Miles 3099-3215: Glacier National Park
This morning, I woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs. I had one of Tyler’s famous waffles; Jackson had one yesterday and it looked delicious. It was. I sat talking with Mark and Tyler for a while. When I came back upstairs, I was informed that the young Mr. Farmer had commanded quiet until 9:00 sharp so he could get his beauty sleep. I read until the young master had eaten and prepared for his day hiking. We got into the park around 11:30 and stopped by the visitor’s center for pins and stickers. We were planning to do the Avalanche hike, but when we drove by, there were no parking spots. We kept driving on the Into-the-Sun Road through the park. It was beautiful; Glacier has a lot of different environments/landscapes: mountains, deep forests, big lakes, waterfalls, and cold snow-melt streams, and of course, glaciers (we didn’t see any today). I apologize in advance for how many pictures I took; every view was so beautiful that I had to take a picture. None of the pictures or anything I could describe could come close to Glacier, or for that matter, any of the national parks we’ve been through. We could have been in South America at some points; how humid it was and the forests were almost like rain-forests in some ways, so thick and wet and quiet.
We drove up to Logan Pass in between two mountains. The visitor’s center there was so crowded that we couldn’t park. We turned around to head back toward the Avalanche hike and stopped for our packed lunch on the way. There was a parking spot, so we started the hike. It was 4.6 miles, so I thought “two hours, max”. I was right, but it didn’t seem like it because it took about one hour, twenty minutes on the front half and forty minutes on the back half, because of the elevation changes. We hiked to Avalanche Lake, which was really beautiful, with the mountains and some waterfalls/snow-melt streams in the background.
We hiked back to the car, but before we left, Jackson and I (mostly me) waded in a creek. It was really cold, but felt good. We left the park and went into a gift shop right outside the park entrance. Jackson got a t-shirt and I got a sweatshirt. We picked up pizza from Jersey Boy’s Pizzeria, with salad and garlic parmesan wings. We took it back to the hotel and ate at a table in the lobby. Tyler sat with us while we ate and we talked about the best things to do in Glacier tomorrow. We’re going on a longer hike tomorrow. We came back up to the room and here I am now.
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”