terrific adventure full of drama, excitement, wild animals, religious cults, and staggering views. There were three main waterfalls on the trail, Bering Falls, St. Mary Falls, and Virginia Falls, and all along the way were rapids, cascades, and smaller falls. We did this hike two years ago, but stopped at the upper cascades. Yesterday we pushed on and were rewarded with the arrival at Virginia Falls, a 100-foot tall waterfall set in a round amphitheatre of rock.We spent much of the time leapfrogging with a group of about 30 college-age hikers, all looking normal, talking normal, being normal, but all fifteen of the women were on this challenging hike in full-length skirts. Hmmmmmm…
We also ran into a guy on our return to the trailhead (about 6:15 pm by this point) who was looking for a backcountry campsite that was miles away, all by himself, in grizzly country, who had absolutely no idea where he was despite the fact that he was holding a map and we were on perhaps the most clearly defined trail in America. Now close your eyes and picture this… this is a big guy… real big… like six-foot-something, lots of muscles, broad shoulders. Plus he adds on an enormous pack, and he looks also six feet wide… but then below the waist, besides the hiking boots, all he has on is UnderArmour spandex undershorts. And the view was, well…. ewwwwwwwwwwww. So then Dad whips (be sure to pronounce the H first, as in “Cool h-wip”) out his awesome new $500 superduperawesomewickedthrashinboominsickphatnasty Garmin
GPS, and can’t actually figure out how to get it to just tell us where we freaking are. Wahhh-wahhh…We did, in addition to the amazing views of the falls, forest, and river, see the most beautiful and enormous buck.
And then, on the way home, we had the wildlife moment of our lives. We spotted a black bear… a
HeeeyuuuuuuuuuJah male black bear the size of a grizzly, about 100 yards from the road. We watched this bear for about ten minutes, taking many pictures, videos, and looking through binoculars. Then, suddenly, there was movement to the right…. And out came a large canine creature… we have checked this photo against our guidebooks and consulted a number of Rangers, but have not yet determined if it is an extremely large coyote or one of Glacier’s nearly unseen grey wolves. But what we do have is a set of unique pictures not only of an enormous black bear, but of a second predator alongside it. 
p.s. Note to Joe & Maureen: While we were away Liz cracked open the summer kits, and the kids went nuts, especially so far for the jumbo bubble wands!
(July 11 follows the slide show!)
July 11: We actually got on the road early 
today, taking only 1hr40min for our departure instead of the usual 2 hours! We drove up to Logan Pass, and hiked exactly one mile of the Highline Trail, along a section known as The Garden Wall. This trail provides a unique experience for those hiking with children in Glacier, as just to your left are the most spectacular views you will find anywhere in the park, as well as your certain, untimely, and scream-filled death. The Garden Wall is a remarkable place… this cliff (next to you) is what is known as a weeping wall, and water continuously flows from the melting snow above. 
This causes the cracks and slopes in the wall to fill with the most remarkable plant life you will find anywhere. Unfortunately, we fou
nd that the level of nervous attention we were having to pay to the children was causing both them and us to not have as good of a time as we could have had. So, after exactly one mile (which we knew because last night Dad learned how to work the GPS!) we turned back and returned to the trailhead.
We stopped for a brief snack and rest, and then continued up in the other direction from Logan Pass toward Hidden Lake. Snow still covered much of the trail, and we all had a great time throwing snowballs and slipsliding away. Izzie especially enjoyed throwing snowballs at people we didn’t know.
We had dinner and pie at the Park Café which is located between us and the park entrance at the end of Going-to-the-Sun Road. The Park Café is well-known in these here parts… there’s actually a terrific magazine ad I saw a couple of months ago for tourism in Montana, but it’s actually about coming to Glacier and seeing everything and hiking everywhere… but the whole ad is actually about the pie at the Park Café! The title is something like “It’s all about the pie.” And their entire message is: if you drive 2500 miles to Montana, and you go all the way to Glacier, and you hike a gazillion miles, and you fight off bears, lions, and rattlesnakes, then you’ve earned a piece of this pie. And the state actually put this ad together and the café had nothing to do with it. Pie’s pretty good, though.
After dinner we drove back to Logan Pass, this time with Alex and Grandma. This means that Grandma got to ride on Going-to-the-Sun Road for the very first time. If you’re not familiar with it, Going-to-the-Sun Road is often referred to as America’s most beautiful road. It’s also one of the scariest if you’ve never been on it. It’s an interesting experience taking Grandma on a cliff-side drive, which we’ve actually done a few times now. She makes these different types of noises as we drive, alternating between a high giggle and a low, painful moan. But I digress… up at Logan Pass, we saw even more unexpected wildlife. First, most surprisingly, was a 22-or-so-year-old female changing out of her itty-bitty, well-fitting, bright pink, possibly sequined bikini. Yes, in a parking lot. On a mountain pass. When it was 55 degrees out. Second most surprising was that there a bighorn ram standing not 10 feet behind her, apparently checking this out, just bemused and shocked as the rest of us.
We took Grandma and the gang on the loop around the visitors center, played in the snow a bit more, and saw four bighorn rams. All appeared to be brothers, and they enjoyed messing with each other quite a bit. Lucky for us, that means we got them see them doing lots of headbutting. Also, lucky for us, they kept their somewhat aggressive play limited to their own species.
today, taking only 1hr40min for our departure instead of the usual 2 hours! We drove up to Logan Pass, and hiked exactly one mile of the Highline Trail, along a section known as The Garden Wall. This trail provides a unique experience for those hiking with children in Glacier, as just to your left are the most spectacular views you will find anywhere in the park, as well as your certain, untimely, and scream-filled death. The Garden Wall is a remarkable place… this cliff (next to you) is what is known as a weeping wall, and water continuously flows from the melting snow above. 
This causes the cracks and slopes in the wall to fill with the most remarkable plant life you will find anywhere. Unfortunately, we fou
nd that the level of nervous attention we were having to pay to the children was causing both them and us to not have as good of a time as we could have had. So, after exactly one mile (which we knew because last night Dad learned how to work the GPS!) we turned back and returned to the trailhead.
We stopped for a brief snack and rest, and then continued up in the other direction from Logan Pass toward Hidden Lake. Snow still covered much of the trail, and we all had a great time throwing snowballs and slipsliding away. Izzie especially enjoyed throwing snowballs at people we didn’t know.We had dinner and pie at the Park Café which is located between us and the park entrance at the end of Going-to-the-Sun Road. The Park Café is well-known in these here parts… there’s actually a terrific magazine ad I saw a couple of months ago for tourism in Montana, but it’s actually about coming to Glacier and seeing everything and hiking everywhere… but the whole ad is actually about the pie at the Park Café! The title is something like “It’s all about the pie.” And their entire message is: if you drive 2500 miles to Montana, and you go all the way to Glacier, and you hike a gazillion miles, and you fight off bears, lions, and rattlesnakes, then you’ve earned a piece of this pie. And the state actually put this ad together and the café had nothing to do with it. Pie’s pretty good, though.
After dinner we drove back to Logan Pass, this time with Alex and Grandma. This means that Grandma got to ride on Going-to-the-Sun Road for the very first time. If you’re not familiar with it, Going-to-the-Sun Road is often referred to as America’s most beautiful road. It’s also one of the scariest if you’ve never been on it. It’s an interesting experience taking Grandma on a cliff-side drive, which we’ve actually done a few times now. She makes these different types of noises as we drive, alternating between a high giggle and a low, painful moan. But I digress… up at Logan Pass, we saw even more unexpected wildlife. First, most surprisingly, was a 22-or-so-year-old female changing out of her itty-bitty, well-fitting, bright pink, possibly sequined bikini. Yes, in a parking lot. On a mountain pass. When it was 55 degrees out. Second most surprising was that there a bighorn ram standing not 10 feet behind her, apparently checking this out, just bemused and shocked as the rest of us.We took Grandma and the gang on the loop around the visitors center, played in the snow a bit more, and saw four bighorn rams. All appeared to be brothers, and they enjoyed messing with each other quite a bit. Lucky for us, that means we got them see them doing lots of headbutting. Also, lucky for us, they kept their somewhat aggressive play limited to their own species.
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Yikes do you guys know you are the luckiest, it is so great everything you are getting to see. I want to be a Gowman. I remember when I lived in Dillon Colorado, when we would go down to Denver for the Clampit treck, we would always see the Mountain goats up on the mountains just before the Eisenhower Tunnel. Fun stuff
ReplyDeleteHi Mark and Liz,
ReplyDeleteJust checking in with y'all. Been home for 2 days and I wanna go back out to Montana or Wyoming or Estes Park. Sigh. Please tell Jerry the best meal I had on our vacation was at the Rock Inn, and I even bought a t-shirt to remember the place. And you didn't know this, but on the first night of our respective trips we were probably about 20 miles away from each other, because Brad and I stayed in Toledo the first night. Sadly I couldn't comment before now because it's very hard to post comments on the iPod Touch. OK, it's not that difficult, I was just too lazy to put in my password!!
Hope you continue to have great adventures!