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Glacier National Park, Montana ( Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah ) Sept 11-19, 2007 Debbie & Melvin Sept
11, 2007 We flew from Birmingham to Houston to Albuquerque to
Salt Lake City and all along I thought it was a non stop flight - boy, did we
have jet lag when we arrived. We found our luggage and headed to the Alamo
car rental where we drove away in a Chevrolet burnt orange 4 door Cobalt - a
really neat compact car that gets good mileage and really handles good on the
highway. We drove for 200 miles and arrived at Idaho Falls about 7:30 pm,
rented our Comfort Inn room and crashed about 9:30. Birmingham
Airport Univ of Ala Stadium Mississippi
River Texas
Clouds Albuquerque, NM Salt Lake
City, Utah Drive to Idaho Falls Sept
12, 2007 We drove about 95 miles from Idaho Falls to the west
entrance to Yellowstone NP. We showed them our annual park pass, picked up
a map and bypassed the long lines to enter the park. Our objective was to
visit the western side of the park and eat lunch at Mammoth Inn. After a 2
hour drive through the park observing deer, elk, buffalo and seeing the
beautiful volcanic activities, we ate lunch at Mammoth and drove out of the park
through the north gate. The
southern portion of Montana is mountainous and very beautiful but the more we
drove north, the more wide open the terrain became - it looked like it had not
rained in months - everything was a pale tan color and looked like it was about
to dry up and blow away. Once we got to the Louis and Clark National
Forrest, the weather was in the 70's all day but once we peaked the summit of
the mountain range, the temperature dropped to 45 degrees on the northern side. What
a change - we turned on the heat in the car.
We arrived
at Malmstrom Air Force Base Inn at Great Falls, Montana and checked in. To
our surprise, the room was called the "John Deere" room and our
parking spot was reserved for us as "Reserved for John Deere"
The room was amazing - there were two rooms each measuring 16 x 16 feet one a
living room and one a bedroom - there were John Deere tractors everywhere and
John Deere cups, napkins, soap dispensers, spoons, photo's, and did I mention
tractors - and even a John Deere wagon. The room was truly a John Deere
room decorated with all John Deere stuff.
We drove
to town, ate dinner at Perkins Restaurant, made a few phone calls then
headed back to the room to enjoy our suite. Debbie fixed coffee and we
relaxed at our dining room table eating a large chocolate chip cookie and a
fresh cup of coffee - yum, yum good. We downloaded all the photo's taken
that day and got things ready for the next days adventure. I hope the
tractors don't run all night...... Sept
13, 2007 We drove from Great Falls, Montana to East Glacier
Park by driving highway 89 to Browning where we decided to gas up and eat a bite
before going into the park. We arrive in the national park about 11am then drove
about 6 miles to Two Medicine Lake. We parked and decided to
take a short hike around the shore of the lake - I somewhat think of myself as
being a good map reader since being so dependent on map reading skills for
survival in Vietnam that I didn't notice all the trails and intersections on the
park map. What we thought was a 3 mile sightseeing walk turned into a 12.5
mile excessively tiring hike around Two Medicine Lake. We had only took
one bottle of water and by the end we were getting somewhat dehydrated. It
was a very good lesson. The lake is really beautiful and pics will be
posted on the web sight. We finished our grueling hike about 6:30 then had
to drive 45 miles to our "Sunrise Park Lodging." It
doesn't get dark until about 8:30 so we stopped in St. Mary's at Park Cafe for a
sit down meal. It took them over an hour to get our meal and Debbie waited
15 minutes for a ticket trying to pay - she finally left a $20 bill on the table
and left. We arrive at our lodging, got a shower, relaxed for 15 minutes
then to went to bed. No TV, No radio, No cell phone, No communications,
nothing but a bed, a chair, a commode and a shower all for $125 a night. We
slept good after such a long hike.......
Sept
14, 2007
We got up about 6:30 to a temperature of 32 degrees
and was off by 8am driving 40 miles to Many Glacier lodge and campgrounds.
We arrived at the lodge parking lot, toured the lodge, ate a buffet breakfast
and decided to hike to Grinnell Glacier. We packed 3 bottles of water,
apples, candy, and jackets to start our hike in 38 degree weather with clear
skies. We decided to do the hike by taking the $15/ person boat shuttle
across two lakes - the first being about a mile long and the second about 3/4
mile long. There was a land barrier between the tow lakes that we had to
walk across - the guide said it was .2 tenths of a mile or about 4 football
fields. Once we arrived at the dock of the 2nd lake, we started our 3.8
mile one way hike by walking across a marsh area. The two younger guys
ahead of us walked upon a black bear on the walkway - they clapped their hands
and yelled and the bear ran off before we got a picture but we did see his paw
prints on the wooden planks in front of us. After about two hundred yards
we started an upward vertical climb of about 1600 feet over a distance of about
3.5 miles. Not quite like climbing football stadium steps for 3 solid
hours but by the time we arrived at Grinnell Glacier, we felt like we had
climbed a ladder to the moon. This is the most popular hike in the park
and the most photographed scenery in the park - we took over 200 digital photos
on the hike - simply beautiful all the way. We actually walked
to the edge of the semi frozen lake filled with icebergs that were adjacent to
the glacier. The water was very cold and somewhat greenish blue milky
looking. We were so relieved to know that 95 % of the hike back was down
hill. We were tired little puppies when we arrived back at the boat dock
to await our return shuttle across two lakes. We got back to the Many
Glacier Lodge about 6pm, did some shopping in the gift shop and headed back to
our lodge room on the "Going to the Sun Road." We quickly
showered and walked across the parking lot to the "Two Dog Flat"
restaurant where we relaxed to a great dinner. Another memorable day....
Sept
15, 2007 We started out from the "Rising Sun" lodge
thinking that as we drove across the national park on the "Going to the Sun
Road" we would eat breakfast at Logan Pass Lodge and Restaurant but after
taking about 50 digital photographs and stopping a dozen times along the route,
we arrived at the Logan Pass Lodge to find a huge "closed for the
season" sign on the door. We continued to drive the across the park
noting that the eastern side was ten times more photogenic than the western side
until we arrived at Lake MacDonald Lodge. There the trees became larger
and taller. We arrived at Apgar Visitors Center and Lodge where we took
advantage of the restaurant and pigged out with a 10:30 late breakfast.
After eating, we spent about an hour in the gift shop doing what we shouldn't
have done - spent money. Around noon, we drove back to Lake MacDonald area
where we took a short hike on the "Trail of the Cedars" for about an
hour. Around 2 pm we headed out of the park toward Whitefish where we were
to spend the night. On the way we drove to Kilispell to do some
shopping at Wal-Mart and eat dinner. We ask the clerk at Wal-Mart if she
could recommended a good Mexican restaurant and we took her advice and we were both very
satisfied. We drove to Whitefish and spent the night. We had
thoughts of taking an Amtrak train to Haver, MT - a 260 mile 5 hour one way
trip and return that afternoon but we decided not to because of the fires near
the national park. Forrest fires had the skies so smoky that visibility
was only a mile or two and photo's were simply not recommended.
Going to the Sun Road ( 1932 left, 2006 right )
Sept
16, 2007 We had breakfast at McDonalds, rode into town to see
the Whitefish Amtrak station, take a few photo's then head south on highway 89
toward Flathead Lake. We took the scenic drive on the eastern side of the
lake and wanted to stop about 15 times at fruit stands to buy fresh picked
cherries but it was Sunday morning and not one of the stands were open - we
bombed out on that deal. The lake was very nice but the smoke from
the forest fires was thick enough that we could hardly see across the lake.
We ate lunch in Missoula, MT and did some shopping at Best Buy and a Verizon
phone store. We had an easy day of driving and arrived at Hamilton, MT
about 3pm. Hamilton is located between two mountain ranges in a flat
valley. Not very impressive this time of the year but I'll bet
beautiful in the winter with snow all around. Another good day,
another good dinner and another good nights sleep.
Sept 17, 2007 Highway 93 from Missoula through Hamilton to Chillis, Idaho is a scenic highway.
Sept 18, 2007 Sept 19, 2007 - Flight home ( Salt Lake City - Chicago, Louisville, Birmingham ) |
