Breakfast with friends. Visiting an old ranger friend at Farragut State Park (my first job in Idaho). Silverwood.
We’ll miss you Glacier. We took the northern route back to Coeur d’Alene through Whitefish and Libby, Montana.
Back when we originally moved to CDA, Whitefish was where I wanted to move to. It’s a cute little mountain ski town. The girls were saying… “it reminds us of Truckee”.
We went to the Great Northern Railway Museum in town. It’s currently the most travelled train route in North America. And the stop in Whitefish, Montana is the most popular stop between Seattle and Chicago.
Whitefish is a great little town to stop through, cute downtown (including a great little thrift store where everyone scored) and yummy food.
We also stopped at Kootenai Falls near Libby. Kootenai falls is a sacred space for the Kootenai Indians. It also served as a geographic barrier between the 2 bands of the Kootenai Indians, those that lived above and below the falls. We happened to get there just as we saw some kayakers heading down the falls, very fun to watch. The swinging bridge was also quite fun.
Then met an old co-worker of Edwin’s for a beer and then some good friends for dinner.
Woods & Water.
Isabella even bartered a trade in of an old dress for a new dress. thanks again, isabella was stoked.
It was a cold, kind of rainy morning and Edwin caught a bit of a head cold, so we did some needed cleaning in the RV, went to the visitor center to get some more info and get the kids their junior ranger badges, and did some biking around the trails. Every day in Glacier has been great. We somehow didn’t have enough time to make a 10 mile hike to one of the big glacier lakes…didn’t quite realize we would’ve had to drive a few hours to the other side of the park and then start the hike…probably would’ve happened had we continued East, but we are heading back to Coeur d’Alene tomorrow to make our way back to the Bay Area for a few days, so it was too much of a detour. We definitely won’t be able to cross everything off the list on this trip, but now we’ll know how to do for the next time.
Here’s some good history/fun facts for you if anyone is interested…
George Bird Grinnell visited Glacier in the late 1800s and began lobbying the government for this place he coined the “Crown of the Continent” to become a national park. Glacier National Park became a park in 1910 under President William Howard Taft.
At the time 3 Native American tribes existed in the territory. The Blackfeet, the Kootenai, and the Salish.
The Canadian side of Glacier National Park is known as Waterton Lakes National Park. They were established separately and are managed independently. In 1932 the US Congress and Canadian Parliament declared the parks be joined to commemorate the long-standing peace between the 2 countries. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was established and became the worlds first International Peace Park.
What is a GLACIER? to be a glacier it must have 3 things… 1) be 100 feet thick. 2) 25 acres in area. 3) must be moving
In 1850 there were a reported 130 glaciers in the park. As of today only 26 “ish” remain.
Sadly, by the year 2030 there will be NO more glaciers in what is known as Glacier National Park…only a little more than 10 years from now.
A little about climate change, global warming or whatever name you want to put on it… (and feel free to correct me if I have some misinformation #Alyssa, if you’re reading this 🙂
12,000 years ago the world was 7 degrees cooler than it is today. In the last 100 years the temperature has raised 2 degrees. It’s not so much about the temperature rising…but the RATE OF CHANGE. Our plants and animals (including us) are smart and can adapt to change, but we are not used to adapting to such changes so quickly.
The reason for the temperature rising…is the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. Carbon is NOT a bad thing. All organic materials/compounds are carbon based. The problem is the amount. Things such as forests and oceans are “carbon sinks” and they absorb and store carbon into their ecosystems at a rate of ~6 billion tons of carbon per year. Then we have things such as volcanoes and forest fires, or other natural sources (even though humans are natural, we are put into a different category for this model) that are “carbon deposits” and put in ~2 billion tons of carbon per year. Humans, another “carbon depositer”, we put in ~8 billion tons of carbon per year. The issue is this “imbalance” and we have an excess of ~4 billion tons of carbon in our atmosphere.
Carbon is a greenhouse gas. Our UV in the atmosphere reacts with greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane, etc… and “stimulates” or “excites” them. Our atmosphere can only “absorb” so much of these gases and the “heat” that these “excited greenhouse gases produce” is what causes the increase in temperature. Again, the problem is not so much that our temperature is increasing, but the RATE of change.
So…a thing to remember…we come to national parks and are mindful. It is IMPORTANT to remember that our state parks, community parks, and more importantly our OWN BACKYARDS need the same level of care.
Here’s a quick/easy one if you’re still reading :). Currently, as bears are about to go into hibernation, it is called “hyperplasia”. They can eat up to 100,000 berries in one day.
And I’ll end with some rhyming fun…Allie the Algae took a “Lichen” to Freddy the Fungus and now they’re relationship is on the rocks or up in the trees. Lichen is not a fungus or algae but a “hybrid” and grows along rocks and on the bark of trees.
A dear friend of a dear friend lives here in Kalispell so we got a special “locals tour” of the Going To The Sun Road. Thanks Betsy and Rebecca 💕
We were a bit silly and since it was a beautiful but cold day yesterday, and today was “supposed” to be nicer, somehow we didn’t bring hats or our big jackets even though we were going up over the pass. Thankfully Betsy came prepared with an extra jacket and hat 🙂 so we eeked by
We thought mid week in September was the time to go to Glacier. Apparently we are not the only ones to think that either. So many more people visit the parks each year and Betsy said this Thursday in September easily looked like a Saturday in the summer a few years ago.
It was still a beautiful day and a must do at Glacier but I feel we must come back and enjoy the pass when the sun is out and the wildflowers are in full bloom to re-hike the highline trail and the hidden lakes trail.
But glad we made it over to many glacier even if no time for a hike to see it. Plus Betsy has the employee pass so they let us in when they were turning away cars because it was too crowded.
We did see some animals today. 3 grizzlies, a pika, and some bighorn sheep.
yes We went on a ranger led hike to Avalanche Lake. At first we were unsure if we would leave the group as we saw the crowd of baby-boomers congregate, but the ranger programs the national parks are really great. It’s really fun learning and re-learning all this ecology and geology as an adult. …college is coming back to us. GO BEARS 🐻 💙💛 Plus the girls learn a lot more information than they would from us. And it helps to have another “teacher” other than mom or dad.
On our way to Avalanche Lake we walked through a beautiful Western Red Cedar/Western Hemlock/Pacific Yew/Black Cottonwood forest. The western side of Glacier is different from the east side because of its climate and soil. Continuing our education that we learned from Crater Lake, when Mount Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago, the ash deposited 800 miles away here in Glacier National Park. The east side of the park is quite windy and the ash did not settle. On the west side the ash from the eruption was allowed to settle. Even now, there is 1 foot of ash from the Mount Mazama eruption found just inches below ground. This volcanic ash acts similarly to clay and helps keep water available close to the soil level. This allows over 200 gallons of water to be available for the trees during the dry months, which in turn allows this area to be a dense conifer forest. In fact, West Glacier serves as the eastern point of the Pacific Northwest conifer forest.
The cliffs behind Avalanche Lake are spectacular and has numerous waterfalls feeding into the lake from Sperry Glacier up above. Because of the steep cliffs and snowfall there are a lot of avalanches here and the Kootenai Indians named this “the place where things go backwards”.
Another quick fun fact we learned was that the blue-greenish tint of the lake is from “glacial flour”. Glacial flour is essentially rock dust from rocks rubbing against each other as the glacier moves. It is a very fine powder that does not settle in the lakes and rivers and the blue we see is because the glacial flour makes it appear “milky” and absorbs other colors than blue. The more “glacial flour”, the more blue the water looks.
Here are some pics from the day…but pictures don’t do Glacier justice. The highlight being that we went swimming in Avalanche Lake. It was a jump in/out kind of swimming but definitely don’t think it was the 38 degrees as advertised.
2 scoops was maybe 1 too many
Apgar School 1915-1958
We made it Glacier. 3rd National Park. The sun is out. I guess it rained here the past 2 days and is supposed to be nice for the next few days. Good timing on our part. Fall/Winter seems as though it’ll be hitting early here. Everyone also said it was a relatively cold summer. We lucked out and got a camping spot within the park with no reservations…let the good vibes roll.
tJust a few stops before we hit Glacier.
We are officially in bear country. Here’s some bear identification knowledge. Can you tell the difference between a black and brown bear?
The valleys, canyons, and rivers are so lovely. We didn’t make it far from cda as it was bad weather AND we cane across this loveliness.
We are in Montana. 4th state down. I just love Montana. It’s so beautiful. Years ago when a Edwin and I relocated to northern Idaho, Montana was another place we easily would’ve moved to.
We somehow missed the “Welcome to Montana” sign but pretty sure these next few pictures sum it up.
