FIRE AND ICE
For this year’s trip,
Christy and I decided to visit Glacier National Park, in Montana, and the North
Cascades, in Washington. Our motivation
was to visit the largest concentration of glaciers remaining in the contiguous
United States. As you probably know,
our glaciers are melting rapidly.
Scientists predict that Glacier National Park’s glaciers will completely
disappear in the next 20 years. Each
year, the ones that remain dwindle. Our
intention was to see them while we still could.
Ironically, the first part
of our trip had more to do with fire than ice.
When we arrived in Glacier, there were 14 major wildfires burning in
western Montana. Although there weren’t
any fires inside the park, smoke drifting in from other areas created difficulties. We were lucky though, as we spent most of
our time on the east side of the park.
Most of the smoke stayed on the west side, blocked by the high peaks of
the continental divide. Although we
were able to avoid the worst of the smoke, the tragedy of the fires still
impacted our memories from the trip.
I’ll never forget driving within 200 yards of a raging fire, seeing it
race through dry grass towards a handful of homes.
We started our trip by
flying from Charlotte to Seattle. I
guess we took a roundabout approach, as Seattle isn’t exactly on the way to
Montana. Flying into Seattle is a lot
cheaper than any of the towns in western Montana though. Plus, going to Seattle gave us the
opportunity to visit our friends, Brian and Jill, and their children, Kaitlyn
and Izzy. Although I had visited them a
couple of times since they moved to Bainbridge Island, Christy hadn’t seen them
since our wedding. Visiting with them
turned out to be one of the best parts of our trip.
We flew into Seattle on Saturday. We picked up our rental car from Thrifty,
who gave us a free upgrade from a compact to a Jeep Liberty. This was a pleasant surprise, and best of
all, it came with Sirius satellite radio.
After a brief stop at REI for supplies, we headed for the ferry, which
we just missed. Missing ferries turned
out to be another theme for the trip.
We were forced to kill an hour at the dock, which we spent enjoying Mac
and Jack’s draft beer. It was a nice
afternoon, so I guess missing that ferry wasn’t so bad after all.
We spent the next day and a
half enjoying Brian and Jill’s hospitality.
On Sunday, we abandoned our plans to drive out to the coast. After one day of travel, and with another
coming up, we were dissuaded by the 7 hour round-trip drive. Instead, we joined Brian, Jill, and the
family for an afternoon cookout at Matt’s place. I’d met Matt a few weeks earlier, when I was in town on a
business trip. That Saturday, Matt
joined Brian and I for a hike to Marmot Pass and Buckhorn Mountain, in the
Olympic National Forest. It was a great
hike, and I was looking forward to spending the afternoon with Matt and his
family.
We had a great time, eating
burgers, drinking beer, and playing croquet.
The afternoon festivities helped us forget about our morning misery at
Albertsons. We’d stopped there to pick
up the majority of the groceries we’d need for our month-long trip. We rang up a tab of $318, which I’m pretty
sure is some kind of a record.
GOING TO THE SUN
We were up early the next
morning for the long drive to Montana.
We caught the 6:20 ferry (one of the few we didn’t miss) across Puget
Sound. Unfortunately, morning fog
eliminated any views of Mount Rainier and the Cascades. It also obscured the sun rising in the east,
which probably made the beginning of the drive more pleasant. The low clouds continued all the way to the
crest of the Cascades. Once we crossed
the pass, the change was almost instantaneous.
Suddenly the sun was out, and the sky was a cloudless blue.
The drive from there was
long, but at least it was occasionally entertaining. First, we stopped at what must be the worst rest area in the
country. Not far beyond the pass, we
saw a car in the median, completely flipped over. How did that happen? A
few miles later, we passed a truck lying on its side. Later, while eating lunch at Perkins in Spokane, we watched a
large RV pull out of a shopping center parking lot. The driver took a bad angle, and took out a whole row of
shrubbery. Who was driving that thing,
Robin Williams?
Other highlights of the
drive included an impressive bridge spanning the Columbia River. Just beyond, we passed through the town of
George, Washington. I guess somebody
had to name their town that. It was
along this stretch that we caught a chip in the windshield of the rental
car. Luckily, Thrifty failed to notice
it when we turned the car back in.
After Spokane, we drove
through a narrow stretch of Idaho, passing a beautiful lake along the way. A few minutes later, we reached Montana. We
stopped at the welcome center (which is 30 minutes down the road), and chatted
with the friendly folks there. We
picked up a free highway map, and got updated on the latest fire information. From there, we headed north, past Flathead
Lake, towards Kalispell. I was looking
forward to checking out the scenery along the lake, which is the largest
natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, smoke from the Brush Creek fire filled the valley,
and we could barely see the lake, never mind the mountains to the east. We did spot a Coyote along this stretch of
highway though.
The smoke accompanied us all
the way to the west entrance to Glacier National Park. We
stopped at the visitor center there, and paid a brief visit to Lake
McDonald. Unfortunately, the
ever-present smoke continued to limit the view. We continued up Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass. Just beyond, we spotted several Bighorn
Sheep. We pulled off a respectful
distance to watch them. Then, a touron
whipped over to the side of the road, very nearly hitting one of them. The sheep scattered, and our first wildlife
sighting in the park ended abruptly.
We followed the road down
into the east side of the park, which was largely free of smoke. This was a huge relief, as we were worried
that it might ruin our trip. We reached the St. Mary campground, where we
had reservations for the night. The
campground was almost full, but we still found a decent site in a meadow
complete with a few aspen trees. It was
getting late, so we drove into “town” for dinner. A few miles up highway 89 we found the Two Sisters
restaurant. We each had chicken
sandwiches, which were quite good.
Afterwards, we headed back to camp, where we relaxed after a long day in
the car.
Back to Montana
Back to Hiking and Backpacking Trip Reports
Please remember to Leave No Trace!