Rain rain go away, come again another....summer....

Hello from Glacier N.P.

Last night we got into Glacier N.P. after a hectic day of changing flats, plugging flats, buying tires and all that jazz, so we decided to splurge and spend the $10 on a campsite in Glacier. We found the Cutbank campground which is a primitive campground, meaning no running water and such. It seemed to suit our needs with the views. The only thing was the weather was pretty wet and loud. One local we talked to at a gas station told us its the worst weather she's seen here in years! The hail certainly caught us by surprise yesterday (videos on fb). So we stayed in the van for the night, keeping warm and dry and made ourselves some pancakes…again…we all decided no more pancakes for a while. We fell asleep to a movie, Touching The Void, which Andrew hadn't seen but is a must watch! It's a movie that proves we can do things we never believed we could if we just have the will.

This morning we ate some cereal for breakfast and then headed off into the park to drive The Going to The Sun Road. It's the main road through Glacier N.P. and is a marvel of engineering; the road cuts right along the sides of mountains with hairpin turns and serious inclines. It actually takes the park months to clear the road of snow, having to plow over 18 feet of snow off the roadway, consequently the road was not open completely yet so we could only drive 18 of the 50 miles, but they expect to have it open completely in 3 days. The views are absolutely unbeatable. It's similar to the grand canyon in that you can see pictures but they never do it justice. The road overlooks huge peaks with dozens of icy waterfalls, all the while driving along huge snowbanks…even in summer. We even got to see Jackson Glacier, one of the 26 remaining glaciers not expected to be around much past 2030.

Driving up the road we saw a couple other vanagons who of course gave us the "vanagon wave", it's like the jeep wave except usually it's done with more excitement and often a peace sign and even honking of the horn :) We stopped at a view point along the road to take some pics and breath it all in. To our surprise a bald eagle graced us with his presence, it was gliding maybe 40 or 50 feet about us! We also saw some bighorn sheep on some steep cliffs above us.

On the way back down the road we noticed some cars pulled off and we pulled over too and got a glimpse of our first GRIZZLY on the trip. It was just a yearling, not a small cub but definitely not full grown, so mamma was somewhere nearby for sure. Didn't seem to deter the other people in front of us from getting out of their car 30 yards from the bear and snapping pictures…

After we got off the road we went back through the small town of Kiowa on our way to West Glacier where we plan to sleep for the night. We stopped at a laundry mat and spent a few hoursdoing laundry. While the laundry was cookin we meandered into a wooden spoon shop,(thesprialspoon.com), with all hand carved spoons, absolutely gorgeous work. We chatted with the owner for a bit, grabbed a coffee next door and a brownie and waited for the laundry to get done. Now we are on our way to West Glacier, where we will find a campsite and probably stay inside to keep dry. We just saw an elk on the side of the road while I was typing this and managed to throw the computer down, grab the camera and get a few shots. 

Anyway, cross your fingers for good weather so we can do some fishing, we are supposed to get snow and sleet and thunder for the next two days sooooo….but we can't complain, we are kinda living the dream!

-Adam

Eagle is in center of photograph if you enlarge