The Boomer Bus: Post 9-6-2014 Glacier National Park

Post 9-6-2014 Glacier National Park

Wow-a-whee!! We are in the Glacier national Park for a few days and are enjoying the absolute beautiful and wondrous glaciers, the forests and the lakes on the Western side of the Park. The Eastern is more open, hills, huge lake (St Mary Lake) and uninteresting. Unfortunately, there are only 25 glaciers remaining and they are too far away from any highway or trail to get to them. We could only drive up the mountain and see them from afar.
Good news: the Antarctic is growing and it makes Al Gore look the stupid ass he really is. But, that means that maybe these will start growing again too.

I think the drive from West Glacier to St. Mary’s on the Eastern side is probably the most scenic and breath taking of the entire park. It’s a two lane highway with a speed of only 35 and 40 the entire length except for dropping to 25 in some areas where congestion is. There was a 20-25 mile stretch of construction that had dirt/gravel road and looked like we were back in Alaska where that was the norm. We had to drive the truck since they don’t allow anything longer than 21 feet to go through the park. We got a campsite in the park in a wooded area and it’s really nice and quiet.

As we approached “Logan’s Pass” we encountered three mountain sheep on a ledge just above the highway. Looked like they were posing for us. And of course, we had our usual ground squirrels running around begging for food at the visitors center.

Tourist a bunch everywhere you look and parking is at a premium or non existent in all the parking lots. It’s like “we got to get there before winter”. Most seemed to be visitors to America and many were bikers, hikers and people genuinely interested in the history of the park.

As mentioned, the drive was just gorgeous. Slow yet extremely scenic. A six percent climb over 5-6 miles to get to the “Logan’s Pass” gave us some really beautiful sights and glaciers to see even though they weren’t very big. I think Jackson’s Glacier was the largest we saw.

The park offers presentations every day for interested persons and especially for the children. There’s an ongoing effort to expose them to as much as possible while they are young. They have a Jr. Ranger program that earns them a certificate and badge and it’s exciting to watch their faces when it’s presented. Of course, seniors can participate too. We have been able to sit in on some interesting presentations on the history of the park as well as about the wildlife.

Tomorrow, we are driving around the park to the Eastern campground for one night and hopefully will visit the “Many Glaciers” section of the park and have