Thursday September 6, 2001

Woke up and finished reading John Steele Gordon's book, Hamilton's Blessing, subtitled The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.  I so admire Gordon's ability to make history come alive, to write non-fiction and make it eminently readable.  I mean, is there a drier subject than our national debt, but this guy has a way of making even this interesting.  What a gift.

We began our easterly drive through Glacier on the "Going-to-the-Sun" road.  It was very foggy, or maybe it was the smoke from the fires in the northwest section.  We couldn't quite decide.  We stopped alongside Lake McDonald while Carol tested the water - cold!  Took a walk thru the woods on a trail named John's Lake Loop, a Loop advertised as a half mile.  This Loop must have been charted by a blind man because we continued for a about a mile and a half, across the main road, to a stream.  Very nice, but "Where's the Loop" Jean kept complaining.

When we were about five minutes into the woods, we passed three cowboys on horseback trailing two new colts.  My guess is that they were giving them experience as trail horses, and intended to use them in the coming months to guide trips into the Glacier wilderness.  I would gladly have offered to help them with this adventure, but I suspect they didn't see it as much of an adventure as I did.  Funny, one man's adventure is another man's job.

We took our picture on the bridge over the stream, one of Jean in the woods, and passed a warning not to take a trail spur because bears had been sighted.  That was enough of a warning for the four of us.  We walked back along the "Going-to-the-Sun" road, which isn't advisable since there are no shoulders and many curves.  Additionally, this is the only road thru Glacier, so it's fairly busy.

Speaking of busy, we planned this trip for the two weeks after Labor Day primarily for two reasons:  the kids would be back in school and hence the crowds would be less, and the weather should still be somewhat mild.  We turned out to be exactly right on both counts.  We hit a couple of places which were closed as of Labor Day, but that wasn't a major problem.  We proved to be quite perspicacious.

We lunched at the Lake Lodge on McDonald Lake.  Our bus boy was on an exchange-type of program from Poland.  I tried to engage our waiter in conversation.  He was from Montana, and I thought we could gain some insight from a native of Montana.  Wrong again, tourist breath.  He seemed like a real nice kid, but it was quickly obvious he didn't want to participate in our learning program.  We wondered if he was a little embarrassed being one of the only kids working in the place from not only this country, but from Montana.  

At the main desk of the Lodge Paul and I stopped and made reservations for the night at Many Glacier, the other Lodge in the Park.  We dealt with a young man named Kris who was extremely personable.  He was a serious hockey fan and had attended Texas A & M University.  Worked for Dell for a while but was caught up in their recent layoffs.  A friend of his won a trip at Dell to England and France, so he accompanied her for a two-week vacation.  What a neat guy.  He's bounced around a bit since graduating from college, but I'll bet this kid winds up on his feet.  His first love is photography, and he's already had a picture published in the magazine, Country.

We drove a ways, then stopped and hiked around the Trail of the Cedars.  We discussed choreography on the walk to make noise to keep the bears at bay.  (It's quite possible that as a result, there are a few bears in Glacier who are potential challenge dancers.)  In the parking lot when we returned, we walked thru the difference between 

Stretch, 3 x 1 Turn to a Line

and

3 x 1, Stretch, Turn to a Line

Glacier is a very vertical park, as opposed to Yellowstone which has more African-style "savannahs", so the ability to see wildlife in Glacier is more limited, especially from a car.  We did see a Mountain Goat, perched majestically on a rock high above the road, but little else that day.  

We passed St. Mary Lake, exited the Park, and drove north to the thriving metropolis of Babb.  It's so small that both of the Town Limit signs are back-to-back.  A few hundred feet out of town, after turning around, we had to wait while a couple of cowboys were herding cattle across the road from one pasture to another.  It was all I could do to stay in the car and not join - like they needed my help.

We again entered the Park and drove along the only other road in the Park to Many Glacier Lodge.  Large, rustic, but very nice in a Hunting Lodge kind of decor.  We had possibly the smallest hotel room we've ever seen, but it's lack of size and amenities was balanced by a high price, $110 a night.  The sink was in the room, (yes, we did have our own bathroom, sans a sink) with a separate handle for the hot and cold water - I really hate that!  The lobby was huge, with the focal point being a large fireplace with chairs all around it.  Every time we entered it, there were many guests sitting around and talking - I'm guessing they didn't want to stay in those tiny rooms!   I jest, but the Lodge was really neat and quaint, the sleeping rooms notwithstanding.

We ate dinner in their dining room, an enormous room with the war flags of the Swiss Canons hanging from the ceiling.  

(When I say "war flags", I'm not making this up, but quoting from some literature we were given.  Does it strike anyone as odd that a country that's never been to war has "war flags"?)  

Our waiter was Oktee, a young man from Poland who was studying Marketing Management in Warsaw.  He spent the first four days on his sojourn in America sightseeing in New York City - nothing like Manhattan to give a visitor a quick glimpse of a typical American city, right?  

In a meeting room in the basement of the Lodge, a Ranger gave a slide show titled "Mammals of Glacier".  We sat in back, and I listened intently to every word he said . . .  well . . .  actually, I slept thru most of it.  However, I stayed awake long enough to learn that:

We spent a little time in the lobby - man, what a neat place.  So masculine.  It had a real sense of community with so many people lounging around talking and reading, but alas, we were all pretty tired.  We went to Galburt's room to see the digital pictures Paul had taken shown on his laptop, a ritual we would enjoy most nights on the trip.