God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther
August 18th
Zack and I had a full days worth of driving today. We had hoped to make it further on our way between South Dakota and Glacier National park the day before, but we took a couple of side trips that took us longer than we had anticipated. By the time that we made it to Glacier, Many Glacier Campsite was already full. So, we ended up staying in St. Mary's for the night.
It was actually a very pretty campsite, other than there being few trees and thus, pretty views, but lots of sun. There were ripe service berries at our campground, which the park rangers had told us were drawing the bears into the area...nothing like a statement like that to make you want to crawl into you tent for the night. We set up our tent for the first time..it actually went a whole lot smoother than anticipated. We even had plenty of room for the air mattress that Zack insisted that we bring along (side note: I am so glad that we did bring it. Even though I had made a big deal about it teasing him while we were packing) After setting up our tent, we climbed up a path on a near by hill and were rewarded with a great view of the St. Mary's Lake.
We had a lot of first. Not only was it the first time to set up/ sleep in our tent, it was also our first meal prepared on the camp stove. (Thanks SO much Lawson for the stoves! And thank you Ben and Rachel for the pots!!) We decided to go with something easy. We had caned beef ravioli. Washing the dishes was another adventure. We, not having been camping that often, did not realize that we were supposed to have a bucket to wash our pots/pans in...so, I had to just wash them over the grey water sink. I hate feeling like I am doing something that I am not supposed to, so we remedied this on our way to Yellowstone.
After Dinner, we headed to the St. Mary's Visitor Center. Zack wanted to ask the Rangers about good hikes and to get some Bear Mace. While he did that, I listened to a presentation about Osprey given by one of the park rangers. It was really well done and had lots of interesting information. I had not really known much about the Osprey beforehand. They actually have a nest of Osprey right outside the building that you can watch online. There were 3 baby birds (which were actually quite large by this time) in the nest.
Later that night, while we were getting ready for bed, I was walking from our tent toward our car when what looked like a dog started running toward me. As it got closer, I realized that it was actually a fox. It ran right in front of me and then off into tall grass. This got me talking to the people camping across from us. You really met some really nice people at all of our camp sites. The couple that we met was just stopping in Glacier for the night. They were making there way home, but had been to glacier park multiple times and they were gracious enough to tell us what some of their favorite hikes were.
Our first night in the tent turned out to be pretty cold...and lead to on again off again sleep for me.
August 19th
We woke up, grabbed bagels and tore down our campsite. We were moving to Many Glacier. We got there early enough to get a campsite and then packed up lunch and hit the trails without bothering to set up our tent.
We decided to do a 9-10 mile hike. We hiked to Iceberg Lake. The hike was beautiful. We hiked mostly along a ridge, giving us amazing views of the mountains majestically reaching upward all around us. The mountain sides were carpeted with various colors and shapes of wild flowers...and I couldn't help but think, "how can people think that there is no God when they are presented with such beauty and majesty?". While on our way out to the lake, we passed a couple that told us that they had seen a mother and baby moose not too far ahead on the trail. However, by the time we made it to that part of the trail there was no sign of mother or calf. We did see a couple of Mountain Goats WAY up on the mountain side.
The Lake was Beautiful! I never expected to actually see ice chunks floating around in the lake, but to my amazement there were. Not only that, but there were glaciers clinging to the mountain ledges that surrounded the lake. Occasionally we would hear the rumble of snow/ice cracking. It is hard to say if it was icebergs hitting each other or pieces of glacier breaking off in an area that we could not see. Zack waded into the crystal clear FREEZING blue water and stood as long as he could before scrambling clumsily out with numb feet.
We ate lunch down at the lake and talked with some of the other hikers. There was a grandmother/granddaughter there that told us that someone had told them about a good place to go see moose...so we filed that information away to use later. As we were leaving the lake, we passed by a middle aged couple that old us that they had just seen a Bull Moose a little ways up the trail...despite hurrying there, we did not have luck!! Man missed the moose twice! What a let down! I was pretty disappointed. I had never seen a moose before.
Once we got to the back to the trail head, we decided to take a look at the lake the lady had told us was such a great place to see Moose. The trail started from the same trail head and the lake was only about 0.25 miles down the trail. We hiked over to Fishercap lake thinking that we would probably be disappointed again. BUT, we were greeted by two HUGE bull moose feeding in the lake. We scrambled along the edge of the woods watching them and taking pictures of them. They were magnificent, strong and beautiful animals. Apparently they are the largest member of the deer family, although to me, they almost more resemble a horse. I could have sat and watched them for hours, but dusk was approaching and we still had to set up out tents and make dinner. I made our Chili and Frito's for dinner, while Zack set up the tent.
After dinner, we went over to the camp store to learn a little more about the token showers. Showers were $1.25 + tax for 8 minutes. We got tokens for the next morning and then went back to our campsite to get ready for bed.
August 20th
Zack and I got up and went to brave the token showers. We both got lucky. 1. there was no line. 2. we both found showers that had not used up there total time limit allowing us to take showers with out using our tokens! Yay! Tokens for another day!
We had some oatmeal for breakfast and headed down to Two Medicine Lake for a hike. The day before we had met 2 couples that had hiked around the lake and seen a lot of wild life, so we decided to give the hike a shot. We are not exactly sure how far we hiked but think that it was close to 9-10 miles when all pieced together. It took us about 4+ hours to hike the whole thing and left us SORE and disappointed. We did not see any wildlife more interesting than a chipmunk of ground squirrel and the views really were not that nice. The most exciting thing about this hike was the instructional video that Zack made about "how to use Bear Mace." Our only consolation was the REALLY good soft serve Huckleberry ice cream that we got as a reward for our hike. My feet were KILLING me! So, I waded into the cold water of the lake to give them an ice bath of sorts...I think that it helped a little.
We headed back to the campsite for some Beefaroni. (tell you what, we were having some tasty meals! lol!!) While I was making dinner, there were a bunch of people congregating in the parking lot behind our campsite and they were intently watching something. So, I headed over there to see what the fuss was about...the fuss, as it turns out, was about a mother Grizzle Bear and Three cubs that were playing on the grassy mountain side a good distance above the camp store. They were really neat to see/watch. Everyone was so nice and they would let you look through their high powered telescopes...one of which Zack and I do not own. (by the end of our trip, Zack's binoculars had become monocular..one side just stopped working.)
We packed lunch/our bags for the next day and went to bed early, because we had a full day planned the next day!
August 21st
Zack and I got up early to hitch a ride on a shuttle. We took a pay shuttle ($10 per person) from Many Glacier down to St. Mary's visitor center where we were able to get on a free shuttle to Logan's Pass. We had been in such a hurry and had been told that weather was supposed to be beautiful that we left our rain jackets at our campsite. So, when it started misting and looking overcast, were started having a few concerns about our level of preparedness. Once we made it down to Logan's Pass, the rain seemed to be holding off. So, we decided to hit the tail. We began walking and soon saw a group of people watching a mountain Goat lazily meandering across the top part of the mountain. we briefly stopped and then continued on our way, adding a number to our little group of 2. There was a 65 year old man taking what he described as a 5 month "walk about" after retirement. He had been traveling from park to park and making his way across the country. He didn't feel comfortable hiking by himself and so he had been joining up with other hikers. He was a nice man and we later learned that he was a retired state park ranger..this came in handy later when he was pointing out wildlife, rocks, and plants. The hike itself was beautiful. We were hiking along a ridge line, which at certain points meant hiking along a thin path with a drop off on one side. I loved it! The scenery was amazing and things were looking great until we started seeing lightning shooting down and striking the peaks all around us...a little frightening when you are that far up and there is little to nothing higher than you. Shortly after the lightning, we experienced huge drops of rain that started racing down from the sky at an alarming rate...I was thinking oh great! We are going to be hiking in this all day and end up getting hypothermia...way to go for not packing that rain jacket! Thankfully, after a short downpour, the rain stopped and the storm seems to had moved out as quickly as it moved in. We had beautiful weather for the rest of our hike. One of our favorite things to say as we made our way along the trail was "oh, Danny would hate this!" or can you imagine Danny out here?!" or "if there was a list of top 10 places that Danny would hate to be, this would be #1!" We hiked about 7.5 miles with our retiree before we parted ways. Zack and I decided to hike up to an overview of Ginelle Glacier (the Grinelle Glacier trail had been closed because of Grizzly Bears) because Zack had been DYING to hike to this glacier. The extra 0.6 miles was about more than I could handle. It was a STEEP series of cutbacks...and there were literally times that I told Zack that I didn't think that I would make it, but once we got to the top, the view was amazing!! We were looking down into a stunningly blue lake with huge pieces of ice in it...which flowed from a giant glacier that was clinging to the mountain side just above it. We sat up here for a while, but the wind was roaring through the little pass that we were sitting in and I was starting to get really cold...so, after a final look around at the breath taking vistas all around us, we headed back down and continued on our hike to the Granite Chalet.
The Granite Chalet is a cabin that you can hike to and spend the night at. We had looked into that, but it was pretty expensive to do...and we had opted for the camping route. We sat at the chalet looking out over the mountains and valleys in the distance and ate some lunch. Zack and I had taken the shuttle to the trail head and were now about 7.5 miles into our hike...we had committed ourselves to a 16-17 mile hike...and there was no turning back now.
After lunch, Zack and I got back to our feet and headed out toward our campsite. It was about 3:30 by this point and we still had a good 7 miles to go. We were starting to get concerned as we continued down the trail seeing no one else...we rounded a bend and saw a herd of Big Horned sheep resting in a meadow just beside a small glacier. Our path took us even closer and we probably got about 50 feet from them. After admiring them for a while, we headed on our way, because it was getting late, and we had a long way to go!. We continued down the path, which was becoming more and more like an advertisement for that movie about the man killed by bears. So, we started making a LOT of noise (someone that we talked to the day before had seen 13 grizzly along the trail that we were hiking) We were getting more and more nervous being out there on the trail by ourselves in perfect bear territory. However, while seeing lots of berry-filled bear poop, we never saw a bear. As we drew closer to the end of our hike, we passed several lakes...one of which was Fishercap. Despite stiffness and aches that had firmly settled in, we decided to stop by Fishercap again to see if there were any Moose there. We were again pleasantly surprised by seeing a Moose cow feeding in the lake. We watched her for a little while and then completed our hike.
Once at our campsite, we both took off our shoes to rest our aching feet and Zack went and got a bag of ice and some huckleberry ice cream from the camp store, while I made dinner. I made a boxed macaroni grill tomato basil chicken penne. It was pretty good...we were pretty hungry by this point. During dinner, we iced our feet..and calves...and shins... :)
We were both pretty tired so, we went to bed pretty soon after dinner.
August 22nd
Neither of us got great sleep last night. The wind was howling through the trees and I would periodically wake up thinking, "I really hope a tree doesn't fall on us!" Zack told me in the morning that he was thinking about getting up and going to the car because he had been concerned that a tree would fall on us...his rational for leaving me in the tent was that then at least one of us would have been able to go get help...ummm, seriously?
We were planning on leaving Glacier to head to Yellowstone and neither of us was in the biggest hurry to do so. We went and took showers, ate some breakfast, and then broke camp. We drove down the Going to the Sun Road and stopped at Logan's pass to hike to Hidden Lake. We had been told that there were Mountain Goats along the trail that would be much closer to you than on most other hikes. I really wanted to get a good picture of a mountain goat, so we decided to do the hike...despite being sore from our hike the day before. When we got up to the lake over look (1.5 miles out) I was disappointed not to have seen any mountain goats...false advertising! Just when I was about to give up hope, we saw some hiding in a stand of trees. The bad part was that I wasn't going to be able to get a very good picture. There was a couple that walked by letting me know that there were more goats a little further down the trail...but I was really not wanting to walk further than I had to! I was about to suck it up and move further down the trail when mom and kid goat decided to come out of the trees to graze on the grass along the path! Success!! But, by this time it was starting to get pretty late and we needed to hit the road!
We said our goodbyes to Glacier and headed down the road toward Yellowstone. We stopped in Butte for dinner and then decided to stop in Bozeman for the night. We stayed at the Best Western Grantree Inn...it was a MUCH better experience than that of Billings. The staff was friendly and the room was clean with a comfortable bed and calming/homey decor.
Zack and I had a full days worth of driving today. We had hoped to make it further on our way between South Dakota and Glacier National park the day before, but we took a couple of side trips that took us longer than we had anticipated. By the time that we made it to Glacier, Many Glacier Campsite was already full. So, we ended up staying in St. Mary's for the night.
It was actually a very pretty campsite, other than there being few trees and thus, pretty views, but lots of sun. There were ripe service berries at our campground, which the park rangers had told us were drawing the bears into the area...nothing like a statement like that to make you want to crawl into you tent for the night. We set up our tent for the first time..it actually went a whole lot smoother than anticipated. We even had plenty of room for the air mattress that Zack insisted that we bring along (side note: I am so glad that we did bring it. Even though I had made a big deal about it teasing him while we were packing) After setting up our tent, we climbed up a path on a near by hill and were rewarded with a great view of the St. Mary's Lake.
We had a lot of first. Not only was it the first time to set up/ sleep in our tent, it was also our first meal prepared on the camp stove. (Thanks SO much Lawson for the stoves! And thank you Ben and Rachel for the pots!!) We decided to go with something easy. We had caned beef ravioli. Washing the dishes was another adventure. We, not having been camping that often, did not realize that we were supposed to have a bucket to wash our pots/pans in...so, I had to just wash them over the grey water sink. I hate feeling like I am doing something that I am not supposed to, so we remedied this on our way to Yellowstone.
After Dinner, we headed to the St. Mary's Visitor Center. Zack wanted to ask the Rangers about good hikes and to get some Bear Mace. While he did that, I listened to a presentation about Osprey given by one of the park rangers. It was really well done and had lots of interesting information. I had not really known much about the Osprey beforehand. They actually have a nest of Osprey right outside the building that you can watch online. There were 3 baby birds (which were actually quite large by this time) in the nest.
Later that night, while we were getting ready for bed, I was walking from our tent toward our car when what looked like a dog started running toward me. As it got closer, I realized that it was actually a fox. It ran right in front of me and then off into tall grass. This got me talking to the people camping across from us. You really met some really nice people at all of our camp sites. The couple that we met was just stopping in Glacier for the night. They were making there way home, but had been to glacier park multiple times and they were gracious enough to tell us what some of their favorite hikes were.
Our first night in the tent turned out to be pretty cold...and lead to on again off again sleep for me.
August 19th
We woke up, grabbed bagels and tore down our campsite. We were moving to Many Glacier. We got there early enough to get a campsite and then packed up lunch and hit the trails without bothering to set up our tent.
We decided to do a 9-10 mile hike. We hiked to Iceberg Lake. The hike was beautiful. We hiked mostly along a ridge, giving us amazing views of the mountains majestically reaching upward all around us. The mountain sides were carpeted with various colors and shapes of wild flowers...and I couldn't help but think, "how can people think that there is no God when they are presented with such beauty and majesty?". While on our way out to the lake, we passed a couple that told us that they had seen a mother and baby moose not too far ahead on the trail. However, by the time we made it to that part of the trail there was no sign of mother or calf. We did see a couple of Mountain Goats WAY up on the mountain side.
The Lake was Beautiful! I never expected to actually see ice chunks floating around in the lake, but to my amazement there were. Not only that, but there were glaciers clinging to the mountain ledges that surrounded the lake. Occasionally we would hear the rumble of snow/ice cracking. It is hard to say if it was icebergs hitting each other or pieces of glacier breaking off in an area that we could not see. Zack waded into the crystal clear FREEZING blue water and stood as long as he could before scrambling clumsily out with numb feet.
We ate lunch down at the lake and talked with some of the other hikers. There was a grandmother/granddaughter there that told us that someone had told them about a good place to go see moose...so we filed that information away to use later. As we were leaving the lake, we passed by a middle aged couple that old us that they had just seen a Bull Moose a little ways up the trail...despite hurrying there, we did not have luck!! Man missed the moose twice! What a let down! I was pretty disappointed. I had never seen a moose before.
Once we got to the back to the trail head, we decided to take a look at the lake the lady had told us was such a great place to see Moose. The trail started from the same trail head and the lake was only about 0.25 miles down the trail. We hiked over to Fishercap lake thinking that we would probably be disappointed again. BUT, we were greeted by two HUGE bull moose feeding in the lake. We scrambled along the edge of the woods watching them and taking pictures of them. They were magnificent, strong and beautiful animals. Apparently they are the largest member of the deer family, although to me, they almost more resemble a horse. I could have sat and watched them for hours, but dusk was approaching and we still had to set up out tents and make dinner. I made our Chili and Frito's for dinner, while Zack set up the tent.
After dinner, we went over to the camp store to learn a little more about the token showers. Showers were $1.25 + tax for 8 minutes. We got tokens for the next morning and then went back to our campsite to get ready for bed.
August 20th
Zack and I got up and went to brave the token showers. We both got lucky. 1. there was no line. 2. we both found showers that had not used up there total time limit allowing us to take showers with out using our tokens! Yay! Tokens for another day!
We had some oatmeal for breakfast and headed down to Two Medicine Lake for a hike. The day before we had met 2 couples that had hiked around the lake and seen a lot of wild life, so we decided to give the hike a shot. We are not exactly sure how far we hiked but think that it was close to 9-10 miles when all pieced together. It took us about 4+ hours to hike the whole thing and left us SORE and disappointed. We did not see any wildlife more interesting than a chipmunk of ground squirrel and the views really were not that nice. The most exciting thing about this hike was the instructional video that Zack made about "how to use Bear Mace." Our only consolation was the REALLY good soft serve Huckleberry ice cream that we got as a reward for our hike. My feet were KILLING me! So, I waded into the cold water of the lake to give them an ice bath of sorts...I think that it helped a little.
We headed back to the campsite for some Beefaroni. (tell you what, we were having some tasty meals! lol!!) While I was making dinner, there were a bunch of people congregating in the parking lot behind our campsite and they were intently watching something. So, I headed over there to see what the fuss was about...the fuss, as it turns out, was about a mother Grizzle Bear and Three cubs that were playing on the grassy mountain side a good distance above the camp store. They were really neat to see/watch. Everyone was so nice and they would let you look through their high powered telescopes...one of which Zack and I do not own. (by the end of our trip, Zack's binoculars had become monocular..one side just stopped working.)
We packed lunch/our bags for the next day and went to bed early, because we had a full day planned the next day!
August 21st
Zack and I got up early to hitch a ride on a shuttle. We took a pay shuttle ($10 per person) from Many Glacier down to St. Mary's visitor center where we were able to get on a free shuttle to Logan's Pass. We had been in such a hurry and had been told that weather was supposed to be beautiful that we left our rain jackets at our campsite. So, when it started misting and looking overcast, were started having a few concerns about our level of preparedness. Once we made it down to Logan's Pass, the rain seemed to be holding off. So, we decided to hit the tail. We began walking and soon saw a group of people watching a mountain Goat lazily meandering across the top part of the mountain. we briefly stopped and then continued on our way, adding a number to our little group of 2. There was a 65 year old man taking what he described as a 5 month "walk about" after retirement. He had been traveling from park to park and making his way across the country. He didn't feel comfortable hiking by himself and so he had been joining up with other hikers. He was a nice man and we later learned that he was a retired state park ranger..this came in handy later when he was pointing out wildlife, rocks, and plants. The hike itself was beautiful. We were hiking along a ridge line, which at certain points meant hiking along a thin path with a drop off on one side. I loved it! The scenery was amazing and things were looking great until we started seeing lightning shooting down and striking the peaks all around us...a little frightening when you are that far up and there is little to nothing higher than you. Shortly after the lightning, we experienced huge drops of rain that started racing down from the sky at an alarming rate...I was thinking oh great! We are going to be hiking in this all day and end up getting hypothermia...way to go for not packing that rain jacket! Thankfully, after a short downpour, the rain stopped and the storm seems to had moved out as quickly as it moved in. We had beautiful weather for the rest of our hike. One of our favorite things to say as we made our way along the trail was "oh, Danny would hate this!" or can you imagine Danny out here?!" or "if there was a list of top 10 places that Danny would hate to be, this would be #1!" We hiked about 7.5 miles with our retiree before we parted ways. Zack and I decided to hike up to an overview of Ginelle Glacier (the Grinelle Glacier trail had been closed because of Grizzly Bears) because Zack had been DYING to hike to this glacier. The extra 0.6 miles was about more than I could handle. It was a STEEP series of cutbacks...and there were literally times that I told Zack that I didn't think that I would make it, but once we got to the top, the view was amazing!! We were looking down into a stunningly blue lake with huge pieces of ice in it...which flowed from a giant glacier that was clinging to the mountain side just above it. We sat up here for a while, but the wind was roaring through the little pass that we were sitting in and I was starting to get really cold...so, after a final look around at the breath taking vistas all around us, we headed back down and continued on our hike to the Granite Chalet.
The Granite Chalet is a cabin that you can hike to and spend the night at. We had looked into that, but it was pretty expensive to do...and we had opted for the camping route. We sat at the chalet looking out over the mountains and valleys in the distance and ate some lunch. Zack and I had taken the shuttle to the trail head and were now about 7.5 miles into our hike...we had committed ourselves to a 16-17 mile hike...and there was no turning back now.
After lunch, Zack and I got back to our feet and headed out toward our campsite. It was about 3:30 by this point and we still had a good 7 miles to go. We were starting to get concerned as we continued down the trail seeing no one else...we rounded a bend and saw a herd of Big Horned sheep resting in a meadow just beside a small glacier. Our path took us even closer and we probably got about 50 feet from them. After admiring them for a while, we headed on our way, because it was getting late, and we had a long way to go!. We continued down the path, which was becoming more and more like an advertisement for that movie about the man killed by bears. So, we started making a LOT of noise (someone that we talked to the day before had seen 13 grizzly along the trail that we were hiking) We were getting more and more nervous being out there on the trail by ourselves in perfect bear territory. However, while seeing lots of berry-filled bear poop, we never saw a bear. As we drew closer to the end of our hike, we passed several lakes...one of which was Fishercap. Despite stiffness and aches that had firmly settled in, we decided to stop by Fishercap again to see if there were any Moose there. We were again pleasantly surprised by seeing a Moose cow feeding in the lake. We watched her for a little while and then completed our hike.
Once at our campsite, we both took off our shoes to rest our aching feet and Zack went and got a bag of ice and some huckleberry ice cream from the camp store, while I made dinner. I made a boxed macaroni grill tomato basil chicken penne. It was pretty good...we were pretty hungry by this point. During dinner, we iced our feet..and calves...and shins... :)
We were both pretty tired so, we went to bed pretty soon after dinner.
August 22nd
Neither of us got great sleep last night. The wind was howling through the trees and I would periodically wake up thinking, "I really hope a tree doesn't fall on us!" Zack told me in the morning that he was thinking about getting up and going to the car because he had been concerned that a tree would fall on us...his rational for leaving me in the tent was that then at least one of us would have been able to go get help...ummm, seriously?
We were planning on leaving Glacier to head to Yellowstone and neither of us was in the biggest hurry to do so. We went and took showers, ate some breakfast, and then broke camp. We drove down the Going to the Sun Road and stopped at Logan's pass to hike to Hidden Lake. We had been told that there were Mountain Goats along the trail that would be much closer to you than on most other hikes. I really wanted to get a good picture of a mountain goat, so we decided to do the hike...despite being sore from our hike the day before. When we got up to the lake over look (1.5 miles out) I was disappointed not to have seen any mountain goats...false advertising! Just when I was about to give up hope, we saw some hiding in a stand of trees. The bad part was that I wasn't going to be able to get a very good picture. There was a couple that walked by letting me know that there were more goats a little further down the trail...but I was really not wanting to walk further than I had to! I was about to suck it up and move further down the trail when mom and kid goat decided to come out of the trees to graze on the grass along the path! Success!! But, by this time it was starting to get pretty late and we needed to hit the road!
We said our goodbyes to Glacier and headed down the road toward Yellowstone. We stopped in Butte for dinner and then decided to stop in Bozeman for the night. We stayed at the Best Western Grantree Inn...it was a MUCH better experience than that of Billings. The staff was friendly and the room was clean with a comfortable bed and calming/homey decor.
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