Glacier NP 2006

8/18/06 Day 52 summer trip. 260 miles today, total 2959 miles.> Drove from Banff to St Maries, Montana via hwy 1 and hwy 2 near the North East entrance to Glacier NP. The city of Calgary was huge and it took us for ever drive through the city on surface roads. After finally getting through the city and heading south the mountains disappeared and became mostly flat huge ranches and huge farms. The two crops appeared to be hay and wheat. All of Alberta that we traveled through appeared to be very prosperous. Made it through customs at the border without loosing any produce or wine. Arrived in the very small town of Saint Maries, Montana around 4:00 p.m. Checked into Johnson’s RV Park with full hookups at $35 per night. We smelled smoke but saw none as the recent rain appeared to completely extinguish the fire. We had sautéed shrimp in garlic butter, green peas, steamed white rice, and KJ Chardonnay for dinner.

8/19/06 Day 53 summer trip. 150 miles today, total 3109 miles. Got up at 7:30 a.m. and were on our way into the park by 9:00 a.m. getting onto THE HIGHWAY TO THE SUN ROAD which goes through the park over Logan Pass. My truck just passed as 21’ long and 8’ wide is the max dimensions allowed to drive through the park on this road, The park has several large lakes but the Logan pass area is the most beautiful in my opinion. Linda and I stopped here at the visitor center and did the most popular hike in the park to Hidden Lake. It was 3 miles round trip with perhaps 800’ of elevation, Part of the trail was wood stairs and decking which was no fun to come down. The trail was through a meadow just above tree line and after a ½ mile on the trail there were lots of flowers in full bloom with lacy looking creeks and water falls everywhere. It was like a lush wonderland up their with the clear fresh air, glacier clad mountain back drops, marmots, chipmunks, mountain goats, squirrels, and Ptarmigans game birds. Of course the US does not allow dogs on most National Parks trails so Meghan had to stay in the car. Finished the exhilarating hike and continued driving through the park to the West entrance and then returned to our trailer view the south border of the park driving mostly in Lewis & Clark NFS land. It was a grueling dangerous 50 mile mountain drive and I was really tired when I got back around 4:00 p.m. Linda did our past 2 weeks laundry at the RV Park while I caught up on this diary. We went out to dinner at Johnson’s Café in our RV Park tonight. It’s a family style café serving fresh baked bread and homemade soup with every meal. Linda had the special meat loaf dinner with baked potato and salad. I had local sautéed white fish caught in St. Maries lake which we have a view of in our 5th wheel. The food and western ambiance in this café is excellent.

8/20/06 Day 54 summer trip. miles today, total 3109 miles. We decided to stay one more day here in Glacier NP. Had a great breakfast at Johnson’s Café. We visited the MANY GLACIERS inlet into Glacier NP. It had more lakes and a resort hotel area which was quite busy, so we skipped the hikes in the park and headed back out stopping at a reservoir which was out of the park. We gave Meghan a two mile hike along it. As we continued out we saw a black bear around 40 yards from us. Did not get the camera out in time