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On our way to Glacier we stopped at Kootenai Falls and walked down the trail to the swinging bridge so that Joe and Zoey could walk high across a torrential river on a small wooden cabled suspension bridge.  I’m not a fan of heights, or swaying foot bridges, so I just watched from the shore.  The falls were pretty impressive too – right now with all the snowmelt going on the rivers and creeks are way above normal and are colored this beautiful aqua blue/green that you don’t see in Texas.

Wow, does Glacier Park deliver!  If you have the need to be awed by rugged mountain wilderness then this is the place to go.  We’re really enjoying being in the parks pre-summer season but that’s about to end now that schools are out.  We’ve had our choice of prime camping spots and enjoying the parks without huge amounts of humans surrounding us so far.

We spent the first couple days on the east side of the park at Apgar village, which is on the bank of the 10 mile long McDonald lake (which was formed after the a glacier melted), with the white capped Rocky Mountains off in the near distance.  Did some hiking up to a sub-alpine lake called Avalanche Lake.  Incredible views of huge waterfalls up in the mountains behind the lake feeding the snowmelt down to the lake.  We saw lots of mule deer on the trail and at the campsite.  We hiked the trail on Saturday and then read in the paper that on Sunday, the next day, a man had been bitten by a Grizzly bear a mile and half from that same trailhead!  So the bears were there, we just didn’t see them.  First attack since 2005 and the guy was jogging on a trail by himself and not making noise to alert bears he was coming.  We joke that Zoey is our bear alerting system because she’s always making noise.

Then we headed to the east side of the park which just blew us away.  It is much more remote and rugged, and about 15 degrees colder due to the weather patterns across the Rockies.  We stayed at Many Glaciers which is basically at the foot of huge snow capped mountains in all directions – absolutely breathtaking.  First day we were there we saw a huge bull moose just off the road and the next morning had a moose walk through our campsite.

There’s a fabulous lodge built in 1915 in the Swiss chalet style which looks out over a lake with the mountains surrounding it – it’s where I wanted to spend my time.  Huge fireplace going in the lobby with comfy couches and chairs around it – deck chairs on the balcony so you could sun and just stare out at the mountains.  A boat ride, which Zoey insisted we take, allowed us to see mountain goats and more moose.  I even convinced Joe to forgo hotdogs on the fire one night to have a great meal in their dining room – trout and beef medallions, yum!  We would have stayed longer except it was cold, cold, cold.  It snowed on us a bunch and the temperature never got above 39 which is too cold for me but Joe didn’t mind.

We got one good hike in up to see a waterfall on a trail that rose 700 feet in the space of one mile.  Good workout especially for Joe with Zoey in a pack on his back.

We had more hiking planned for the next day but that got nixed when we got back to our trailer and found out that we had no propane to run our heater for the night!  We had the tanks filled not too long ago but apparently they got filled with something that was not propane!  With the temperatures going below freezing at night I refused to sleep in a trailer with no heater so we ended up packing up early and driving into the night to Great Falls, Montana where we got a hotel J.  Aaahh, a big bed, heat, a shower, and a free breakfast – it was heaven.  I’m so amazed at how few people there are in Montana!  Talk about wide open spaces.  There are no cities per say, only what we would consider a big town.  I can only imagine what it is like in the middle of winter when everything is totally covered in snow.

On our way to Helena, Montana last night we were driving behind a little white Toyota Camry when all of a sudden we saw a big deer flying over the car.  It had hit a buck going 70 mph which appeared out of nowhere.  I’m amazed that the car was able to maintain control and pull over.  We pulled over too and stayed with the older woman and her granddaughter for an hour until a wrecker and the state trooper showed up.  Their front end was totally smushed.