Glacier National Park and Lewis and Clark Cavern

You’ll be reading this late because northern Montana is not actually fully in the twentieth century, let alone the twenty first. Cell phone accessibility is spotty and wi-fi or even 3G next to nonexistent. Hasn’t cut down on our enjoyment of what we’re experiencing however. Maybe added to it.

After leaving Yellowstone, it was time for a little truck maintenance, oil change and transmission flush and change, the last just for luck and recommended every 25 thousand miles for heavy towing vehicles. I think this one qualifies. One thing that surprised me was that the little trailer button on the end of the right hand stick coming out of the steering column is best for mountain towing only. Apparently our 8500 pound trailer is not enough of a load to bother the mighty Allison transmission on the flat. Using towing mode there only seems to result in worse fuel mileage and rough shifting. The added towing power is a treasure in the mountains, though. It keeps the engine and trans cooler on the upslopes and downshifts automatically on the downgrades to keep the whole shebang at a reasonable speed.  On the whole we seem to have a class package of truck and fifth-wheel trailer for our travels. Just lucky guesses I assure you. Thanks in particular to Tom Nurenberg, my brother-in-law who emphasized that power was king and my brother Ted who educated me on diesel.

The oil change stop in Billings allowed for a night in Walmart’s parking lot. It’s free and not much worse than some no-service park sites. Billings offers a light show of the oil refinery across the freeway. As you can see we were not alone in taking advantage of a free night of urban camping.

A very popular Wal-Mart lot in Billings, Montana

Next day, off to Glacier. Due to site availability, we spent 3 days on the lush green west side at Fish Creek and Morningside Meadow. The next 6 days were in camps on the east side at St. Mary’s and Rising Sun.  All these campgrounds are on the same road but you can’t get there from here, at least while towing a trailer. The 50 mile Going to the Sun Road is the only road through this million acre backpacker’s paradise and its high point is Logan Pass, a mere 6 thousand feet or so in altitude, over a series of switchbacks with even a couple of tunnels. The park service  free shuttle bus from one end to the other with several stops and transfers is a deal. We used it often and appreciated the savings in fuel and nerves. Many hiking trails begin and end at the shuttle stops. The prime hiking trail, the High Line starts at Logan Pass and ends at the Loop (a large switchback) a mere 14 miles later. Just a bit long for our tastes and always in the sun; sunny is not a desired exposure for Liz.  Not to worry, a multitude of easier and shorter trails are available. Note I said easier, not easy. The only flat ground here is ground that has been made flat. Most camps are multilevel. All the campsites are primitive (no electricity or water) so our generator has been getting a workout and every 3 or 4 days we visit the dump sites to empty wastes and replenish water. Fortunately, these are nicely located at the campsites.

Madison Lake just outside our first campground in Glacier

Small house, great yard

We began our exploration with a shuttle ride to Logan Pass. Between the construction delays (a landslide a couple of weeks before had closed the road and injured 2) and our late start we only had enough time to look around a little before getting in line for a return shuttle bus.  One big similarity with Yellowstone, lots of people visit Glacier. Another big similarity, a world class view.  Probably even better than Yellowstone.  Mountains everywhere, most with huge snowfields and of course glaciers. In 1920 Glacier National Park boasted 150 glaciers. All but 25 glaciers have been downgraded to snowfields. The difference being that a glacier is defined as more than 26 acres and moving. That is, a glacier is a mass squeezing out ice at the bottom with the weight of the ice above it. Projections are that no glaciers will remain by 2030. I suspect that many snowfields will remain. As if I could tell the difference. Above Logan Pass we saw lots of permanent snow. This is early August. By late August temperatures will once again drop (honest!) and the snowfields will begin to expand again.  The day we left, nighttime temperatures had dropped to 43 degrees and it took until afternoon to get over 60. The night before an unusual east wind had blown over 5 trees within the Rising Sun camping area. One falling tree missed a tent by only a few feet. Ah, Nature.

Yawn, just the typical scenery in Glacier. Amtrak stops in Glacier. This trip is a train or a car ride away.

Okay, I admit being charmed by cute little rodents.
This ground squirrel spent all his time right next to Logan Pass Lodge berating the tourists.

The next day we planned a little better and got to Logan Pass in time for a hike to Hidden Lake Overlook. Mountain goats in the area are so accustomed to hikers that they just ignore you. I still haven’t seen a Bighorn sheep though. I did see a Grizzly though, on my way to replenish our propane and without Liz or the camera in the truck. Crap! In my excitement I even forgot my otherwise useless phone had a camera. Did I mention the lack of electronic emissions in the area?  Anyway, the Hidden Lake hike set the pattern for our stay in Glacier. Hike 5 or 6 miles with lunch on the trail. Return and bask in the comforts of home. Really, we occasionally feel a little guilty at our fifth-wheel luxury while surrounded by hyper-fit backpackers and bicycle riders in flimsy tents. What the heck, that is their vacation while this has become our lifestyle. One cold evening I watched two hikers each carrying a 6-pack of beer. So long as they enjoy it!

On the way to Hidden Lake Overlook

The snow packs just great!

The ranger was chasing hikers from the ledge where we had just had lunch.
Seems it was reserved for the goats who were right there to reclaim it.

Our major hike was the International Peace Park Hike, walked every Wednesday and Saturday from Waterton in Canada, down past the U.S. border to Goat Haunt and then a $25 boat ride back up Waterton Lake to the parking area. We hiked with a couple of extremely nice acquaintances, Dennis and Micky Oeding out of Palm Springs California. I should interject here that we’ve met many very nice people in our travels and I never seem to get around to mentioning them. To everyone who got our card and reads this blog – I apologize for not mentioning you but most often the flow of the narrative just doesn’t seem to go that way. However, the casual acquaintances we make along the way are a large part of the enjoyment of this life. Back to the hike.  Rated a moderate hike it was led by a couple of cute-as-a-button female park rangers, one Canadian and one U.S. Actually, nearly all the park rangers we’ve encountered can be rated as young and attractive or respectably grizzled and experienced. The first four miles of the hike was the typical Glacier near-vertical up and down. One out-of-shape lady had issues so the Canadian Coast Guard was summoned for her.  Lunch at the border and a somewhat easier four more miles south to the boat landing and customs station with a single file jaunt over a suspension bridge. I would rate this hike as a bit more severe than moderate with lots of cardio pulmonary exercise at first. High point for me was that the entire route was through thimbleberry patches. They’re somewhat like a raspberry without the thorns and big maple-like leaves to mark them out. Irresistable.  Huckleberries taste great but are difficult to search out. Area stores sell huckleberry pies for 30 dollars each. Serviceberries were not sweet but thimbleberries are the best.

Ashley and Laura, our International Peace Hike guides

Like I said, one hell of a hike.

Easier than it looked.

Yet another digression – a couple of years ago some lucky interns were assigned to follow individual bears around (I assume by way of a radio collar) and collect their scat (poop) for an entire day. Then they spread their collection out and counted seeds. Their finding was that a black bear in Glacier can eat 100,000 berries a day. In fact, except for the occasional intrusion on a wolf or cougar kill or happening upon a fawn, they seem to be mainly vegetarian.  Anyway, the hike was a lot of fun though 8 miles is just about the limit of what we enjoy for distance. Not to mention the addition of a Canadian stamp on our well-stamped passports.

About the bears. As with Yellowstone the park is filled with reminders about the dangers of getting friendly with them or other wildlife. Since we usually travel with groups or on well-traveled trails we had not equipped ourselves with bear spray. One day late in our stay we decided to hike a trail by ourselves so I decided it was time to get protected. A camp store was right at the head of the trail so I asked for some bear spray. 50 bucks! As I was absorbing this expense a lady in the store told me she and her family were leaving and she’d be delighted to give us hers. She’d gotten it from another camper who had to leave and didn’t intend to return and she’d rather not risk it in the house with her small children. What luck! So now we are equipped for the low probability encounter.

The east side of Glacier has a couple of other entrances, Many Glacier and Two Medicine, with ten or twelve mile roads to lodges and trailheads to spectacular features. Many Glacier takes you past (of course) mountains covered with glaciers and snowfields. Two Medicine takes you to an unusual waterfall that exits through a hole in a cliff. Well worth searching them out and the hikes.

Just more beautiful scenery

Two Medicine falls

These roadside waterfalls are common features.

Every now and then I have to pinch myself and remember that I am indeed finally in the Rocky Mountains. We’re spending most of our time somewhere around a mile in altitude. I really don’t know how I imagined it would be, but it turns out we both like it just fine. We’re constantly running into people who have taken a few days off just to beat the heat. Certainly we’re experiencing reasonable days and cool nights. Driving without the trailer is all kinds of fun Okay, sometimes looking way down there off the roadside or nearly rubbing up against a sheer rock face can be nervous making.  With the trailer it can be an exercise in concentration.

We left Glacier with six days open before checking back into Yellowstone. Scheduling difficulties, you know. These are both very popular parks and competition for sites is high. Anyway, we’d heard (again, thanks to fellow campers for help with our itinerary) of Lewis and Clark Cavern. Not that Lewis and Clark had ever even seen or explored it but their names get tacked to lots of stuff in the area and at least they had indeed traveled down the river nearby. It was actually discovered by a couple of nearby ranchers around 1890, one of whom set up a business of touring the cavern even though it was actually owned by the railroad company and later by the Federal government. Illegal as hell and he kept having to break through the locks on the only known entrance. After he died in 1932 the CCC improved the site, blasting a new entrance, emplacing 600 or so concrete and steel steps (500 down, 100 up) and then blasting an exit.  Everywhere we go in this area we find things done by the CCC, 80 years ago, still in good condition and obviously very well engineered. Maybe it’s time for a new similar program?

View from halfway up the trail to the cavern

The cavern itself could have been designed by Disney. ¾ of a mile, filled with stalactites and stalagmites, cave bacon, a beautiful clear pool, lots of bats and even a section you had to slide down on your butt to get to the next room. It suffers from having been visited for so many years and early souvenir hunters snapping off small stalactites but still very showy.

I know, I promised to give up on cave photographs.
These are the best from a couple of dozen.

Our campsite was 3 miles down from the cave, just off Montana route 2, no electricity or water but enough trees for shade and a staff that went way out of their way to make our stay entertaining. The first night a ranger demonstrated use of an atlatl (spear thrower) with a try-it-yourself afterwards. We’d fallen into a conversation with a couple of avid backpackers and somehow missed a chance to use it. Next night was a pretty good musician who gave us a great recitation of Irish ballads and old folk music. Our third night was some sort of inspirational speaker that kind of fell flat. Saturday morning, we signed up for a nature hike with a ranger guide. We were the only folks who showed up, so Tom offered us several choices of where we could go. We decided on an area near the old limestone quarry, a gigantic hole in a hill. Tom is an avid birdwatcher and hunter with encyclopedic knowledge of the vegetation and geology of the area. Definitely a high point!

One pretty good folksinger.
There's a bluebird just to the right of his left elbow.

Tom Forwood, a very knowledgeable Montana State Park Ranger and our private guide.

Mule deer seen on the hike.

Now, Sunday morning and we find ourselves not far from there and just 120 or so miles from Yellowstone on a commercial site with electricity, water and for a wonder, wi-fi, all at a very reasonable rate. We’ll spend a couple of days here catching up on our electronic identity and run back down to the wonders of Yellowstone.

Seduced by Yellowstone

We've just spent two weeks at Yellowstone. The entire experience was richer and more complex than I can describe here in an orderly fashion so I'm just going to go with impressions without any sort of a timeline.

First, I thought that Yellowstone was all about the hydrothermal features, unique in the world. Very wrong. Even though they are indeed spectacular and interesting, the park is also about wildlife in nearly touching distance and breathtaking scenery. Okay, the thermal stuff does also qualify as scenery. The canyon, on the other hand, is even more of a spectacular visit than Old Faithful or even the Artist Paintpots.


Lower falls in Yellowstone Grand Canyon



One of the many hot springs.
Note how clear the water is.



One more breathtaking vista (yawn).

Second, Yellowstone is a lot of driving. Remember, the park is 2 million acres, about 50 miles square. Long distances from one feature to another. Fortunately, it's very much like driving through a 3-d postcard at 40 mph or less. We logged more than a thousand miles in the two weeks here. Every one of those miles was breathtakingly beautiful with something new around every bend. We also
hiked twenty or so miles on off-road trails always seeing something unique or beautiful.

Which brings up the next point - traffic. There's always a bunch of people on the road. Kinda handy for finding wildlife, just look for the traffic jams. After a while I got to thinking "It's just another herd of elk, what's the big deal?". Amazing how one's thinking adjusts.

Of course, where there is a lot of traffic, there are a lot of people. People from all over the world. We became accustomed to hearing German, Chinese, Hindi (I think), French and a smattering of Dutch and Spanish. One experience that sticks in my mind is seeing a group of hard-core bikers (Oh yes, the park is full of Harleys, more on that later) in full regalia, leather vests and pants, do-rag bandannas on their head, ponytails and beards. As they passed by me, I heard them speaking German to each other. Wouldn't have known it  looking at them. About the Harleys - hundreds of them, usually travelling in packs, most often folks in their 50's and up just reliving their youth. Hard to find fault, especially from my own perspective.

Next is the wildlife. Not necessarily the big fellas, bison, elk, bears, deer, etc. As mentioned before, the woods are full of marmots, squirrels, there are otters in the rivers, osprey a common sight, ravens bigger than chickens and smart enough to spot an unprotected sandwich.

Of course, there's always the scenery. Mountains in every direction and often underfoot. This is exactly on the continental divide and it seems every direction ought to be down. Nope, lots of up wherever you look. It took me days to realize that not only are we in the Rockies but we're crossing over them on a regular basis. That would explain the change in fuel mileage and the popping in my ears.

Our last full day in the area, the town of West Yellowstone had a Hot Rod show. Free to the public and very much a class operation. Two, count'em two, original Cobras. Each half a million minimum on the auction block. Also lots of much less expensive home-built rods and restorations. One fellow I spent a long time talking with had less than 4 grand in his self-bodied (handcrafted aluminum) custom starting with his son's junker Mustang.


The $4000 custon (plus 4 years of work)



The other end of the spectrum.



This one had me going, I had to ask the owner.
Hint for you gearheads - paired center exhausts and rear distributor.

Next Stop, Glacier National Park.