Many Glacier and Bears

Saturday August 22, 2015   Day 25     Glacier National Park, Two Medicine Campground, site 99  3^rd day

Woke up to a beautiful, bright, sunny day.  Clear skies.  Quite a bit different from last night’s storms.  The tops of the surrounding mountains had snow on them.  What a pretty site.  Went down to 37^o last night as it does every night, it seems, since the Tetons.  Our refrigerator is 35^o. The smoke seems to have cleared.  It is the least hazy we’ve seen since the Tetons.  Yesterday I said it was the smokiest.

Photo taken yesterday morning with smoke haze.

 

Photo taken this morning after last night's rain.

 

We were excited to go out into the cold to capture some pictures of the mountains with snow on them.

Looking south.

Looking west over Pray Lake.  A clear

morning with new snow on the peaks.

 

Looking up at the new snow on Rising Wolf Mountain.

 

What a beautiful place to camp!

 

I promised Marsha I would take her to the East Glacier Lodge in East Glacier Park, just outside the park on the Blackfoot Reservation.  We had breakfast there last year before we went on the Road to the Sun Tour.  So if you want to see what the lodge looks like, you have to look at last year’s blog.  Or maybe this picture:

 

East Glacier Lodge from the inside.

We also took advantage of a 4G signal in town.  Sat in a parking lot behind the train station with my computer on my lap.  Posted two blogs for your enjoyment.  It took about an hour to put it together.  The drafts were already written.  Just had to decided where and what pictures to upload.  The fast connection made it go faster than some.  At Gros Ventre, each photo took about 3 or 4 minutes to upload.  While we were working on the blogs, Amtrak made a stop and some Union Pacific freight trains went by. 

Went to the Cenex station in town for some ice and then found a laundromat to do our laundry tomorrow.

Our plan today was to take a ride up the east side of the Park to the Many Glacier area.  We were there last year, but never went to the campground to check it out.  Last year we had just had lunch at the Many Glacier Lodge and left.  It is a very pretty area, but much more crowded than Two Medicine area.  The ride there is gorgeous mountain scenery.  Today the mountains were covered with snow from last night’s storm. 

 

 

 

There is a narrow unpaved road from the main highway, US-89, that follows the North Cut Bank Creek to Cut Bank Campground.  A small campground mostly for tenters.  The road goes about 6 miles before you cross a cattle guard that indicates the park boundary.  Today there was a gate across it because the campground is closed due to fires.  We knew that going in, that the campground was closed, but I didn’t know the road to it would be.  We didn’t mind.  We enjoy driving down back, bumpy roads into wilderness.   We turned around and went back to the main highway.  The smoke in this area was very thick.  As we were driving along the road, I pointed out to Marsha the very unusual cloud formations up ahead.  As we got closer we realized that we were looking at the tops of snow covered mountains.  The smoke blocked out the mountains, but not the snow, so they looked like suspended clouds.

It wasn't until we got closer that we could make out the mountains.

Next, we passed through the St. Mary’s area, which is the eastern terminus of the Going to the Sun road.  Continuing north on US-89 takes us to the Many Glacier cutoff at the settlement of Babb, Montana.   Most of this whole ride takes us through Blackfoot land.  It is all open range and we frequently see cattle on the road or beside it.  Near Cut Bank there were horses standing around near the road.

Along the Many Glacier cutoff, we saw a cinnamon colored black bear with its black cub.  Happened to be right near a pull out and we got some pictures.  Glad to show you some pictures of some wildlife instead of cows!

This is a brown black bear.

Mother and child crossing the road.

At Many Glacier we checked out the campground, which was completely full.  It was set in a nice forest of conifer, but was very crowded.  Packed in quite close.  The sites are smaller, too.  We like Two Medicine Campground much better.  On the way back out, we were amazed at the trail head parking for the Grinnel Glacier Trailhead.  It overflowed onto the sides of the road.  Must be a very popular hike.  I wonder how many finish it.  It is a strenuous 11-mile (round trip) hike to the Grinnel Glacier.  The only glacier in the Park that you can day hike to.

We drove back to the campground, not stopping.  We went through a lot of curves and switchbacks.  The speed limit varies between 70 mph on the straights and 15 mph on some of the switchback curves.  It is beautiful scenery on any road in the Glacier National Park region.

 

When turning onto Two Medicine Road we saw another black bear and cub, by the side of the road feeding on berries.  We stopped and took some pictures.  Don’t have any of the cub.  It was hidden in the bushes.  The mother walked to the other side of the road, but the cub stayed in bushes.  It later joined the mom across the road but was behind the truck and couldn’t get a shot.  Here’s some pics.

Digging in the dirt for bugs or roots.

 

Back at the campground, used up the last of the Triscuts.  They sold some at the General Store, but wanted $6.50 for a regular size box.  We’ll have to get back to a real town with a real grocery store to get some new groceries. 

Got the grill fired up but still had trouble keeping it going.  The wind wasn’t bad either.  I took the grate off and used one of Marsha’s sewing needles to check that the holes in the firetube were clear.  A lot of them weren’t.  That seem to do the trick and I was able to bake some potatoes and make some round steaks.

At 07:30 we attended the evening program.  Tonight it was Native Talks which was a talk by a Blackfoot native.  His talk was about a school that was set up to teach the young ones their native language.  They are in danger of losing their language.  There are only 150 speakers left and they are all over 75 years old.  It was very a very interesting talk.  The Native America Speaks program is over thirty years old at Glacier and a lot of the other parks have now adopted the same program.

 

The end of another wonderful day at Glacier National Park.