Friday, July 21, 2006
Montana = awesome
You wouldn't think it, but Montana is awesome. I thought that when I moved to North Carolina that I lived in the middle of nowhere. I was wrong, because I found the middle of nowhere...and it's in (or including all of) Montana. The trip began with a short 5 hour flight to Montana, from Raleigh via Salt Lake City. Who would have thought that it's 4+ hours from RDU to SLC? Not me.
So I got to Montana and met Sarah at the airport after almost two weeks apart (yes, I'll call the wahm-bulance, shutup Betsold, since you're probably the only one reading this). We got our rental Corolla, which was surprisingly not crappy, and headed up to Glacier National Park (GNP). The ride up was pretty full of seeing nothing. We decided to take the scenic route, route 89, and along the way we saw...nothing. It was about 2.5 hrs from Great Falls, Montana to GNP. We arrived at about 6pm, since the stop at delicious Quiznos delayed us a bit.
Evidently it doesn't get dark in Montana until like 10:30pm. So we had a few hours when we arrived to drive around the park and grab some dinner. The first day we drove from our hotel, the Rising Sun Motor Inn, up Going to the Sun Highway to Logan Pass and beyond. It was an awe inspiring (good phrase, I know) drive and I saw things I never thought I'd see. The mountains are HUGE and everything looks like a painting.
Friday we did a pretty sweet hike at Logan Pass on the continental divide. We started walking across a boardwalk, which quickly ended and we were hiking across snow, in July, in Montana, on cliffs of snow that looked like if we slipped we'd be sliding down about 300 feet on more snow to a nice pile of sharp rocks. We survived the snow and made to a small pond along another path and to Hidden Lake. Shortly after we saw the lake in the valley, we saw the psycho mountain goat. We were like, "oh whatever, a goat, we'll just keep walking and it will go away." WRONG. We walked towards the goat, it walked towards us. We walked back on the trail from where we came, the goat followed us. It followed us (while we were all alone on a mountain) about half a mile back up the trail and wouldn't go away. So we found some other people and it still kept walking towards us. Eventually enough people got there and the goat stopped walking on OUR path. Silly goat. We finished our Logan Pass hike and figured what the hell we'll go up to Canada. So to Canada we went. Waterton Park in Alberta was nice, but Canada totally got the shaft in terms of Glacier Park awesomeness.
Anyways, Saturday we went on more hiking, this time near Many Glacier a little north of our hotel. We wanted to go on a hike but it was closed because of bears. We went on a different hike that the other direction from the bears. We almost made it to Swift current pass. (i think that's what it's called, i forget now). We saw some waterfalls and eventually made it a few lakes and then turned back. Then we went on a boat ride on one lake, a short hike to another, and then a hike to another. We saw a moose (look closely, it's a lady moose lying down), and then headed back for dinner.
I'm really starting to get tired of typing, but check out all my pictures on my flickr account.
http://flickr.com/photos/jarettstein
So I got to Montana and met Sarah at the airport after almost two weeks apart (yes, I'll call the wahm-bulance, shutup Betsold, since you're probably the only one reading this). We got our rental Corolla, which was surprisingly not crappy, and headed up to Glacier National Park (GNP). The ride up was pretty full of seeing nothing. We decided to take the scenic route, route 89, and along the way we saw...nothing. It was about 2.5 hrs from Great Falls, Montana to GNP. We arrived at about 6pm, since the stop at delicious Quiznos delayed us a bit.
Evidently it doesn't get dark in Montana until like 10:30pm. So we had a few hours when we arrived to drive around the park and grab some dinner. The first day we drove from our hotel, the Rising Sun Motor Inn, up Going to the Sun Highway to Logan Pass and beyond. It was an awe inspiring (good phrase, I know) drive and I saw things I never thought I'd see. The mountains are HUGE and everything looks like a painting.
Friday we did a pretty sweet hike at Logan Pass on the continental divide. We started walking across a boardwalk, which quickly ended and we were hiking across snow, in July, in Montana, on cliffs of snow that looked like if we slipped we'd be sliding down about 300 feet on more snow to a nice pile of sharp rocks. We survived the snow and made to a small pond along another path and to Hidden Lake. Shortly after we saw the lake in the valley, we saw the psycho mountain goat. We were like, "oh whatever, a goat, we'll just keep walking and it will go away." WRONG. We walked towards the goat, it walked towards us. We walked back on the trail from where we came, the goat followed us. It followed us (while we were all alone on a mountain) about half a mile back up the trail and wouldn't go away. So we found some other people and it still kept walking towards us. Eventually enough people got there and the goat stopped walking on OUR path. Silly goat. We finished our Logan Pass hike and figured what the hell we'll go up to Canada. So to Canada we went. Waterton Park in Alberta was nice, but Canada totally got the shaft in terms of Glacier Park awesomeness.
Anyways, Saturday we went on more hiking, this time near Many Glacier a little north of our hotel. We wanted to go on a hike but it was closed because of bears. We went on a different hike that the other direction from the bears. We almost made it to Swift current pass. (i think that's what it's called, i forget now). We saw some waterfalls and eventually made it a few lakes and then turned back. Then we went on a boat ride on one lake, a short hike to another, and then a hike to another. We saw a moose (look closely, it's a lady moose lying down), and then headed back for dinner.
I'm really starting to get tired of typing, but check out all my pictures on my flickr account.
http://flickr.com/photos/jarettstein
// posted by JARETT @ 10:22 PM 
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