A Glacier is Snow that Never Melts: Days 6, 7, & 8

Rain, Rain, Go Away
We got out of Jamie’s quickly and headed to another Super Walmart. We bought a few supplies, most importantly, an extra fleece blanket. The drive from Missoula to Glacier was shorter than I expected. I spent most of the ride working on my blog. By the time we arrived at the west entrance to Glacier, it was raining. We stopped at the Visitor Center and found out that the main road (Going-to-the-Sun Road) through the park was closed in the middle. We could drive in like 16 miles, but then would have to exit the park and drive around to the other side. Wow, the day wasn’t looking good. The ranger suggested a few shorter hikes and told us which campsites were still open for the year.

Despite the rain, Glacier proved to be amazing. We stopped at a pullout along the road. There were stairs built down to this small little set of falls. As we were checking them out, I looked down river and saw a moose drinking some water. We got a ton of photos of her. Between the moose and the pretty creek, I was starting to get over the rain and the closed road. We drove as far in as we could. Right before where the road closed was the “Trail of the Cedars Nature Trail” (nice name, ey?). I wasn’t looking forward to a hike, since my knees had been bothering me. What we wanted to see on the hike was Avalanche Creek, and lucky for me it wasn’t very far in. The creek was amazing. The creek cut through these dark purplish-red rocks. The forest around it was full of huge cedars and hemlock trees. We read on one of the signs that the forest hadn’t burned since the 1500s.

On our way back to the main road, we stopped at the creek where we saw the moose. Adrian wanted to climb out on the wet-slippery-sharp rocks. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but apparently all the warnings about drowning got to me. Apparently, the number one cause of death in the park is drowning. I’m sure he was super careful out there with his camera. He made it back to the car in less than 3 minutes, but it felt like much longer.

We headed out of the west entrance of Glacier and got on the road. We planned to camp on the east side of Glacier at St. Mary’s. The drive around the park took awhile, but even in the rain it was beautiful. The mountains looked amazing and the trees were amazing yellows and oranges. We stopped at Goat Lick overlook, but alas, the goats only lick the side of the mountain during the spring. Once we got to the little town of East Glacier, the skies had cleared up. The sky was totally blue with pretty clouds hanging over the mountain range. In East Glacier, we got a fine photo of the World’s Largest Purple Spoon. It was awesome. We drove on, enjoying the leaves. We got to the turnoff for Two Medicine and decided that taking it was a good idea. It was especially good since the road to St. Mary was closed and we could think of no alternative. On the road to Two Medicine we saw our first bear. It was a black bear and he was right along the road. We took some pictures from the car and then headed on.

By the time we got into the park by the campsites, the weather had turned nasty again. I told Adrian that if there were no other tent campers, we were certainly not setting up camp there. There were about four RV’s and one tent camper, so we decided to give it a try. We set up camp in record time, broke out the camping stove and heated up some sloppy joe’s. I think we set up camp, cooked, and ate in less than 30 minutes. It was freezing and wet. It was still too early to go to sleep, so we decided we would watch a movie on the laptop in the car. It seemed somewhat ridiculous to be watching a movie while camping, but it was warm, dry, and entertaining, so why not? After the movie, we piled ourselves under the blankets (including the new fleece from Walmart) and tried to get some sleep.

The Rain Stops But the Wind Blows
When we woke up, it was still freezing outside, but it wasn’t raining. Had we decided to take down the tent, it would have rained. We had decided to camp in the same spot two nights in a row, so with our extra time we made ourselves some pancakes. True to form, the first two pancakes I made were pretty ugly, but still tasty. The rest turned out quite nicely. The park ranger came around and told us how to get around the closed road to St. Mary. It would take us a bit longer, but we could get there easily. After breakfast, we loaded up into the car and headed out. Along our detour, we saw lots of cattle. On the way, I taught Adrian the difference between a dairy cow, a beef cow, and a horse. Now he knows when to say “Got Milk?’ and when to say “you’re what’s for dinner” and when to not find the animal appetizing.

We arrived at St. Mary Visitor Center mid-morning. The wind was so strong, the flag was about ready to fly right off the pole. The ranger gave a few hike suggestions and we started along the other end of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Along the road, we saw two coyote pups running along. We snapped about fifty pictures of them. It was a bit excessive, but they were kind of cute.

We stopped at Sun Point to do a hike that was supposed to take us to some waterfalls. Sun Point itself was a point overlooking St. Mary Lake. The wind there was so strong you nearly fell over if you didn’t lean into it. Adrian made some comment about not feeling wind like that since he was in the Navy, though the way he said it alluded to something that made me laugh crazy hard. He later would deny saying such a thing.

The hike led us to a small waterfall and Sunrift Gorge. Adrian really enjoyed the creek and the gorge. I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t just hike a mile to reach something that was 40 feet of the main road. Adrian begged me to let him climb down into the gorge. Again, I was worried about the slippery rocks, but I gave in. He took off his shoes and socks and waded across the creek. His enjoyment of it was quite entertaining. We got back on the trail to head back to the car. We had been instructed to make lots of noise as we hiked to warn any bears that we were coming. Apparently, bears don’t like to be surprised. Adrian settled on belting out Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls” every few minutes. It must have been effective because we didn’t see any wildlife.

After the hike, we got back in the car to head up the Going-to-the-Sun road. The drive was really beautiful. The mountains in the park are this amazing purple color. Since it had been raining and cold, up on the peaks was a dusting of snow. It gave the mountains a wonderful texture. We stopped at Jackson Glacier Overlook, which is the only place in the park you can see a glacier from the road. We made ourselves some sandwiches and ate lunch while enjoying the view. A few miles later, the road closed again, so we turned around and headed back out of the park.

We drove a few miles north to Many Glacier, another road into the park. We stopped at a hotel on Swift Current Lake. The ranger had told us the wind would be better here, but we had no such luck. Adrian took a few shots of the hotel, which looked like a Swiss Chalet. We decided to check out the lobby (anything to get warm). There was a huge fire with couches around it on all four sides. The hotel guests were making great use of it, with their feet up, leaned back and reading books. We bummed around for a while and then went back out to the wind to get more pictures.

The creek and the falls near the hotel fascinated Adrian. He insisted on climbing all over the rocks to get great shots of them. I mostly just wanted to get out the wind, but I waited patiently, trying not to blow away. By the time we were done I was exhausted and perhaps a bit cranky. I was done exploring for the day. It was time to head back to camp. On our way out we noticed some people staring at the side of the mountain. One had a huge telescope. We stopped to see what the fuss was all about. As it turned out, there was a black bear with her two cubs. Adrian got some shots with his telephoto lens. We talked to the people with the telescope. They let us take a look and “gave” us pictures they took with it. (We had to buy their DVD of other pictures of the park).

Once back at camp, Adrian suggested we cook hotdogs on the fire for dinner. The burn-ban had been lifted so we finally were able to burn the firewood we had been dragging around since Yellowstone. It was nice to have some heat from the fire. We ate our hot dogs and had some s’mores. Soon we had burned everything we had, but unfortunately, it wasn’t even dark. We had to find something to do before going to sleep. We decided we’d watch another movie, but didn’t want to have to sit in the car. Adrian maneuvered the car right up next to the tent so we could have the laptop in the tent while it was plugged into the car. We watched “My Cousin Vinny” and then crashed out for our seventh straight night on the air mattress.

We woke up around 8 am. As we were contemplating crawling out of the covers, we started hearing raindrops on the tent. Go figure, apparently taking down the tent in dry weather would not be something we’d do more than once this road trip. It cleared up a bit so we packed up camp. Just as we were taking down the tent, we got about 2 minutes of small hail. Lovely.

We had been discussing whether we would head up to Banff. Neither of us wanted to explore another park in this kind of weather. We found a phone number in our atlas for “Travel Alberta.” As soon as we got cell phone service, we gave them a call. Adrian asked for weather information for Banff. It sounded like the weather would be equally bad as it had been for the last few days. Adrian and I decided it would be better to visit Banff in more palatable weather. I really enjoyed Glacier even in the nasty weather, so I want to come back. We decided to take a road trip to Banff NP, Jasper NP, and Glacier NP in the future.

We had stopped to make the call in front of a café called “Brownies.” We both agreed brownies would make an excellent breakfast. Well, the skim milk we washed the brownie down with was healthy at least. Now we’re back on the road headed towards Seattle.

In a few days we’ll be starting classes, so I’m glad we got out of the city to take this trip before we get swamped with studying. We saw a crazy amount of beautiful stuff. September gave us an amazing backdrop of colors to view this part of the country (so I suppose the nasty weather was worth it). Adrian and I still like each other and all that fun gooey stuff, so I would call the trip a successful one. Like our other trips, I’m sure I’ll be enjoying the memories of it for a long time.

By The Numbers
Days gone: 8
Nights slept on air mattress: 6.5
Showers Taken: 2
Distance Traveled: 2900 miles
Distance driven by Ana: about 700 miles
Stops for Gas: 14
Books on tape finished: 3
National Parks Visited: 3
Times Crossing Continental Divide: 10
Times Crossing Hudson Bay Divide: 2
Highest elevation: Dunraven Pass, 8859 feet
Pictures Taken: 1077
Pictures Kept: 353
Bears seen: 4
Geysers seen: at least 63 too many
Blog posts written about trip: 4
Word count of blogs: over 4900
Times it rained taking the tent down: 3
Times it didn’t: 1
Trip cost: $0.35/mile
Trip value: priceless (you didn’t think I could resist that, did you?)

A Yellowstone is a Smelly Stone: Days 4 & 5

Things that Look Weird and Smell Funny

Our first order of business upon entrance to the park was to find ourselves a campsite. We registered for a site at Grant Village on the south side of the park, close to Yellowstone Lake. We got our reservation and the weather forecast. Apparently, the forecast included afternoon thunderstorms and the possibility of snow over night. Wow, night number four in the tent was looking good. We set up camp one more time and got back in the car. Yellowstone has to be the quintessential American park. To view the sites, you pretty much drive to a parking lot, park, walk between 20 and 100 feet see something cool, get back in the car, and repeat.

We got in the car to drive to see Old Faithful. We crossed the continental divide, twice. Just as we were approaching Old Faithful, Adrian saw it erupting. I totally missed it. Lucky for us, they don’t call it Old Faithful for nothing, so it would happen again soon enough. We made ourselves some lunch from the parking lot to pass some time (and keep me from getting too cranky). We walked over to Old Faithful and overheard that it would be erupting again at 1:45. That gave us enough time to check out a whole bunch of other geysers in the area. I had no idea there were that many geysers in the park, much less in just one spot right next to Old Faithful. Adrian took no less than three pictures of every one we passed. Old Faithful erupted around 1:40. It was cool. Yup, once again, I rock it up with great descriptions. There’s about a gazillion geysers in the park and most of them reek of sulfur. My favorite one was this crazy clear blue, but it really smelled bad.

The plan was to drive north as far as we planned to go for the day, saving all the stops for the way back south. We drove as far as the Norris Geyser Basin. We stopped, got out of the car and did a little more hiking on boardwalks around the geysers. There’s a sign about every 10 feet that says to stay on the boardwalks, just to be sure you don’t go off the path and fall into some boiling water. I have to admit the illustration of the boy accidentally doing this on the signs was a bit funny. So, by this time, I’m exhausted and already pretty bored with the geysers (they all start to look the same after awhile). I go anyway, so Adrian can get his three pictures of each geyser. We did find one that was about the exact same color of my coat, so that was exciting. After Norris Basin, I crashed out in the car for a bit, waking up to take pictures of the random wildlife we’d catch along the road. We stopped at a nice waterfall. Our last stop for the day was at the Grand Prismatic Spring. After that, it was back over the Continental Divide, twice, and to our campsite.

Since it was cold enough for me to sport my fleece, jacket, and beanie hat all day, I was glad that we had bought firewood for the night. We decided to make spaghetti carbonara for dinner. It was somewhat difficult to get enough heat from the Coleman stove to both boil water for pasta and cook bacon, but we managed. Eventually we just threw the spaghetti pot on the fire to boil there. It tasted insanely good. I made the perfect amount for us to finish without leftovers (although it was so good I’m sure we would have finished it no matter how much I made). Since we had a fire, we made s’mores for dessert.

Around 8 pm we decided we’d try to shower in since we hadn’t had one since Jamie’s. We got all our stuff together, put out the fire, and drove over to the showers. We arrived just in time to find out it closed at 8:30 pm. We missed it by about a minute.

Since the fire was already out, we decided to make it another early night. We pilled a mountain of blankets over us and tried to sleep. Apparently, when it’s cold enough for them to predict snow, four blankets aren’t enough to keep warm. I had the pink fleece Powerpuff Girl blanket on standby just in case it got too cold. I broke it out pretty quick. Adrian is no longer allowed to make fun of the Powerpuff blanket, since it was much needed. I was slightly warmer than Adrian, because I had brought my beanie hat into the tent. Mr. Warner told us all in 5th grade that you lose like 50% of your body heat from your head, so I was all over that. Adrian was not. He considered a trip to the car for the extra blanket and a hat, but reconsidered after stepping out of the blankets for a millisecond. I offered him my fleece jacket to wrap around his head and he gladly accepted. We still barely slept. I decided another trip to Walmart was in order, we needed more blankets!

Do We Have to See More Geysers?

In the morning, it was time to pack up camp once again. We considered making breakfast, but like almost every morning on the trip, it started raining as we packed up camp. Back on the road in Yellowstone, we stopped at a few more geysers. Since geysers were all starting to look the same, I was thrilled that next destination was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. On our way, we stopped to photograph some wildlife. We saw a bull elk along the road, a bison right on the road, a coyote down along the river, and a bald eagle perched along a ridge. We eventually made it to the Canyon. The canyon had two falls, the upper fall dropped 109 feet and the lower dropped 308 feet. We parked and walked to photograph the upper falls. There were stairs built down to the lower fall so we made the trek to the bottom. We got a few pictures and then made the climb back up.

We drove over to the other side of the canyon and did the American tourist thing. Drive, park, photograph, repeat. There were several spots to view the falls. We drove through the rest of the park fairly quickly. We stopped again at Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of the park. We saw an elk, just chilling out on the lawn in front of a chapel. Later, when we were eating our lunch, a man told us that he and his wife had watched an elk head butt a parked car. Interesting. Mammoth Hot Springs was more geysers. I was fresh out of interest in the geysers, so Adrian took off with the camera and I started downloading pictures to the laptop. We had filled both memory cards so it was time to clear them off.

The entrance to the park was just a few miles north of Mammoth Hot Springs, so once we were done there we hit the road. I was exhausted so I crashed out in the passenger seat. We stopped for gas and a few Red Bulls right before Interstate 90. I got into the driver seat to head towards Missoula to stay with Jamie once again. Adrian spent about 2 hours in the car deleting the pictures we didn’t need to save. He even started putting captions on them, which I thoroughly appreciated. We got to Jamie’s around 8:30 pm. We were both happy to have access to hot water and a shower. Apparently, we needed a good warm night of sleep, because by the time we woke up it was already 9:30.

Tenting in the Tetons: Day 3

The Middle of the Middle of Nowhere

We woke up bright and early (well, early anyway) to hit the road to Grand Teton National Park. We picked up Interstate 15 in Montana and headed south. I have never seen so little traffic on an interstate. Adrian realized he was nearly out of gas, so I started studying the map in the new atlas for places to stop. You’d figure most exits would have gas, but no such luck in the middle of Montana. Eventually we found an exit with the little gas tank symbol on the exit sign. That seemed simple enough, but we could see zero signs for gas. We head in the direction that looked more civilized (but just barely). We found the place; it was marked with a sign that said “fuel”. It was a bar that apparently sold gas. There were two pumps and they were the oldest pumps I’ve ever seen. Any older and you would have had to physically pump the gas. The only sign of life at the place was a very friendly dog. Adrian went inside and did indeed find someone. We bought a few gallons, just enough to get to the next gas station to find some higher octane fuel (Adrian’s car is particular apparently). Unfortunately, we barely made it to the next place with gas, and it was nearly as shady as the first. The tank of gas wasn’t even buried underground. Somewhere in Idaho, we finally found some acceptable gas and filled an entire tank.

The Tetons Don’t Look That Much Like Breasts to Me

Finally, the drive brought us close enough to the park where we could see the Tetons. The trees had already started changing to their fall colors, giving mountain backdrop a beautiful foreground of color. We arrived at the park early in the afternoon. Our first stop was at the newly opened Moose Visitor Center. Adrian and I really enjoyed the building design. It was nicely detailed and took advantage of some amazing views. The park ranger suggested we hike Cascade Canyon. We noted this and went to find ourselves a campsite.

We found a campsite at Jenny Lake and set up for night number three. Adrian made us sandwiches while I set up the tent. After lunch we headed out pretty quickly to catch a boat across the lake. The ranger suggested we take it to save some hiking time. It only ran until four and by then it was 3:30 or so. I really enjoyed the hike because there were so many places that were worth stopping at. It was a short hike to “Hidden Falls” which was a much prettier waterfall than our pictures of it suggest. The next stop on the trail was “Inspiration Point” which overlooked Jenny Lake. Once we got back into the canyon, the fall colors were everywhere. The trail followed a creek most of the way up, so there was always something to look at. We found a pretty sweet dam. Adrian was scared of the beavers, so he broke out the bear spray just in case he got attacked. Soon after we found a cave, which I determined was a prime location for a bear den. Seriously, it was right by water and the trail brought a steady supply of hikers for the bears to eat. What more could you look for in a home? The rest of the trail just offered spectacular views of the side of the mountain covered in reds, oranges, yellows, and greens.

On the way back, we found this tower of rocks that someone had stacked just off the trail. Since I’m about seven-years-old at heart, I really wanted to knock it down. However, I figured someone had put in all this effort to build the thing, so maybe I should leave it. Perhaps some family had been building the thing, stone by stone every time they visited the park. I mentioned to Adrian how much I was itching to knock it down. Since he’s only five at heart, he lacked my reservations about knocking it down. Twelve pictures later, the tower was destroyed.

We hiked back to the car, and headed back to camp. We unloaded all the food and cooking supplies and I made Adrian “camping casserole.” I’ve never actually cooked camping casserole while camping, so that was exciting. Since we lacked firewood and it was freezing, we headed to bed soon after dinner. Being “bear aware” we made sure that everything that could possibly attract a bear was packed safely in the car.

Since we went to bed so early, we woke up at a decent time and packed up camp. We stopped at a few view points on the way out of the park, but nothing was as nice as the hike. We did see a bull elk along the road and got a nice picture of his rack. About 10 miles after leaving Grand Teton, you enter Yellowstone. Our pass to Grand Teton covered our entrance fee to Yellowstone as well, so we were ready to start exploring our second national park.

The Road Trip "West" Begins: Days 1 & 2

It’s Thursday morning. Adrian and I have been on the road since Saturday. We’re at the halfway point of our trip, 5 days down and 5 to go. At this very moment, we’re driving on HWY 93 in Montana. To be more specific, Adrian is driving; I’m riding in the passenger seat (I’m not that good at multi-tasking). Apparently, we’ve seen a lot in the past few days. We’ve taken over 600 pictures, though thankfully Adrian spent two hours sorting through them and narrowed it down to 271. We’ll see how many details I can actually remember.

The Wedding
We left my place at 10 am Saturday morning, headed down to the Columbia River Gorge for a wedding. We met up with Adrian’s friends Royce and Stephanie to caravan down there. Royce had this plan for us to stop at Olympia (Washington’s capitol, for you out-of-staters) to get pizza. Seems a bit random, but it was on the way and it was excellent pizza. While we waited for the pizza to be cooked, we walked around downtown Olympia. We found the artesian well in the middle of a parking lot (just as random as it sounds). We stopped at a sporting goods store and I bought a fleece, which has come in handy because it has been freezing. So, we got the pizza and ate it on the campus of the Capitol. Then it was back on the road to the wedding.

The wedding was an outdoor wedding at Caroline’s house (the bride). The setting was beautiful; her backyard overlooks mountains. Behind the bride and groom was the garden, with plenty of sunflowers blooming. The groom, Kane, is one of Adrian’s architecture friends, so there we knew a lot of the people there. I’ve never been at a wedding where the bride and groom looked so happy to be there. After the ceremony, there was plenty food and beer, and thus, lots of eating and drinking.

Later in the evening, we headed to some sort of “Hoptoberfest” in town. With all those locals drinking beer in a tent, it felt very small town and comfortable to me. Adrian had a good time dancing. Unlike me, he drank enough to enjoy dancing. It was pretty entertaining (and by that I mean embarrassing). I spent most my time out of sight of the dance floor. When they stopped selling beer, it was back to Caroline’s for a little more celebrating. Caroline’s family let the guests camp in their field, so we spent the first of 7 nights on the new air-mattress. It was wicked windy, enough that the tent would blow in far enough to touch my shoulder as I tried to sleep. Continuing their hospitality, Caroline’s family provided the whole group breakfast in the morning, so we filled up before hitting the road.

Missoula Here We Come
Sunday was uneventful, we had to drive like 8.5 hours from Kane & Caroline’s to Missoula, Montana where we were crashing with Adrian’s friend Jamie. The drive was pretty insignificant, driving through south-eastern Washington was excruciatingly boring. We did make a few stops to entertain ourselves, one of them being at a Super-Walmart and the other being almost as good (but it’s pretty hard to beat Super-Walmart… they don’t have those in Seattle). We listened to the Seahawks game on the radio. They lost in the most pathetic of ways. It made Adrian a bit cranky. We made it to Montana, where I swear the sky is bigger. Adrian thinks I’m crazy, but I’m pretty sure it is. We finally rolled into Missoula and found Jamie’s apartment. We cleared a spot for the air-mattress (night 2 of 7) and went to a sports bar so we could converse AND watch football (woo hoo, football). Jamie was a lot of fun, seems like exactly the kind of person I’d make friends with.

the places that are home

Adrian and I flew to Illinois over Labor Day weekend. He got to meet the family and see where I grew up. I think everyone liked him (though my family would never volunteer that sort of information). My mom seemed not to want to offend him, forcing me to relay messages to him about how EXACTLY the salsa should be made, though she was in the same room as me. We both gave her a hard time about that.

As always it was great to be home. I was able to spend a little bit of time in all my favorite places: on my swing in the back yard, my grandparents deck over looking the beautiful rolling hills of Jo Daviess county, and of course, Tower Rock. I'm pretty sure this photo of tower rock is extremely distorted, because it never seemed that high to me. I love this picture because it makes it look much harder to climb than it is. Though it may look like I'm stretching hard to climb up, we're actually on our way down, and I'm just reaching for a camera. I swear I'm well planted and in no danger of falling off, though I'm sure my mom would feel otherwise. In a few weeks when the leaves change colors, the view from Tower Rock is unbeatable.

Sometimes I miss home, and lots of times I miss my family, but Seattle is feeling more and more like my new (possibly permanent?) home. Though it has its flaws (lack of my family, cost of buying a home) it has become a very special place to me. I feel comfortable here and if I ever complain of boredom, it's entirely my fault, because there is plenty to do and see. How could I complain about living in a place where all I have to do is walk out on my balcony to see mountains, Lake Union, and downtown?