Glacier Park & Whitefish, Mt.

Thur - July 8th

These two fawns were in the next door neighbor's yard while we were camped in our daughter's driveway in Helena. Their mother was nowhere around, but I saw her walk by with them a couple of days later. Deer are a common neighborhood sight everyday.

This is a view as we were approaching Glacier National Park in the Flathead National Forest area.

Another view along the way. We saw these mustard fields occasionally from Williston to Helena, but there were lots of them in this area. Very colorful.

Great scenery in Glacier Park. Hard to take a bad picture. I took about 400 pictures.

Glacier National Park, "Crown of the Continent", is 1.2 million acres of shining mountain ranges, deep valleys and lakes carved by prehistoric ice rivers. It has glistening glaciers, alpine meadows, dense forests, waterfalls and over 200 sparkling lakes. It is the third largest national park in the lower 48 states. It has 936 miles of rivers and streams, over 700 miles of trails and very few miles of roads. We took the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a 52 mile scenic highway that crosses the Continental Divide at Logan's Pass 6,646 feet.

You can take a tour thru the park in these vintage Red Buses that were purchased from 1936 to 1939. They are called "Jammer Buses" because of the way the drivers always jammed the gears when shifting on the rugged mountain highways. They have been recently refurbished by Ford and use propane power for the park's cleaner future. There are also free bus shuttles to limit the number of cars in the park.

Melting snow and ice transforms itself from a quiet trickle to a thundering stream into a tranquil lake.

We hiked the Sunrift Gorge Trail to the bottom to see Baring Falls. It is a staight, steep canyon cut thru bedrock, formed by a small stream cut thru a natural break in the rock.

In 1850 there were 150 glaciers. Now 26 are left. Global warming scientists say they will all be gone by 2030. An increase in hot summer days (90 and over) and a decrease in the number of days of frost have resulted in larger and more severe wildfires. Damage from pine beetles and root diseases has also increased since the trees are weakened from drought.

This is at Logan's Pass showing the first part of the mile and a half hike I made up the snowy mountain to see Hidden Lake and mountain goats, Glacier's official symbol. It was 61 degrees at the pass, but 83 down below at the river.

When I reached my destination, there were many snowboarding tracks way above me, so they were hiking a long ways to ride down on their boards. I wished I had brought my skis with, so I could ski back down. I met a lady coming down on her skis.

I had no idea I would get to see mountain goats up close like this.

There were more on a little rim just above the trail, and still more way up above.

View of Hidden Lake. It was very slippery going back downhill in the melting, slushy snow.

Another view along the trail down.

Another view of Hidden Lake.

This is looking back at Logan's Pass. I was hiking in the snowy area at the base of the peak on the far right. Someone told us that the pass was higher than any of the mountains in the Appalachians.

St. Mary's Valley near the end of our 52 mile drive. Waterton Lakes Park just over the border in Canada was established in 1895 and Glacier in 1910. Their adjoining locations led to the world's first International Peace Park in 1932. You can take Historic Boat Tours from one park to the other, but you must have your passport. The boat docks below the north face of Mt. Cleveland, the highest cliff wall in the continental U.S. You can also take boat tours on Lake McDonald in Glacier. It is a 10 mile long, u-shaped lake formed by a melted glacier.

This is an osprey in it's nest at the St. Mary's shuttle stop at the end of the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

There are wildflowers everywhere. Amazing considering the snow has only been gone a few weeks.

Views of St. Mary's River. It is only two miles long and then flows into Flathead River, which flows right by our campground outside of the park and eventually into Flathead Lake.

View of Jackson Glacier.

More wildflowers.

Sunrift Gorge with flowers growing out of the rock walls.

Seems like good advice. Someone should have told me about 37 years ago.

Did you know grizzly bears gain several hundred pounds every summer eating grass, roots and berries? When huckleberries are in season they will eat as many as 100,000 berries a day. Can you imagine picking that many berries? The huckleberry shakes are awesome!

Here we are camped at Spruce Park RV Park just east of Kalispell on the Flathead River. We stayed here three nights. What a beautiful view. I even got a lesson on casting from an old duffer who was fly fishing off shore.

View from our campground toward Glacier.

Whitefish Mountain Ski Resort.

Amtrak stops at Whitefish.

Whitefish Lake.

On our way over from Helena, we took Hwy. 141 at Avon just past Mc Donald's Pass 6320'. Then we took Hwy 200 just west of Lincoln (home of the unibomber) and Hwy. 83 north to Kalispell.

Heading for Idaho,
Tarra

Devils Lake & Peace Garden to NE Montana

Sat - June 19th - Tue - June 22nd

We stayed over an extra day at Devils Lake due to strong winds that were supposed to die down by the next morning. As we started to leave the casino parking lot, John commented that it looked like traffic was moving pretty slow. I said it was probably because the highway looked like it might be a little wet from the spray that the wind was washing up on the road. Oh yeah, was I right and then some!

I wasn't kidding about how high the lake is. It was actually washing the paved shoulder away and throwing huge rocks and logs up on the road.

The snow plow was going back and forth just pushing the rocks and debris back into the lake, but it was a losing battle.

And it rained several more times the next few days after this. Hwy. 2, the main highway that we were headed to from here, was underwater in places a couple days after this. There were 50 mph wind gusts and, believe it or not, just a few miles down the road we met three cross country bikers loaded down with saddle bags and one pulling a trailer.

It wasn't much better at the peace gardens. They had 21 straight days of rain earlier and it rained several more days while we were in the area. It was a wet, soggy mess with swarms of mosquitos. This is a shot of the 120 foot Peace Towers. There is a double tower on each side of the border symbolizing people from four corners of the earth coming together to form two similar nations with a common base of democracy and beliefs.

The International Peace Gardens is a 2,339 acre garden with woodland walkways and two pristine lakes. It was dedicated in 1932. The last few years they have been doing lots of maintainance work on the buildings and drainage systems and adding lots of new gardens, trees and buildings, including a new interpretive center and conservatory. It should be really nice to visit in the next year or two with all the new improvements.

There is a little marker on the photo above that marks the boundary between the towers and the countries. This photo shows two more markers and if you zoom in, you will see there is a cutout all the way through the forest right on the border between Canada and the U.S.

This Old Historic Lodge was the first building built here by the CCC in the 1930's. It has recently been completely refurbished to it's original state and it's beautiful.

This is the Ducks Unlimited Dam on the Peace Garden Lake overflowing from all the rain, and we had more rain that night. I'm starting to feel like a duck.

This is the memorial at the North American Game Warden Museum dedicated to all the game wardens who have lost their lives in the line of duty. Each state and province has a plaque on the stones with names of those who have died. The markers on the side are for others who have passed away. Inside the building, all of the animal exhibits have been confiscated from hunters who have broken hunting or customs laws, along with stories of what they did or how they were caught.

This is an 18 foot clock made of flowers.

This was a touching little garden dedicated to children.

This is one of the new additions to the gardens. They are steel girders from 911 and there will be a garden planned around them.

They have athletic camps and music camps here for kids during the summers. We went to a concert put on by the music faculty members and it was excellent.

The gardens are in the Turtle Mountains. Several towns have turtle statues in both countries, but Dunseith claims to have the W'eel Turtle. It is made out of wheel rims. Dunseith is the Gateway to the Turtle Mountains and the International Peace Gardens.

Moving on we stopped at Rugby, the Geographical Center of North America, or so they claim. I've been told the exact center is a few miles away.

We rode bike around town and saw a few interesting things. This house is next to an old church that is now a Victorian Dress Museum. It was closed for the day.

This is three houses on one block that have been joined together and they are now a funeral home.

Just down the block is the 30 foot Niewochner Bell Tower containing 15 bells in front of another funeral home. There about 4 tons of bells in the steel tower purchased from auction sales, antique shops and churches.

As we were riding around on our bikes we spotted the line of boxer shorts hanging in a front yard and more underware scattered all over the front yard. No idea what was going on. Any ideas? It made us laugh, anyway.

Rugby also has this Northern Lights Tower dedicated to the aurora borealis, a stunning natural phenomena of the northern plains. The poles are painted all different colors with metallic paints and it is lit up at night. It's probably pretty cool looking, but they didn't light it up the night we were there. They also have a huge prairie village museum and a depot museum.

On to visit old friends from college in Velva. Tim offered us a beer and said he had beer on tap. We thought he was kidding. Oh no. When the kids grew up and left home, he bought an old fridge, cut a hole in it for the tap and Wallah! The Keginator! The freezer is plum full of frosted mugs and there is even a window between the garage and the dining room, so they can pass pitchers straight thru when they are having a party.

Needless to say Tim is a very popular guy in the neighborhood and the keg runs dry about every two weeks. He occasionally gets donations from friends and neighbors to keep his little enterprize going. The Schwan's man happened to stop by when he was setting up his operation, and he even stopped back at the end of his route to have a beer and socialize a little. So if you are looking for some new friends, give it a try. The Keginator. It works.

Scandinavian Heritage Center and Visitor's Center in Minot. Definitely the nicest visitor center we've ever seen. This is the Gol Stave Church Museum donated in 2003 by a doctor in Minot to honor his parents and pioneer immigrants from the past and to create a little bit of Norway for those who can't go there.

If you can zoom in on this, there are three statues. National Amateur Ski Jumping Champion, Casper Oimoen, member of the U.S. Olympic Team in the 1930's. Sondre Norheim, Father of Modern Skiing, from Telemark, Norway. He died in McHenry County and is buried in nearby, Denbigh, ND. And Leif Eiriksson, Icelandic Explorer, to honor the Icelandic Ancestors. Here John is visiting with Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark's beloved author of more than 200

children's stories, including The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid. They are standing in front of a Danish Windmill and the display of flags from U.S., Cananda, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway.

This is the Dala Horse, the national symbol of Sweden.

This is the Stabur, or storehouse, sent here from Telemark, Norway. It is a replica, built by a Norwegian craftsman, of one built in 1750.

This is the Sigdal house, built in Norway in 1770. It was dismantled, shipped over here and put back together by the same person. I said the only thing I knew in Norwegian to the lady inside and she understood it. My Dad used to say it and it meant, you speak so foolish all the time. I can't imagine why he said that to me so often.

This is a view of the two bedrooms inside and the rosemaling on the doors. The family who lived here had ten children. There was a small bed in the main room for the parents. Just the 3 rooms.

Drill baby, drill! Between Minot and Williston there are many new oil wells pumping and many more being drilled. Most all of the campgrounds and motels along the way are filled up with workers. I read somewhere that there are between 8,000 and 10,000 job openings in North Dakota all the time. I'm sure the majority are in this area, the Bakken formation of the Williston Basin. We saw lots and lots of trucks of every kind, construction equipment, tankers, gravel, etc. One of the oil drilling rigs like this was just surrounded by Halliburton trucks. We didn't stick around this area long. We were afraid someone might want to give us a job. And to quote our friend from Velva, "I'm retired!"

Trivia: Williston has the only drive-in movie theater in North Dakota.

A little ways into Montana is the little town of Culbertson. This was taken in front of their visitor center and museum. They have a really awesome museum. Be sure to stop if you are ever there.

Supper with Uncle Tony in Lewistown tomorrow, and on to Helena and the grandkids for a few weeks.

No blogs for a while.

Tarra