One Last Taste of the Outdoors, Glacier Style

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Our last full day in West Glacier,  sigh.  The smoke from the fires in the adjoining states is in the air and you can both see and smell it.  We are planning a last hike on the trail that begins at Fish Creek Campgrounds, even though they are suggesting that people with respiratory difficulties stay indoors.  If it gets awful, we’ll turn back! 

At breakfast we chat with Jennifer and learn that she has lived in Montana, Texas and California and that her twenty-year old son is going to college in Washington state.

This little guy was watching us eat breakfast, through the window!

Back upstairs we sit on our semi-private patio and enjoy the scenery. Marilyn has her second cup of coffee and I have orange juice.  There are two tiny birds playing hide and seek in the trees and when they fly away, they are practically wing tip to wing tip!  So cute!

Ah well.  Enough of this lolly gagging!  Time for our last official Glacier hike!  We’re going to Rocky Point, not to be confused with the one in Tampa!  For part of the drive we are on the Inner North Fork Road and can see why people don’t take it all the way to Polebridge!  If you thought the Outer Road was rough, this one is amazing!  But we don’t have to be on it for long before we come to the trail head parking lot.  There are a couple of families preparing for the trail and we debate letting them get a good head start or trying to stay ahead of them.  The question is important because one of the little ones seems bent on setting some sort of volume and duration record!

These are my new favorite flower, they are called Ocean Spray and they are as
prevalent here as Beargrass was on the other side of the park.

The trail and nature loop take us close to Lake MacDonald and through the area that was damaged by the fire of 2003, including the Howe Ridge.  For the most part the path is wide and only has a few places with an impressive climb.  We’ve done most of the loop when it begins to rain and we decide that it might be smart to head back, since we don’t know how intense the weather might become. 

The red on the tips of this maple's leaves is a fungus called rust.

A bear did this by scratching away the bark to get to the cambium for lunch!

Beautiful Ocean Spray!

And this little gem is a Nodding Onion.

Part of the trail leads to a viewpoint from which we can see Lake MacDonald.  Even with the smoke from the fires in the neighboring states, and the impending storm, it is gorgeous!

 Along the way we encounter a family of three.  The eight-year old daughter has borrowed a back back from the Discovery Cabin with binoculars, an identification guide, and a bug catcher.  She was working for her Junior Ranger badge!  She gave her brother three geodes for his birthday!

A Douglas Fir furry cone!

Marilyn outstanding in her field - of Ocean Spray!

I told you it rained!

And they were large drops!

Huckleberries coming into season for sure.  Along the path we saw a man who was about
ten feet off the trail.  He was having a feast on them!

Back to the car and a short stop at the West Glacier Mercantile for a couple of last-minute purchases and back to the lodge for lunch.  We have those humongous burritos left and Jennifer lets us use the microwave in the kitchen to heat them up.  We have our computers and play with our pictures while we eat and we are still around when one of the three owners of the Lodge comes in.  He is here to repair our A/C (don’t laugh!  We need it cold, and we enjoy the white noise which drowns out the trains!).  We take the opportunity to sing Jennifer and Don’s praises and to compliment him on the design and décor. 

Our tummies are really full, so it seems an ideal time to go to a whiskey tasting!  There is a local distillery right down the road, Glacier Distilling, and how can we resist the call of the red barn?  Besides, it is raining, even though slightly, and we can’t hike any more!

Inside there is a swarm of people tasting, drinking, and having a blast!  We can have a flight of four whiskeys for only four dollars!  There are eleven choices so we can hit eight of them and it is not too hard to eliminate the other three.  There are whiskeys and liqueurs to sample.  Whew!  After eight little sips I’m already not too responsible!  And then we each have a cocktail!  Marilyn’s is called a Fisherman’s Direct and mine is a Tuscan Brown Bear, made with iced coffee, coffee liqueur, almond syrup and Grappa, one of their liqueurs.  And it’s topped with whipped cream!  Life is good!

The drinks are GD's version of a Bloody Mary, called a Rocky Mountain Caesar!  The
wooden holders in the front hold the little glasses for the flites

Our treats!

After ordering a few bottles of this and that, Kendra boxes up our orders and we will take them to UPS tomorrow in Kalispell, since they aren’t allowed to ship out of state.

More weather rolling in.

Everyone is hoping that the western states are getting enough rain to help the firefighters!

This is the drive to Glacier Guides Lodge.

 Back to the Lodge to see if all our worldly possessions will fit in our suitcases!  We are donating some things to Jennifer, like the bear spray, our cooler, some paper towels and other assorted food items that we didn’t finish – not too much, though.  We did a pretty good job of shopping and eating!

Finally ready for our Wild Huckleberry Wine! That's Jennifer's corkscrew.

 Now we are sitting outside enjoying the gorgeous, seventy-degree weather, drinking our huckleberry wine and blogging!  Eventually we will go to dinner and prepare to return to reality.  We have tomorrow to go to Columbia Falls which puts us that much closer to Kalispell for our six a.m. flight Tuesday morning.  While there we may go to another wine tasting and see what wonders this little town holds.

I was ready to post this when a lady from another room stopped by to chat.  She and her friend are going on a five-day hike called the Glacier Challenge.  The guides set up the tents and fix breakfast and dinner!  Sounds great until she says the hikes are from six to ten miles each day!  What makes this even more remarkable is that this sixty-year old is just three years out from chemo and has lost twenty-eight pounds!  Her friend is sixty-five and her last day's hike will be seventeen miles!  What an inspiration!

Off to dinner at the West Glacier Restaurant where Krystal is once again our waitress. She's the cutie who told us several days ago that the salads were too big to finish!  We learn that in ten days she is leaving for Nepal!  She is working on the licenses required to be a helicopter pilot, and hopes to take tourists around the park. She has three associate's degrees and plans to take a degree in tourism.

We each have a cup of Broccoli Normandy, a cream-based soup with broccoli, cauliflower and other vegetables.  We split the stir-fried veggies with chicken and even with both of us eating there is no way we can finish this endless bowl of deliciousness!  We wind up taking some home and will have it for lunch tomorrow before we hit the road for Columbia Falls.