It's also full of tourists. While you can pick up a backcountry pass and head out into nowhere, most people choose to take the 50-mile Going To The Sun road that snakes from the west entrance to the east. We did too. The road has two lanes, and even on this out-of-season Wednesday it was pretty packed. You could say we moved at a...yes...glacial pace!
Also, being a national park, there were none of the mad, wilderness-style hikes that we enjoyed yesterday. True, you did need to wear more than flip-flops, but everywhere was nicely managed and maintained. This is how we like our outdoors.
While we didn't have any grizzly encounters we saw pretty much all the other wildlife available. This included mountain goats, columbian ground squirrels (who hibernate for eight months a year! Like me!), a golden eagle, and a "hoary" marmot that whistles. We also spotted a couple of glaciers, small after the summer but also receding due to global warming. But this is the USA, where we don't really believe in global warming, so there's probably another reason.
Every direction was a picture postcard vista. When you grow up in Somerset, and Cley Hill is considered a breathtaking geological feature, your mind can't really cope with the enormity of it all. They also get an average of 98ft of snow in the winter. 98ft!! You don't get that in Disneyland.
Hannah, glacial.
Pines and mountaintops.
That's the Sun road winding around the mountains. It's an exciting drive...
...with not too many barriers.
National car park. Although this was for road work, which is not something I'd like to contemplate doing on this road.
Just massive! This is looking west from the continental divide. If rain falls over there, it goes into the Pacific. This side it goes to the Atlantic!
Hannah among more pines.
Another view.
Rocky Mountain goats in their natural environment.
A mountain goat in its less than natural environment.
A very rare sighting of a goat and a bear together!
The representative for California.
A ground squirrel! They cheep, loudly, like birds.
A hoary marmot! This one was eating all the flowers off their stems.
Hidden Lake.
Back down the trail.
Rocks, forests, etc. Did I tell you how taken I was with the place?
America the beautiful.
Hannah has a "wild" animal encounter while we eat our picnic.
Mountain and valley, and that's the Logan Pass Visitor Center in front, where we did our hike.
The Jackson Glacier, sadly shrinking.
See? Serious stuff.
Hannah enters grizzly country undeterred.
St Mary Lake, "where the prairies meet the mountains". And where we turned our car around, drove back through the park, and home.
Bonus feature:
Look what we spotted outside our cabin window last night! I'm not really that comfortable with wild animals in such close proximity, but it's a risk you take when you leave the city.
Bambi all grown up.
