Glacier National Park

Lake McDonald Lodge

Views from Whitefish: taxi leaving downtown; rainbow over the highschool; McAdams at her favorite brewery. Huckleberry Wheat Beer, yum!

Hello, Everybody! We are down from the mountains after about five days without a cell phone signal or internet access. We are back to modern American comforts in Spokane, a town which

I would love to explore, but that McAdams is, shall we say, less enchanted with. She can't wait to hit Seattle, which we will do later today. I am excited, also. I've only been to Seattle once, but I loved it. As I recall, I wanted to move there also.

But, I get ahead of myself. We left Whitefish and headed into Glacier National Park, which is absolutely one of the most stunning, eextraordinary places I have ever been fortunate enough to have visited. Established in 1910 under Taft, Glacier became our tenth national park, after we kicked out Salish, Blackfeet and Kootenai Native Americans; recent archaeological evidence points to the fact that people lived in the park area for over 10,000 years. (We passed through a large swath of Flathead reservation, but McAdams, who has driven through Blackfeet territory reports that the tribe shuns visitors and are very hostile towards those who don't belong on the rez. Reservation land, from what I can see, is rather ugly and inhospitable, especially in comparison with all the gorgeous vistsas the land that surrounds it affords. Coincidence that the tribal land is less desirable than the land the U.S. appropriated? I think not. I guess the displaced tribes have the right to still be pissed off.)

Glacier today encompasses approximately 1.4 million acres and has over 700 trails, 200 lakes or streams, and 50 glaciers. It is home to all kinds of flora and fauna, and makes up a vast and unique ecosystem. There are several hotels and lodges, most built by the Great Northern Railway to support tourism; some of them are lovely. There are also myriad campgrounds, small stores, and eateries scattered throughout the park. The Road to the Sun, built in the 1930's, is one of the modern engineering marvels of the world; it is 50 miles of winding, curving, clinging to mountainsides and teetering over dizzyingly dramatic valleys. More on it later. Most of all, though, the park offers mile after mile of the road less traveled. There are dense, verdant woods and jagged, rocky mountain peaks. There are crystal indigo lakes that seem to go on forever and silver blue icy glaciers that feed them. There are places where one can convince herself that nobody, save for a stray mountain goat or the random mountain lion, has even looked at in a hundred years. It is peaceful and quiet and smells clean and sweet. It is overwhelming, overpowering, all-encompassing. More than once, just looking around, I wanted to cry. It is just so MUCH.

So, we started by going to Lake McDonald. It is the largest lake in the park and was one of my favorite places. It features a very nice lodge, but we stayed in a little log cabin. Mostly we just stayed out one the beach.

OK, now I'm going to post this so that you will have something new to look at, but I'm not done with this chapter of adventure yet, so hold tight...more Big Adventure to come!