In keeping with my new tradition of keeping you all up to date on our actual location: Today is Thursday, Sept 4th and we are spending the day today and tonight in Seattle. We plan to stay tomorrow night as well as I was able to get tickets to the Mariners / Yankees game for tomorrow night at 7pm.
8/29/08
We woke up this morning in Kalispell MT and we were just glad to have woken up once again...it was very cold again last night. Of course that's what happens when you sleep NEXT to the brand new / beautiful Holiday Inn Express instead of INSIDE the brand new / beautiful Holiday Inn Express. We really didn't intend to go parking lot slumming last night. It's just that it got to be very late by the time we hit Kalispell and we were just both very hungry and tired... maybe even a little crabby by this point!! Anyway, we just needed to sleep and we decided that we could tough it out tonight. I slept pretty poorly and Bambi slept even worse. I woke up to find that she had spent 1/2 the night sleeping in the truck again. Then and there, we decided that if we're going to stay on the road, we need to find a place to stop a little earlier in the evening and preferably with electricity so we can run our heater!!
Anyway... we actually went inside the Holiday Inn to "borrow" their electric plug and WiFi so that we could check some emails... we also borrowed some heat which felt great. Now I'll admit... a part of me wanted to "borrow" some of that awesome looking continental breakfast they had going on. I've never seen anything like it... a veritble smorgasbord of french toast, biscuits and gravy (yeah, you know I loves me some biscuits and gravy!!), bacon, sausage, cereal, and fruit (if you're into that sort of thing). But, you'll all be proud to know that the code of ethics when it comes to supermarket (or hotel parking lot) slumming says it's ok to "borrow" WiFi, but we don't steal breakfast. I'll have to admit though, it was tempting to just try a little taste. But NO.
So, off we went. We were hungry though, so we went over to a Great Harvest Bread Company and had some breakfast rolls in Kalispell. Then it was off to Whitefish. Whitefish is a really cool town that I believe I talked about in yesterdays blog. Bambi and I spent an hour or two just cruising the downtown shops. We had to get going to make it to Glacier but there was a lot of Whitefish we hadn't seen yet like the lake and the ski resort area. I'm sure that the area would be a lot of fun to vacation in both Summer and Winter time.
We finally drove over the Glacier area and by the time we got to the Glacier West Gate, we were both just tired. Neither one of us had slept much and we were both just feeling it from the fact that we'd been driving so much the last day or two. So, we pulled into a nice parking lot in West Glacier... and took a nap. Oh, it was a glorious nap too. Bambi stayed in the truck with the windows rolled up, sun streaming in, so that she could get really warm. I crawled back in the trailer and left the door open with the mountain breeze blowing through... it was great!!
After a nice little power nap, we decided to just stay right there and have some lunch that we had packed along... yep PB&J. You know, I'm really actually liking the PB&J thing. Being now well fed, and well rested, we felt like a whole new day had dawned and we were ready to hit the hiking trails. And hit them we did. It wasn't but a few miles into Glacier and we saw a great hiking trail called "Trail of the Cedars". This was truly a beautiful hike. It starts with a little jaunt to Avalanche falls which is the narrow little canyon falls that you'll see in the picture. The water was really rushing through this little narrow slit in the rock walls and made a beautiful sound as it did. The trail kept going on though, and so did we. We checked the hiking sign posted at the falls and it said "Avalanche Lake - 2 miles" Little did we know that the 2 miles was all uphill. As we got going, we talked to some people coming down and just asked about the lake and they said, you've got to go, it is so worth it. They were right.
Hiking the Trail of the Cedars is like hiking in 2-3 completely different ecosystems. At the bottom, there is the crashing river and the ground around us was just completely covered in vegitation such as ferns and mosses - like the rainforest in Brazil. Then, as we climbed higher, we saw that the canopy of the trees was completely covering us and very little to no sunlight was getting through which made the ground cover very sparse. Here we saw almost strictly lodge pole pines. In some areas, there were trees that had fallen over in the wind and taken up huge areas of dirt with them. Then, as we neared the top, the trees cleared and it revealed a mountain lake with huge cascading waterfalls all around it. It was like a scene from an alpine adventure film. Absolutely beautiful. When we walked down to the lake, we looked at the surrounding mountains which were draining into the lake and there were at least six different waterfalls. The sign said that the falls are dropping some 2000 feet from the mountains into the lake valley we were standing in. It's as if God said, here, see what I can do. I can take something as simple as water and turn it into one of the most beautiful sights you've ever seen. Just awesome.
Again, instead of hiking the 2 miles back down to the truck, we decided to make a challenge of it and ran most of the way back. It was downhill but still enough to burn off the PB&J we'd had earlier ( I knew I should have borrowed some Biscuits and Gravy from the hotel!!). We got back into the truck and headed on with the drive through Glacier. We finally reached a road called "Going to the Sun" road. If you've never been there, this is the perfect name for this road as it twists and turns back and forth all the way up to the continental divide. The road is very narrow!!!! There are parts where you can't meet another car and there is no shoulder and no guard rail. This is why no trailers are allowed on the road, we had to leave ours near the entrance to the park in a big parking lot they have there. Actually, the road is only even open for a few months out of the year because it is usually covered in snow. At one station, we learned that in places, as much as 90 feet of snow can cover the road and when spring comes, it takes a couple of months to plow the road open. There was one point where we were on a sharp and very narrow switchback where you could litterally look out the passenger window and look straight down like 500 feet. I think that in this case, the road should be renamed the "I'm going to see Jesus" road. If you go off the edge, that's who you'd see next.
Luckily, I'm quite an accomplished driver... just ask any of my youth group kids who got to ride to Wal-Mart with me last year to go Christmas shopping for our community outreach night. As we were heading back to the upper room to wrap gifts, one of the kids just had to egg me on by saying, "hey Ross, can this truck even do a 360 on the snow???" Naturally, I had to demonstrate.
Anyway, we finally made it up the mountain and over the continental divide. We got out to take some pictrues and the temperature was notably different from where we had started... in the picture, you'll see Bambi has her hood up. She stayed out there just long enough to look over the edge, take a picture with me and then sprint back to the truck to turn on the heater. Not me... I had to take some time to spit over the railing!! Yep, I'm still 12.
We decided to drive just a little further before turning back around to go back and get our trailer. Because the road to the sun is the only road across Glacier NP and no trailers are allowed, we had to go back and stay the night at West Glacier and then drive around the South side of the park the next day. Anyway, we were about to turn around when we saw a young girl standing on the side of the road. she was not dressed too well (only jeans,a light jacket and a backpack) and Bambi looked at her and said, "Oh, she's got to be freezing!!" She was hitchiking, so we stopped and picked her up. She was just a little thing and after my throwdown with the criminal in CDA the day before, I knew if she got out of hand, I could handle myself. Turns out she was from Taiwan. She was just here in the States for the summer to work at the park. She was a really nice young lady and it turns out she was hiking and missed the last shuttle to where she works. So Bambi and I decided to just drive her there since it wasn't too far out of our way and like I said, it was getting dark and getting very cold!
We turned around and headed back down the mountain pass and got back to West Glacier just in time to grab some supper at a cafe before it closed for the night. Then we headed back in the direction of Whitefish and found an RV park that is still to this time, the nicest place we've stayed. When we got there, the lights were all turned off but a sign hung on the front door of the office that said, after office is closed, ring bell for service. If it's after 10pm, it better be an emergency! I glanced at my watch, only 9:55 - so I rang the bell. The guy came down in his shorts and t-shirt - you could tell he had been sleeping and I thought he'd be pretty mad at me. Actually, we was really cool about it. Probably one of the most friendly guys we've come across so far. At one point, Bambi said it was taking me so long in there, she almost called for help... only her cell phone wasn't getting very good reception. Anyway, the guy was great and I was probably in there for a half hour or so just shootin' the breeze with him. He fixed us up with a really nice site and gave us access to the lounge which had WiFi and cable tv which was cool since I haven't seen tv in 2 weeks... did you know there is an election going 0n in this country???
Anyway, we had a great night there and if you are ever in West Glacier MT - just East of Whitefish, go ahead and check out North American RV park. They'll treat you right.
No comments:
Post a Comment