Glacier Park

It was a beautiful, clear and warm day as we drove north to the east side of Glacier Park. We parked the trailer at St. Mary, had dinner out side while looking at the beautiful scenery, and looked forward to seeing the park the next day.
We planned to drive west in the morning over the 'Going to the Sun' highway and then come back on it in the afternoon. That way we could have good light for picture taking while going both ways.

The next morning we awoke to cooler temperatures and some clouds moving quickly over head. The aspen trees in this area are dwarfed, probably from the winters and wind. (The joke is that locals will say that the wind is "just blowing today." when asked if the wind always blows like this.
This tree isn't much more than twelve feet tall, like the others in the area.

The wind kept blowing and it wasn't long until the sky looked like this.
However, we took off hoping for the best and that we could still see some of the mountains.

There were some showers that started to go through areas. The lack of sunshine didn't give me the best pictures but we were able to see some of the mountains.

These are of upper St. Mary lake.
This is of the first glacier that we could see.
We were getting higher. This was looking back in the direction we had come.
By the time we got to the visitor center on Logan Pass it was dumping down rain. We made a run for it to the center. There were several others taking a break also so the center was packed. We waited for the rain to ease up, and then continued on our way.

Since we were now up in the clouds one couldn't see very far to take pictures. As we started down the other side the rain stopped for awhile and we had some clouds lift.

This is looking down into the bowl that was left after a glacier had melted. Just beyond the rim it drops many feet into a canyon. You can vaguely see the road going down on the distant right hillside.

I wanted to get a picture of all the different kinds of flowers growing side by side, but never did get one taken. I did get these flowers and the water falls from the cab window (it was raining outside) while we were waiting in line at one of the road construction sites.

Since we weren't going to get any sun shinning on the hills in the afternoon, we decided to take the road around the southern edge of the park on our way back to St. Mary.

We stopped in at the top of Marias Pass, just 5280 feet high. This is the continental divide. If Lewis and Clark had come this way, they wouldn't have had such a high pass when they crossed the divide. I think they ran into some Black Feet Indians, got into a skirmish, killed two of them, and then quickly left before more came when they went to explore this way.

There is a sign here at the pass which explains some of the geology of the area. I found it quite interesting. The mountain that it refers to is pictured below.
This rock, also at the stop, shows some of the layers that are seen in the hillsides.
I love the colors of all the rocks that wash down from the mountains in Montana. As a kid growing up I didn't realize that rocks in other parts of America weren't as colorful. These are crushed gravel. They can be this small, be boulders, or any size in between.
As we went back, we also stopped in at East Glacier. The lodge there was built by the NP railroad. It's structure is interesting. The posts on the front of the building were trees.
The posts on the inside were specially harvested to preserve the bark and not mare it. You can see that it is still looking good. You can also see the size of the trees. One was cut in half and used as a table/counter. It was over 200 years old.
I felt like a small child next to this guy.
There was some service berry bushes where we had parked the truck. We had some on the ranch where I grew up but we didn't know what they were for several years. They taste somewhat like a mild apple and are good in pies, jelly, etc. These were jucier than the ones we had.
By the time we got back to St. Mary, this was the weather.
Oh well.

Something I learned while at the park: There is a point in the park along the continental divide that the water not only flows two directions, but three. One goes to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River. One goes to the Atlantic Ocean via the Missouri River. One goes to Hudson Bay.