Lisa Saves the Day

Lisa Saves the Day

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

This morning we really need some time to regroup and organize so we research the hikes in Many Glaciers will take us, especially the one to Fisher Cap Lake.  We have learned that a hike needs to be less than three miles and that we don’t do rapid elevation changes, so there are about three that look promising. *  We also read about the ranger-led and other activities and select four of those.  Those weighty decisions made, we grab out computers, cameras and bags and set off for St. Mary Lodge in search of an internet connection that is stronger than Rising Sun’s.

St. Mary Lake

Woohoo!  The nice lady at the Lodge assures us that we can still get breakfast (real breakfast!!  Hot eggs and stuff!) and there is internet in both the restaurant and the adjacent lounge! We’ve gotten in just under the wire since they stop serving at 10:00 and it’s only about five minutes of!

Yea!  Blogger is working for me and by the time breakfast if over I’ve gotten Sunday’s post posted (Hmmm, that sounds weird!).  We adjourn to the lounge, with tables and comfy chairs, and I’m able to catch up completely!  I even skim through my email to make sure no one has died and my house hasn’t burned down;  but that’s about all that there’s time for.  We don’t want to spend the whole day doing secretarial stuff!

Giggle!

We head back to our cabin to keep our computers from spending the day in the hot car.  Amazing, but the car really does get hot.  There is an historic ranger station on a side road and we take a detour to check it out.  The road from the parking lot is blocked so we stay at the bottom of the small hill and look up, discussing what the living arrangements might have been.  There is a small barn-looking building that might have housed equipment and horses while visitors and the ranger probably stayed in the station.

Next stop if the visitors’ center where Mike, a volunteer astronomer, has his large telescope set up for viewing the sun.  The hydrogen dioxide nebulae keep drifting across the object of our desires but we do eventually get to see some of the sunspots which is pretty cool.  Mike has an eight-inch mirror, so we can’t see the corona;  but that’s okay.  Marilyn even manages to get a photo!  Mike will be holding another viewing session tonight for Saturn and some other heavenly bodies.  He suggests coming between 10:30 and 11:00 but warns that the moon is pretty bright and will wash out most of the sky.  We won’t be able to see the Milky Way.  He also tells us that the Park Service is working on getting Glacier declared a “Dark Skies” site.  The National Park Conservancy will help to pay for the new lights which will only cast their beams downward, instead of scattering light pollution everywhere.  They also helped buy the larger telescope inside, which will be used tonight.

Mike lives in Ronan and comes up for a week at a time to volunteer his services.

We start down the Going to the Sun road to get back to our cabin and there are cars stopped in the road in front of us.  In Yellowstone this always means there are animals to be seen;  but this is the first time we’ve had it happen here in Glacier.  As they start to move on, we can see a young coyote loping along the edge of the road.  We stop as he cuts in front of us and zig zags from one side of the road to the other, finally coming back to our side and running into the woods, only to re-emerge for another photo op before finally disappearing.  We are pretty worried about him.  He looks too young to be on his own and his behavior suggests that he doesn’t really know anything about cars and people.

Poor little guy!

Back at Rising Sun we stop at the front desk to get another bottle of body wash and to ask Carly for a bread knife.  I tell her that the bar soap with the built-in soap dish is great but only if the person who uses it first puts that side down.  Ours is now welded to the sink.  She laughs and says she’s never heard that one before and heads to the kitchen.  I heard her laughing in the kitchen and she comes back with one of the silverware packets, saying to just take the whole thing.   I also get more ice and tell the about our coyote.  She is excited because she hasn’t seen one yet and this guy is nearby!

Lunch is PBJ and cheddar jalapeno chips. We only have half an hour to make and eat lunch before we leave to return to St. Mary’s Lodge to catch the Jammer bus at 4:15.  We arrive in plenty of time but there seems to be some confusion as to where we are supposed to be.  Our paperwork, which we were smart enough to bring with us, says the Lodge.  There is a bus there already and his manifest says we are supposed to be picked up at Rising Sun.  That sure would have been more convenient instead of driving five miles to the Lodge!  There is a family of five in the same predicament and we are all assured that someone will pick us up.  The driver of that first bus in quite put out and demands to see our paperwork, as though we can’t read “St. Mary Lodge” and might mistake it for “Rising Sun”.  It later develops that there are still some kinks to be worked out with Xanterra’s take over of all the concessions in the park.

We get to spend a lot of time chatting the MaryAnn and her family while waiting for our bus.  Marilyn has already gone to the front desk to call and complain, and to make sure that we aren’t standing around for nothing.

 About 4:45 our bus finally appears.  Lisa is our “jammer” and we couldn’t have been luckier!!  By the end of the trip we are so happy that we forgive everyone for the frustrating reservations screw-up!

Waiting for the traffic which is stopped for the road construction.

 Lisa is a “recovering science teacher” and knowledge of the geology and flora and fauna of the park is quite impressive!  And she has a great sense of humor.  Whenever the bus stops we are allowed to “prairie dog” which means we can pop our heads up through the top of our “topless” bus to luck around.  The buses are the original ones with oak frames covered with steel.  The canvas top is rolled back and the seats hold three or four people.  Marilyn, MaryAnn and I are in “The M Row”!

She tells us that Two Dog Flats is so named because the herders used to graze their sheep there and in the freezing winters they would put two of the sheep dogs in their sleeping bags with them!  She tells us the story of Wild Goose Island.  It seems two young lovers eloped because their families disapproved of their relationship.  They spent their honeymoon on the island and when their fathers found out the began paddling out to retrieve their wayward offspring.  The kids prayed to the Great Spirit, asking that they never be parted, and with a huge bolt of lightening and crash of thunder the young lovers were turned into geese and flew away.  Geese mate for life, so they would not part, and to this day there is a pair of wild geese on the island!

Wild Goose Island

Here's Lisa;  we're waiting for the traffic light to change!

There is a stretch of road in Many Glaciers with road signs that all say “Rough Road”.  The jammers want to take a maker and make them say, “Rough Road”, “Rougher Road”, “Roughest Road” and “No Road!”.

She explains the Law of Superposition and talks about the Lewis Overthrust and clears up the definition of a glacier as differentiated from an ice field – 25 acres in surface area, 100 feet in thickness, and it moves.  She says to look at your fingernails.  They are moving at about the same speed!  Never heard that analogy before!

Lisa in teacher mode

Part of the construction equipment is a water truck, used to keep down the dust.  When one of those approaches us with his sprayer going full force it looks like we will get soaked!  He only turns it off nanoseconds before he passes us and Lisa says he loves to terrorize the jammers!

Jackson Glacier

We see lots of waterfalls and seeps, and both the Jackson and Blackfoot Glaciers on our way to Logan Pass.  When we pull into the parking lot there are people lining the wall at the end of the lot.  Lisa goes against company policy and drops us off there because there are four big-horned sheep less than twenty-five feet away!!  We have half an hour to check out Logan Pass;  but since we did that yesterday we spend the entire half hour shooting the sheep.  

What do you think he's saying?

Beauty everywhere you look!

Mr. Coyote off for a run in the opposite direction from our moving bus.

There was some head butting going on as they argued over some choice munching territory.  A ranger comes along to remind us that we are supposed to be twenty-five yards from the wildlife (and one hundred yards from the bears) but since we are all being “haved” and the sheep chose to be close to us, she lets us stay.  But she stays to keep an eye on us!  She says they are enjoying the salt found in urine.

That guy in the back is part of my "animal tongues" series!

As we're leaving Logan Pass, the sheep decide to cross the road in front of us.

On the way back down, Lisa tells us a bit about the history of the red busses.  They are painted that distinctive red color because the original owner, a hundred years ago, loved the color of the berries on the mountain ash.

As for picking flowers in the park, Lisa shares a cautionary tale. A woman had a handful of wildflowers she had picked and she asked a park ranger what they were. He studied her a moment and said, "They're the fifty-dollar kind"!  They don't take kindly to people disturbing anything that grows in the park!

She explains that the third drainage pattern which we heard about at the continental divide, actually goes to Hudson Bay, flowing north.  She teases the young man in the shotgun seat throughout the trip.  His name is Adam and he is an aeronautical engineering major at Iowa State.  He hopes to work for Space-X.  There are several other college students on the bus and she asks them questions about the park and geology.  She also tells us that there used to be one hundred and twenty-five glaciers in the park but now there are only twenty-five, and that scientists are now saying they may all be gone by 2020, not 2030 as it says on the park’s displays.

Roadside waterfall through the "roof" of the Red Bus.

There is a lot more; but I’m on information overload (and I’ll bet you are, too!)  At the end of the trip everyone gives her a round of applause and agree that she is the best!  Lisa says that Johnson’s RV Park is a good place to see sunrise (as she says, that’s 5:30 AM – as in Morning!) and that their café is good for family-style meals and breakfast.  She also recommends Two Sisters for dinner if you want to have a drink with your meal.  She says to tell John that Lisa sent us and that he should “take a load off”.

Be sure to read the roof!

Sounds good to us!  It’s just four miles down the road.  We arrive about the same time as MaryAnn’s family! We have huckleberry margaritas while we wait for a table to come open, sitting outside in the breeze.  Once seated we order a mushroom ragout (crimini, oyster and shitaki mushrooms with baby bok choy and red peppers in a wine sauce.  There is a charge for sharing but our waitress, Rachel, doesn’t bring us a second plate so we won’t have to pay it!  Since we split our dinner we have room for huckleberry swirl cheesecake!  So decadent!

Sunset is starting.  We'll go up to the ridge at Johnson's RV Park and check that out.

Sunset!

And that pesky moon that will wash out our night sky!

We get home in time to download our pictures and rest up a bit before returning to the visitors’ center around ten forty-five for the astronomy show.  

I can't shoot through the telescope, so I have to be content with a photo of the moon.

We get to see Saturn’s rings and learn some Greek mythology along with constellation names, and see a turquoise binary star whose twin in creamy white.  We’re beat.  Time to head home, shower and collapse.

* Check tomorrow’s blog for the actual events!!