It's a long ride up here! We knew that we must be in a remote place when our GPS navigator got completely lost (we refer to it as a "her" since it has a female voice). Anyway, she tried to send us down two different gravel driveways. We've found that GPS navigators work best when you already know where you're going.
I should mention that so far we have been planning this trip by the seat of our pants. We haven't made any reservations more than a day or two in advance. This gives us the flexibility to stay longer, leave earlier, or add an additional destination if we want. So far it has worked out fine, although arriving in Colorado on the 4th of July weekend wasn't ideal. Other than that, we've always been able to find a campground for the length of time that we want to stay. I have a feeling that it may get a little tougher once we cross over into California.
Back to Glacier. The views here are on par with what we saw at Grand Tetons. They call this "Big Sky Country", and it's easy to understand why. At one point Hannah commented that the skies look so big and beautiful that they almost looked fake. "You know, like at Disney World". I don't believe that even Walt Disney could pull off anything this spectacular.
Our campground was located near the east entrance to the "Going to the Sun Road". This road is closed during that winter months, and had recently been closed due to construction, but our friend Amy Putman sent us an email indicated that the road had been opened. Thanks Amy.. I think.
For those of you who have never been on this road, it's a very scenic highway that runs from East to West through the center of Glacier National Park, and has some of the most spectacular views (I'm sure) in the country. These views come at a price, however. This road is as treacherous as any that I traveled on in Kashmir, India (except for the fact that my friend Santosh drives 50 mph on those roads and passes other cars in curves!).
I know that some of you are thinking "I've been on that road and it really wasn't that bad". Even though it was open, the road is under construction. On the west side of Logan Pass, which is the steepest part, but also with the best views, the pavement has been torn-up and the barriers torn-down. They're still allowing two lanes of traffic through. At any given time, if you're on the outside lane (which we were), your front tire is inches away from certain death. Come to think of it, it's a lot like India!
There was still some snow at Logan Pass. The kids had to get into a snowball fight.
We bumped into this guy at Logan Pass.
We did a number of activities at Glacier. We had to take a tour on the Big Red Bus.
This is another one of those vintage tour buses. Although they look almost identical to the buses at Yellowstone, these buses were made by the White Motor Company, and also went through a major restoration in 2000. For those who are interested, the buses now ride on Ford's E450 platform.
Our tour guide was a very nice young man who teaches at the local Indian school during the school year, and drives this bus during the summer. He said they have any opening for a 5th grade teacher... Emily?
We took a boat trip across Two Medicine Lake.
We had made reservations to go horseback riding, but our Indian guides didn't show up. It seems that the Blackfeet were having some sort of festival over in Browning. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote the he "didn't want to keep track of any unit of time shorter than a season". This should have been written by an Indian. They're not wrong, just different.
We decided to go hiking instead. We saw a number of spectacular waterfalls
Glacier is a great time. We will want to come back here.
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