Events of Monday, August 02, 2010

 

                We spent today exploring Glacier National Park. The most spectacular way to view the park is by driving over the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the west side to the east side. However, unfortunately, large vehicles over 20 feet long and 8 feet wide are not permitted on this road at certain points. So yesterday, we explored the west side of the park and the plan for today was to explore the east side of the park utilizing the park’s free shuttle system.

                We got up early and after some frustration with token-run showers that took the girls’ tokens but gave them no water, we were busy with our day. We packed our backpacks with lunch, raincoats and sweatshirts, donned our sunhats and walking shoes and drove Harvey to the parking lot at the St. Mary Visitor Center just in time to catch the 9 am shuttle. The scenery during the shuttle ride was breath-taking. Huge mountains rising from glacially-carved U-shaped valleys frosted with snow rose up on either side of the road. The road followed St. Mary Lake for the first part of the journey and then we began to climb. The road grew more twisty and narrower. Soon we were stopped for the perpetual road construction that takes place in the few brief summer months during which the roads are even accessible. Then we were on a one-way road, and, as the road narrowed more, we saw very clearly why Harvey would not be welcome on these roads. Both Jim and I enjoyed letting someone else take the driver’s seat for a change. After visiting some of the lodges in the park and stopping at hiking trailheads along the way, the shuttle stopped at Logan Pass, where we got off, checked out the visitor center, and asked about some hikes. The most popular hike was the hike to Hidden Lake Overlook, 3 miles round trip. However, we soon realized how scarred the kids were from our monster 9-hour hike in Yellowstone and compromised that we would only hike up to the saddle.

                Initially, the hike was fairly easy, a gentle incline up an asphalt path. This soon changed into a boardwalk path, a mixture of steps and ramps which Jim, Ben, and Abby soon dubbed “stramps”. The boardwalk wove its way uphill over a series of terraces which Jim said reminded him of garden terraces. Then the path was lost in a series of snowfields. We made our way carefully across these mushy expanses of snow, then walked on a path again and then snow and then path. However, soon the grassy saddle was in sight and, when we arrived, we were surprised to find a mama mountain goat and her kid waiting there to greet us. As we meandered along the saddle we discovered a few more mountain goats-- and before we knew it, we were at Hidden Lake Overlook. (Oops – sorry, kids!) The lake was a gorgeous “turazmarine” color (turquoise-azure-aquamarine – a term coined by our shuttle bus driver). We paused for some pictures and a snack and headed back down. Halfway down, we ate our sandwiches, and then discovered a few bighorn sheep resting on a grassy plateau some distance from the path. Later, closer to the visitor center, Caitlin discovered a marmot. Our descent was significantly slowed by Jim and Lindsey’s picture-taking of wildflowers.

                Next we caught another shuttle to Avalanche Creek. This shuttle was even smaller than the first, about the size of a minivan that seats about twelve people snuggly. Its small size is required by the roads going over the “Triple Arches” and past the “Weeping Wall” and around the steep narrow bends of “The Loop”. We were the only ones on the shuttle, our own private Taylor transportation. Our shuttle driver was a former “Gear Jammer”, driver of the Red Bus, open-topped old-fashioned tour buses that roam the park for a pretty penny. She was very friendly, and after we promised not to tell on her, provided us with a running informational and educational commentary about what we were seeing in the park. We had been planning on hiking around the Loop area, but she convinced us that we had to see and hike in the Avalanche Creek area. So she dropped us off there and we hiked the Cedar Trail, stopping briefly to finish off our lunch and enjoy some sterilized glacial run-off. Just as we were finishing our walk, the thunder started. Then the beautiful sound of pitter-patter raindrops hitting the tree canopy above us filled the air. It was beautiful there in the cedar rainforest. We didn’t even realize how hard it was raining until we left the forest. We quickly donned our raingear and headed for the shuttle stop only to find it crammed with many wet people all wanting to go the way we were. After about 45 minutes of waiting in the rain, we convinced the driver of one of the mini-shuttle buses that the six of us could fit in four seats, and so we did. However, the mini shuttle only travels back to Logan’s Pass and there we had to wait a bit more and crammed many more people into the larger shuttle that returned us to our RV.

                One of the fun things about this trip has been meeting new people from all over the country and sharing our plans with them. It inevitably ends up with an “Oh, if you are going there, you have to see/do/eat this.” I had one such conversation in South Dakota with a woman from Colorado who told us about a café in Montana that served the world’s best pies. So after leaving the park and changing into dry clothes we headed to Park Café and ordered six different slices of “World Famous” pie to go. After driving to our campsite and setting up, we decided to have dinner backwards and eat our pie first while our dinner cooked. We each tasted of each other’s pies and then finished our own. Then we enjoyed dinner, did our best to dry our shoes, and hang our wet clothes and backpacks around the RV and headed off to bed.