Saturday, August 3, 2019

Glacier National Park

I decided that I would go visit Connie at Glacier Park this last week. I had promised to try and Sharon next door agreed to keep the Dogs for me, to make the trip possible. Dogs are not recommended in the park, or permitted on most of the hikes, since wildlife can either be vulnerable or dangerous, depending on the species. Besides I wanted to be able to concentrate on the park. Tiger rebelled at staying with Sharon, so I brought him along.

He is actually a good traveler and surprisingly, to me anyway, quite dependable. Its a bit funny to me, but as a kid I always did every thing I could to keep away from Cats.Now this one follows me around, and cuddles with me when I sleep. I am not all that sure that I appreciate that however.


I started on the morning of the 26th about 7 AM and we drove straight through arriving at Connie's work place at 9:30 PM. and Tiger never ate, crapped or drank water the entire 15 hours that he was in the car. Pretty impressive!

Connie has a long hair version of Tiger Stripped Cat, and they get along very well, both go out and "do their thing" and come back on their own to the sound of a clicker. I was quite pleased that they really required no extra care or caused any bother the whole trip.

Connie still had two days to work so that gave me the freedom to explore the St Mary side of the Park at my leisure. I made at least three trips up to Logan Pass and two trips to the town of  Browning, and various other side trips to check out the country and local wildlife. I was quite surprised to note that the Raptor population is almost nonexistent both in the park and at least out to Browning. I only saw One Golden, one Bald Eagle, three Ferruginous Rough Legs in all the travel that I put in all that part of Montana.

In total I took over 400 pictures of the park. As you can imagine it is going to take a while to get it all straightened out and of course some of them are destined for the garbage can. This today just covers the road from St Mary's to Logan Pass on the "Going to the Sun road".

These 8 pictures are taken from the "camp Ground" at Johnston's from the spot of Connie's "Toy Hauler". The area on the other side of the lake is Blackfeet reservation land.



The Mountains in the back are in the "Raising Sun" portion of the park and the road goes up to Logan Pass.



 This little peak is right across from Connie's camp spot.

This one shows the fire that they had a couple of years ago. 
The right side of the lake burned then.






 The white stalks are Bear Grass which was just blooming at the higher altitudes.



This is the tunnel on the East Side of the pass







I did not do any videos of the "Going to the Sun Road", but it is pretty intimidating if you don't know where your tires actually contact the road. My first trip up the mountain I followed a bus and he took his share of the road. I followed close behind and took advantage of the berth he made. After the first trip up, it was a bit like the back roads of WVa without the 1000 foot drop off. There were some rocks that jutted out in the road a bit and some of them were wearing a bit of polish on them.