Glacier National Park July 4-6

Hello friends, sorry to have neglected the blogging duties these past couple of days. We have arrived safely on the eastern side of Glacier National Park and are loving it! We are spending our days in the wilderness, and our evenings in a campground right at the edge of the wilderness, the KOA on the shore of lower St. Mary Lake, in the Blackfeet Nation. Our email, text, Facebook, etc. is a bit unreliable. Wonderfully so.

We arrived here on Friday, the 4^th of July, set up camp, and immediately headed into the park. We stopped at the St. Mary Visitor Center, checked out the backcountry desk, park info, and gift shop, and headed in for our first hike, and nice 2.8 mile stroll down to St. Mary Falls.

The 4^th of July is Liz and my anniversary, and we didn't have anything super special planned – we figured arrving in Glacier was special enough – but our great present was that Dad fixed our key fob, the truck's remote that locks and unlocks, etc. It quit on us about 6 weeks ago and we have had to open the driver's door since then to what GM calls the “pre-alarm”: 12 horrendous horn blasts - every second, on the second - before it goes to the full alarm. It had become a game for us, in which there was a pool going each and every time we got in the truck on how many beeps we would get before I got the key in the ingition to shut it off. I am proud to say I got it down to two but, needless to say, car alarms don't do well in a peaceful campground, Lucky for us, we arrived here on 4^th of July weekend.

Every time we have come to Glacier, it has always been under extreme fire hazard conditions with a fire ban in place. Twice it had been on fire. Once, we had to evacuate. This time, a major monsoon-like storm hit just a few week ago. The ground is still damp. And so every single 'Murican and most of the Canadians brought as many firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, and legit pro-style fireworks as could fit in their pick-up trucks and lit them off. All. Night. Long. And yesterday we also heard fully automatic gunfire from across the valley for a solid hour. Apparently northwest Montana is a very different place when they're not worried about burning it down. Ahhhhh, the sounds of nature.

That storm I mentioned... dumped 8 inches of rain here in the valley; Lower St. Mary Lake is all swolled up and the trail to get to the lake... is the lake. A few of the trails are still muddy, but up high is where the action is. The storm dumped feet of snow, caused avalanches, and shut down Going-to-the-Sun Road. We had checked on conditions weeks ago, pre-storm, and didn't know about any of this! We didn't learn of the storm and closures until Thursday, the night before we arrived here. We heard it was still closed but the road fully opened Thursday. It was almost Wally World.

Yesterday, July 5, we discovered what may be our new favorite hike, the Swiftcurrent Valley Trail to Bullhead Lake. It was 7.5 miles round trip, and everyone did great, even Kieran and Izzie. 

When we got to the lake we were rewarded with not only incredible views, but the sight of a mother and baby moose at the end of the lake. 

There were great views the whole way, and lots of butterflies and chickadees and wildflowers. When we finally stopped for lunch at the lake we couldn't even relax and enjoy it because we were continuously harassed by a vicious gang of marauding squirrels. This is why you aren't supposed to feed the animals. C'mon, people. DON”T FEED THE ANIMALS. We even almost stepped on a couple of snakes on this hike, but the only real excitement was Mom taking a header off the trail. I ran back to her and was worried that she had broken her wrist or perhaps a hip, but luckily she caught herself with her face.

Today, July 6, the holiday weekend is finishing, and things are starting to quiet down in the park and in our campground. We went up to Logan Pass and played on the snowfields, having July snowball fights in shorts. We had hoped to do a beautiful walk known as the Garden Wall. The last time we came here, some of our smaller hikers didn't have the sense of mortality that is necessary to successfully complete this hike. Unfortunately, when Mom and Dad walked and found the informational sign at the trailhead, they were looking down at it. As the trail was under five feet of snow.

The weather has been unbelievably good so far, and the only thing not 100% has been the wind. It has been so windy that we are unable to use our kayaks, Izzie had the camper door slam shut on her (she's fine), and our neighbor had his camper door broken. But on the trail, it means no bugs, and that is the best thing of all.