Glacier National Park

August 9, 2007--One of the people I talked to in Whitefish the night before told me driving Going to the Sun Road (the road through the middle of the park) is a life-changing experience. So I headed into the park and was immediately impressed by the rugged peaks topped by blue skies and a couple white, fluffy clouds.


















I headed up to a trail that had been recommended to me, the Hall of Cedars. This isn't a cedar, but a black cottonwood... which I thought was cool. It's like our cottonwoods in NM, with recognizable bark, but very tall with just a tuft of leaves at the top.























A short jaunt out of the Hall of Cedars up the Avalanche Lake trail brought me to the Avalanche Gorge, this very cool waterfall of sculpted rocks and deep pools.





































The mountains were truly awesome. The road went straight up this one...







































And this is the road up to the pass...


And the view down from the pass!



This mountain goat was just chillin along the path... not caring at all that people were passing by and taking pictures of it. Just check out how close I got to it!
























From the pass I took a trail through a beautiful alpine meadow to see something called Hidden Lake.


There were some rams browsing off in the distance... turns out zooming in with my camera is just about the same as using binoculars.

And there was this mama goat leading her baby across the meadow...


There was also a wolverine that we spotted across a pond (it ran like a bear, but was obviously too small), but it was in a hurry and I was not ready with my camera! So instead, I have many other pretty pictures of meadows, mountains and snowmelt waterfalls.

































































At the top of the trail was a lookout to the Hidden Lake, which was very pretty but not worth another mile to hike down as the light faded.



















So instead I headed down the other side of the pass, along St Mary Lake


The area had heavy fire damage, which was sad-


So then I headed out of the park to the west and south toward West Glacier, where I knew of a hostel. Going south I could see the source of much of the smoke covering the park--it is billowing up from the mountains in the background of the picture to the left.



















There were these wild horses on the road! I don't know if they were really wild, but it was Blackfoot Indian land and there were no signs indicating open rangeland.


I finally got to Brownie's hostel... in which all the dorm beds were booked up by a girl scout troupe (in my day, we camped!!) so they gave me a private room for $25. Good price, but I was a little scared of the rather rustic accommodations...