Sunday, September 22, 2013

Glacier National Park

We left Yellowstone's Edge RV Park, just north of Yellowstone, after enjoying a fabulous dinner at Chico Hot Springs Resort.  People come from all over to eat here (including people who fly in from Denver).  Due to the distance from Yellowstone to Glacier, we decided to get a reservation at a commercial RV park instead of trying to get to Many Glaciers campground, which had been filling by mid-afternoon.  By accident, we chose a campground 17 miles west of East Glacier, so we had to backtrack quite a bit to get up to Many Glaciers.  We left early enough to get there by noon, choose a campsite and hike to Apikini Falls (up 700' in a mile).  The weather was gorgeous when we got there.






                   Glacier has a lot of bears, and this year was no exception.  This black bear was about 100' off the road.











The next morning the weather was mixed, but we decided to drive the Going to the Sun Road with Joe and Vera, who had never done so.  However, we awoke to a flat tire on the Volvo and went into Bagg, MT (the nearest town outside the park) to get it fixed.  The young man who helped us had been trained by his grandpa and was slow, but we got the tire repaired and headed off.  One of the stops was Sunrift Gorge, a narrow slot canyon.










                   We got to Logan Pass on the Continental Divide and walked along the Highline trail for a while, ate our lunch and then hiked back.  This is a view west of Logan Pass showing the road cutting across the side of the mountain.









Just before lunch  we saw this marmot eating foliage and getting ready to hibernate for the winter.












Here we are on the Highline Trail.  We drove down to the Lake McDonald Lodge on Lake McDonald on the west side of Glacier National Park.  We passed a lot of the red Ford buses that have been rehabilitated and are powered by propane and take people on tours within the park.








This is one of the iconic views in Glacier over St. Mary Lake and Lone Goose Island towards Logan Pass.  That evening we heard a musical presentation of the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition by a singer/song writer who had composed a series of songs and set them to various pictures.  He was great and we got to enjoy the Many Glaciers Hotel before it closed for the season.  It, like the Lake McDonald Lodge, was built by the Great Northern RR and designed by engineers.  They are all massive with huge multi-story central entry halls/lounges and huge timbers holding up the ceilings.  They are all slightly different and all beautiful.
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