Day 45 – Glacier Nat’l Park MT

I have no words tonight to describe the Going to the Sun road in Glacier. It has to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world. We left the RV at 9:30 and drove the 9 miles to the park. The drive starts out in pine forests which open up to Lake McDonald, a beautiful 10 mile lake. Then the mountains appeared in front of us, and we started climbing up. There was a lot of road construction in the alpine area, but that still couldn’t detract from the awesome vistas before us. The mountains were a variety of shapes and composition, some snow covered. There were many waterfalls (which I had been afraid would be dried up for the summer), some cascading right down to the road.

We saw mountain goats by the roadside. It was truly incredible. We stopped for a picnic at Sun Point on Lake Mary at the eastern end of the road. When we were finishing, a female mule deer found herself in the parking lot in front of us and couldn’t figure out how to get away from the cars and people. She came very close to me. Some people coming towards the trash can scared her, and she dashed off in the woods in a panic.

After lunch, we took the hike from the parking lot around the end of Lake Mary. The lake was gorgeous with mountain peaks on the opposite shore. We hiked about a mile to Baring Falls. It was a pleasant hike. The sun was shining, but the temperature was cool. Funny item. A 10 year old boy was hiking towards us with his mom and grandmother in front of him. I heard him ask his mother if she had a first aid kit. She asked him why, and he replied, “A mosquito bit me!”

We drove on to the St Mary’s Visitor Center at the east entrance to the park. The flags were flying at half mast, and I asked a ranger why. She said that they have lost a few forest rangers in the past two weeks in the California forest fires. Sad. Outside in the parking lot was a huge osprey nest with two occupants.

The drive back across the park was equally beautiful from a different perspective and different angle of the sun. We drove through the spray from the falls going over Weeping Wall.

The Tracker wouldn’t start after our last stop in the park, so we came on back to the RV to have leftovers for dinner. Our RV neighbor, Carol, came over and sat by Bill’s fire and chatted with us for a couple of hours. She and her husband are from north of Phoenix.

I took a million photos today, but I can’t see how anything on film could do this drive justice. I did post 32 of the best ones on a new link called Glacier 1 which is in the left hand column here.