On August 15th we reached our 4th
“destination point” when we pulled in to the west side of Glacier National Park
and took up residence for next 5 days in the Fish Creek Campground. The west side of Glacier is heavily wooded
and lush with green growth. It was so
heavily wooded in fact, that we couldn’t get enough sun to use our large solar
panels.
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| thick,lush green campsite - Fish Creek campground | | | | | | | (FYI: you can click in any of the pictures in this blog to enlarge them) |
The first night we were there
we counted 5 neighboring campers running their generators during the designated
generator use times so we thought “no big deal.”
To our surprise the next evening, when we
fired up our generator (for the first time on this trip), we realized that we
were the only campsite with a generator running.
That
day the surrounding trailers and RV’ers had moved on and had been replaced by
tent campers.
When we turned off the
generator, some campers in one of the neighboring campsites started applauding…..
‘wrong thing to do when we were in our right
to run it for that time and Jean already had a headache from it.
Needless to say, knowing Jean, you know that
she had to say something to them, right?!
We had originally planned on driving our truck up the “Going
to the Sun” road but after getting here and finding out more about Glacier, we
decided that taking the free shuttle up to Logan’s pass from the west side and
then taking it from the east side up to Logan’s Pass when we camped on the east
side was the best idea.
This way, we
both could relax and enjoy seeing the gorgeous scenery on the very narrow,
winding road that literally hugs the edge of the mountains on the way up to
Logan’s Pass.
Once we got to the top,
at Logan’s Pass, we hiked the Hidden Lake trail to the observation point above
the lake.
It was breathtaking both visually
as well as physically (due to the altitude, for us flatlanders) and had a
delight of wildlife out and about.
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| what a beautiful hike |
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| marmot along the trail |
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| mountain goat that ended up crossing the trail about 5 feet in front of us |
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| one of the many bighorn sheet along the trail |
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| us at the Hidden Lake overlook |
Unfortunately a wildfire was burning on one of the mountains
across the lake from our campground.
We
could see the smoke plumes during the day and at night, from the lake shore, we
could watch as the flames licked up and across the mountainside.
Although sad and a bit scary, it had an
eerily strange beauty to it.
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| looking across Lake McDonald at the forest fire - second evening of our stay |
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| looking across Lake McDonald - third night of our stay |
When
we kayaked across McDonald Lake, we met some firefighters who said they had
been brought in from Colorado to help control the fire when the winds fueled
the flames too much. We were
lucky that the winds blew the smoke away from our campground.
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| Jerome kayaking across Lake McDonald - you can see the smoke from the fire in the background |
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| Jean kayaking across Lake McDonald - huckleberry ice cream cones were our "rewards" in the village on the other side! |
Experiencing both the west as well as the east side of
Glacier was so interesting. The east
side is so different from the west side, being more open with many old burned
areas from previous forest fires mixed with new growth. It was an ideal area to use our solar
panels….. yeaaa…. no more generator!
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| yes, that's our solar panel set-up on the left! |
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| this was posted in our campground the second night we were there |
For
the next 4 days we stayed in St. Mary Campground and used it as our base to explore
and hike in the east side of “Going to the Sun” road, Many Glacier, and Two Medicine areas.
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| St. Mary Falls - on hike in eastern portion of "Going to the Sun" road |
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| this deer kept walking just ahead of us on the trail so of course Jean had to take a picture of it - on the hike to St. Mary and Virginia falls on the eastern portion of "Going to the Sun Road" |
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| Jerome looking at Virginia Falls, just past St. Mary Falls - the man standing at the bottom of the falls gives you an idea of how high this falls actually is - on the eastern portion of "Going to the Sun Road" |
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| view of Many Glacier Hotel from our boat ride on Lake Josephine just after the eclipse |
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| us on our hike in Many Glacier - Lake Grinnell, Grinnell Falls, and Grinnell Glacier in the background |
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| us at Aster Falls, on our hike in Two Medicine |
Although the fires were
on the west side the dense smoke was being blown through the valleys and hung
heavily in the air in the St.Mary area.
On our last day on the east side we both agreed that the smoke was
getting so bad that although we had loved our time in Glacier we weren’t sad to
be leaving.
Now we’re on our way to our next “destination point” –
Traverse City, Michigan and cooler weather.
We wish you bright skies and good days,
Jerome and Jean
