May 24

So up bright and early, cooking scrambled eggs for my sister. After breakfast, we met up with the others for a grand tour of Glacier Park, and I mean grand. We took US 2 outside of West Glacier and drove around the park to East Glacier, then entered the park from there. Katherine and Pattie had an 'awesome' tour book, and every spectacular turn off, we followed intrepid Pattie to some empty parking lot, would take a trail, and around a bend see some incredible scene, featuring jagged, glacier-covered mountains, rapid runnng rivers, and a couple of exciting rest stops.

On the way to East Glacier, we stopped off at Goat Lick which is a natural place that mountain goats come down to natural salt deposits near the Whitefish River. At the time several people in the parking lot saw some goats up on the hillside, but I couldn't see them. On our return trip, though, the goats were near the highway and we saw a half dozen goats grazing. Pretty cool!

Further down the highway we stopped off at the tiny town of Essex. It's a Great Northern Railway town. The railroad built a permanent camp there early in the century to keep the line open in the winter time. Later on, the railroad built the Izaak Walton Lodge, which is a picturesque mountain hotel. I'd love to come back and stay there sometime, and Amtrak has service to the front door of the hotel. I have some good hummingbird pictures from the hotel. From there the road takes you to the Maries, where you cross the Continental Divide. Around here, the country begins to change from mountainous to rolling plains (Blackfoot Indian Nation). The forest gradually gives way to grasslands. It's very green and beautiful this time of year.

As you can imagine, our trip was kind of like some ancient Royal Progress through the countryside. We eventually made it to East Glacier, and stopped for lunch at the Thimbleberry Cafe, good road food, and about 38 varieties of chocolate desserts. I passed on the desserts, but I heartily recommend their chocolate chip cookies. You'll love 'em. After leaving Thimbleberries, we headed up MT 49 toward Two Medicine Lake and St Marys. Rt 49 is this windy, narrow road full of landslide signs, and warnings about cattle on the road, real Brokeback Mountain stuff. We didn't see any cowboys, but did see some wild horses, a few ground squirrels, and a marmot.

MT 49 is takes you up over a pass where on one side you see the eastern mountain slopes, and on the other side rolling grasslands with a hundred shades of green. MT 49 ends up at US 89, which takes you directly into a mountain lake valley. Again, I have lots of nameless mountain lake pictures that I can't identify, but you'll know, at least, that I've been there. It seems that every vista is more beautiful than the last.

Coming back down the mountain toward St. Marys, a rainstorm was coming off the mountains down the lake valley. I took some pictures, but I'm not sure how they'll turn out. With the clouds, sun, and blue sky, the picture overhead never lacked for drama. One of the great things about out-and-back trips is that on the back track, you see a completely different scene than the one you saw on the way up. We saw a whole new set of panoramas, this time set off by rainstorms and a brilliantly clear afternoon sky.

We got back to Whitefish about an hour later than we had planned (but who's planning, we're on vacation). Pattie and Kat prepared dinner. Pattie had marinated some steaks, then threw them on the grill when we came back. We had a tasty family dinner. We're were petered out, so we came back to our cabin around 11:30, hit the sack, ready for tomorrow.