The day started off with a walk around the park for Daisy. There was a nice walking path that had lots of smells and sounds, she loved it. Unfortunately after the walk, she was banished to the air conditioned camper while we went to explore Glacier. Dogs are only allowed in the Visitor’s area, no hiking for her today.
We Entered Glacier from the West side, walked around West Glacier Railroad Depot, stopped into the Alberta Canada visitor center and got some advice on what to do when we head to Calgary later in the week.
Fun Facts about Glacier National Park:
Glacier park is over a million acres in size with over 175 named mountains, 762 lakes, 563 streams, over 200 named waterfalls, 25 named glaciers, and over 745 miles of maintained hiking trails – Curt and I visited 3 trails and walked about 3 miles today! –Enjoyyourparks.com
“This park is one of the few places in North America where all the native carnivors (meat eating) survive. Grizzly and black bears forage amid the greenery along streams and avalanche slopes” says the Glacier Park Brochure—we haven’t seen any yet.
Over 250 kinds of birds and 70 species of mammals and 25 species of native fish live here.
Since we are early in the season, the “Going to the Sun Road” is not opened yet, they are still plowing the roads. It is hard to believe, because we didn’t see much snow, even at Avalanche Point, which was 14 miles up the mountain it was in the 80’s. We wore long pants and packed jackets in the car expecting cooler weather up there. The trail heads up at Avalanche were closed due to close encounters with bears. So we opted for a trailhead lower down the Mountain called Lake McDonald Loop.
Speaking of bears, there was a sign as we entered the trail:
The Glacier Website recommends hikers to carry bear spray. We thought we should purchase it in town before we got to Glacier, surely they would mark it up here. So we stopped at Cabela’s and asked the salesperson what the difference between Pepper Spray and Bear Spray was. He said Bear Spray was stronger, so told us to purchase that. Well he was WRONG! After some research, this is what I learned. Pepper Spray and Bear Spray have the same active ingredient: oleoresin capsicum, the same chemical in chili peppers. But Pepper Spray is 10% stronger than the Bear Spray. The article said that we don’t want to “hurt or incapacite” the bear, but only want to scare him away….what???? Pepper spray, however, causes intense burning, difficulty breathing and lasts 20 minutes or longer, making it an effective self defense weapon to “subdue and incapacitate” the human threat…..what???? Oh and did we mention, pepper spray costs $10 and the bear spray costs $45. They are selling fear in a bottle. The only difference, besides the mark up, we could determine was the pepper spray only sprayed about 10 feet and the bear spray could reach 30 feet. We opted to purchase the bear spray and play it safe. So back to the story, today when we passed the sign that told us we were entering “Bear Country”, I asked Curt “where’s the bear spray?” “Back at the camper.” Great place for it, we ventured into the woods without our bear spray and as you can tell we made it back out alive.
Below are some pictures we took of our sights, still did not see a glacier.
Wild life viewed today: We had a close encounter with a deer, came within 8 feet of us while we were hiking. We also saw prairie dogs and chipmunks
Day 2
We drove around to the East Side of Glacier. The”Going to the Sun Road” was still not open and the Rangers could not predict when it will be open. We decided to take a boat trip around Two Medicines Lake. It was about an hour drive around the South end of the Park, following Rte 2 most of the way. Warren, our next door neighbor over the weekend and patent attorney, was full of great info since they ventured out there the day before. He told us exactly where to stop to see some billy goats and he did not disappoint. We stopped at “Goat Lick” Underpass, hint, hint there are goats here. We saw some goats, but there were clear across a big ravine, but I have a pretty good camera and was able to capture some shots of a Momma and her 3 kids (that is what baby goats are called). On the way home we stopped and saw a Daddy Goat up close and personal, probably within 20 feet, but there were loud people who scared the Goat before I got a good picture of him.
We arrived at the Medicine Lake Boat Tour window about 30 minutes before the 1300 (see I still tell time in military) and were put on a waiting list. We didn’t make the 1300, but I also put our names on the waiting list for the 1500, which we did make. The Boat Tour also included a 2 mile hike back to see Twin Falls. We got a little excited during this as people that were coming back towards us, kept telling us that they saw Moose down by the water. Aside: We spent 3 years in Washington and never saw a Moose, even though there were moose sightings all over Medical Lake and Airway Heights (2 small towns closest to the base)–so we were sure that we were not going to see a Moose. The closest we got was a hoof print in the mud and moose poop. I’ll spare you the picture of the poop, yes I did take a picture, but it came out a little blurry.
This is Sinopah mountain and this was our view from our picnic table as we ate our lunch.
In addition to the Twin Falls, we saw lots of other water falls:
Running Eagle Falls
We stopped at the Continental Divide and found a monument to Theodore Roosevelt.
So as far as hiking is going, Curt and I are doing pretty well getting in at least 10,000 steps. We are two for two. We plan on going to the other end of the Going to the Sun Road at Saint Mary’s and it will probably be a long day. We have to get an early start so we get back before dark (which by the way is at 2130).
Day 3
We did get up early and this time we took Daisy with us, because we knew it was going to be a long day. Even though we knew dogs could not go on the trails, we took her with us so that she would not be stuck in the camper all day. We were heading up to the East Glacier and the Saint Mary’s entrance. You could only go up 13 miles or so. This is the only time we saw a glacier. You would think that in Glacier National Park there would be lots of Glaciers, but you can only see one from the road. In the 1930s there were 150 Glaciers in Glacier National Park and now there are only 26 glaciers. There is a lot of snow on the mountains and it is hard to discern what is a Glacier and what is just “perennial” snow. A glacier by definition according to the ranger is at least 25 acres and “moving”. We saw one of the Glaciers, called Jackson Glacier:
We had a picnic lunch with Daisy at one of the Turnouts:
This is a picture of Wild Goose Island, where we saw no Geese:
Waterfalls are everywhere. We hiked to this one, not too far off the road, but it was scary as you had to go out on a rock to get this picture. I was watching and had to turn away while Curt took the picture.
Day 4
So today was supposed to be a “take it easy day” as tomorrow we knew we were leaving the park and driving to Calgary AB. But Curt decided we would drive to a winery, we passed on the way to this campground. But we started on the road and it was 1.5 hours back. Way too far to taste some overpriced wine. We don’t often leave a winery without buying a bottle of wine, but when you are on a retirement budget and the cheapest bottle of wine is $38, that is what we did. Instead, we doubled back to Walmart and bought some Black Box wine for $18.
As we are driving back into town, the signs tell us that the “Going to the Sun Road” is OPEN!!!!!! We leave tomorrow and tonight will be our only chance to see the road. It is 1730 (530 pm) and we decide to drop off the Walmart loot, pick up Daisy, make some Chicken Salad sandwiches (thanks to the Fritz’s for their Chicken) and headed out quickly. And boy was it worth it. Below are some pictures. As we said, we didn’t understand why the road was closed in the first place, because we didn’t see that much snow. But as we headed up to Logan’s pass, we saw the snow and the chance for avalanche from snow above as well. Pics below:
The road was curvy and the drive was scary, thin hairpin turns and with the extended mirrors, we thought for sure we would scrape the mountain!!!
