We spent the majority of the day driving. Glacier National Park is a long ways from home! I was so excited to see this park as, once again, I had never been here. I've seen pictures and it all looks so amazing and magical.
We arrived late in the day so there was not much to see, really. Grabbed one of the last remaining campsites in a busy, congested campground. Let me digress for a moment: I hate this form of camping and it usually makes one or both of us grumpy. Its not that I don't love people and crowds. They don't usually bother me much. I'm a stickler for the rules and I go to bed as early as an old person. I'm not talking about the 50, 60 and 70 year old old people I know who can stay up until 2 am without a problem. I'm talking the 80 and beyond who like to go to sleep by 8 or 9pm at the latest. That's me.
When we arrive at the campsite there is an option to buy firewood for $6 or 7 dollars. I know its ridiculous, which is why I'm not buying the wood for a fire: I will not be having a fire. When I hear people late at night scrambling for wood near their campsite and breaking it in to useable pieces, I quietly light up with anger. "You're not supposed to do that!" I scream, but its in my head so as not to start a conflict. Grr.
The smoke from the fire bugs me. Maybe I'm allergic, or maybe you're just not supposed to breathe that stuff in. The smell irritates me as well because it sticks with you for days. It seemed that on this particular night, everyone around us was having a fire. The couple across the way was playing a dice rolling game late into the dark hour. Grr.
I really don't mean to be a snob about it, but its probably best not to include me in your plans to go camping in a campground. I'm more a fan of the isolated spot you can find by either 4 wheeling or backpacking in. No fires, no people, no crying babies, no law breakers searching for wood, and no loud noisy air dryers in a bathroom going off at all hours of the night.
The next morning we wake early and tear down our camp. I'm worried about making too much noise until I remind myself how noisy and unconcerned all our neighbors were last night. Two wrongs don't make a right, though...
 |
| Lost (Found!) Lake. To swim or not to swim? |
Since coming off the Colorado Trail, I have not been hiking once. My foot has been relatively pain free for a while now so we figured it was time to do a 3 mile round trip hike to an overlook of lost lake. "It's been found, why not call it 'Found Lake'" David says. We kind of rocked it on the 1.5 mile uphill portion to get to the overlook, passing a lot of people and not taking any breaks. He convinced me and I reluctantly followed him down to the lake, which was all downhill, and got steep towards the end. This made the total distance 6 miles round trip. At the bottom I toyed around with the idea of going swimming. It was beautiful, clear glacier fed water. I finally resolved that I could swim in my undergarments when other people arrived. I thought about it again and decided not to until realizing, I'll likely never see these people again! Just then, as if a sign from above, the clouds rolled in and it got cold. I had no towel with me. Dang it. As fun as it sounded, hypothermia just wasn't worth it.
The path uphill back to the overlook was hard for me. I was out of breath but determined to make it up. I had to stop on several occasions for a short break. Once we got to the overlook and the path returned to boardwalk and stairs, we jogged or ran down most of it. At the end, my foot was a little stiff but nothing too terrible has happened to it since. I think I'm OK to keep hiking short distances!!!
This is all we did in Glacier. There were fires everywhere surrounding Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon. It was a smokey mess, so I'm impressed I was able to get even a few good pictures.
 |
| Add caption |
Border crossing was fun. It all seemed to be going well until they asked the firearm/mace/alcohol question. No, no and no. They wanted us to pull over and come inside. They pulled our records or whatever they do and determined they wanted to search our car. On second thought, and apparently a little too late, I remembered that I may or may not have put the mace back in my car upon returning home from D.C.. They went through EVERYTHING and took all my carefully packed bags out of the car. They couldn't figure out how to put things back and after finding the mace kind of said, "Usually we put things back but since we found this, and, yeah, you have so much stuff, we figured you could do it". It was so weird to watch them handle our stuff. Part of me was mortified, the other part laughing (I have no idea why, though). There were two other guys, apparently brothers, in the room with us who might experience the same fate as us. They were not happy, they were not laughing, and they were completely serious and pissed. We asked them where in Canada they were headed and they literally pointed to a sign out the window that said, "Welcome to Alberta, Canada!". Was it too late to tell them you changed your mind, I wondered? All this, to just simply go across the border. I felt sorry for them.
 |
| Canadian Customs |
We headed out for Banff National Park and arrived in the evening to another campground. This time, we were able to get a spot in their "smoke free" section. Much, much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment