Thursday, July 27th: 20 years in Glacier

20 years ago we got hitched!  It’s hard to believe.   A year later I became a mom and now I’m caught in this strange place of almost launching a kid who is pulling away from me more each day but will still come to me for a chat, and yet I still have a 4 year old that wants to sit on my lap at every meal and a 6 year old who’s favorite place to hike is between us, with a hand in mom’s and a hand is dad’s.  I love it.  I am really terrified of it ending.  But these trips (we did the southwest last year) have been a good way for me to start moving on a bit.  I don’t want to travel nursing or pregnant.  Travel is allowing me to remember that I have things that I still love outside of being home with the kids.  It’s hard to remember what makes you tick after 20 years in the trenches.  It’s been good to remember that there is a part of me that doesn’t need to have a baby to cuddle, or a kid to read to, although I’ll miss it if I think about it too hard, so I don’t.

Yes, it’s been a really good 20 years.  And it was really exciting to celebrate it visiting a place I’ve always wanted to visit!  Last night was a bit of a challenge to find a camping spot.  Of course, the park sites were full but we wanted to shower so we looked for an RV park rather than a dispersed site.  I called every site within a short distance to the park entrance and all of them were booked before I called the furthest (but still within 10 minutes): Chewing Black Bones Campground.  Honestly, it was really the name that turned me off.  It was my last choice when selecting from the list of options.  I mean wouldn’t it have been yours?  And it looked about just like the name would suggest. About 30 years ago it might have been a nice spot but it was in need of a major reno.  But it was reasonably priced and it was close to the park with available spots so it met all of the important criteria.  I desperately wanted a nice hot shower but, alas, it was not meant to be.  After a long stream of women showering on the one available shower (the other one only had ice cold water coursing from it), the only water left for me was also ice cold.  So it was a fast and chilling event but at least I was clean.

We didn’t manage to get ourselves a timed entry permit to enter Glacier the next morning.  During our last few hours in Canada, the border crossing and miles of remote northern Montana, we still didn’t have service so I wasn’t able to snatch a permit up during the 5pm window that evening.  They were all gone by the time I signed on.  I didn’t even try the second day.  Trying to get onto a website by 5pm is not something I can usually wrap my already highly overloaded brain around.  It’s just one too many things…

Thankfully, you can still enter the park if you get there before it opens - it just means you have to get there before 6am…which means getting up around 5am.  The kids were really excited about that idea.  However, it did lend itself to a few hours in the park before there were tons of people.  Already the parking lots were filling up.  We found our silver beast a spot and decided we would not relinquish it for the day, but instead use the shuttle buses to get from place to place. It turned out to be an excellent choice because every time we went back for snacks or a sweatshirt, etc, we were bombarded with people asking if we were leaving.  I was glad I wasn’t some of the hundreds of vehicles doing endless circles looking for spots in the cramped lots.

We decided to do the High Line Trail first and I was glad we did.  It hugs the side of a VERY steep cliff for the almost entire 16 miles.  Imagine doing that with a billion people single file.  It really is a glorious hike though.  It surrounded the ravine of the park, Logan’s Pass, the Continental Divide.  And the views of the valley and the mountains shooting up is just breathtaking.  The wildflowers that grow in abundance up and down the hills and ledges come in all kinds.  There were even huckleberries to pick and eat, which the kids definitely took advantage of.  There was actually a wire handle around the edge of the most treacherous part of the trail towards the beginning, where the incline below was only loose rock so it would be easy to slip to your death with nothing much to stop you.  Some of the other mountain sides were almost vertically down but there was vegetation.  Not much though in some spots.  I kept thinking about my experience on the Cinder Cone in Lassen at the beginning of our travels. I didn’t want another repeat of that so I kept my eyes mostly off those inclines.  Occasionally I tried it out just to see how I would do.  I never did have a freak out.  I’ll never know what exactly possessed me that day on the Cinder Cone.  There was just something about that bare, steep climb and the sharp edge… this trail had an edge but we weren’t climbing it, it just went on in a level fashion.  I think if we had been climbing I probably would have been losing it.  I carried Zip the most of the trail.  I didn’t really like the idea of a 4 year old on a cliff side…

Hidden Lake was the next trail.  We wereexcited about the possibility of seeing  Grizzlies as the lower part of the trail was closed because of bear activity - apparently they like the salmon in Hidden Lake at this time of year.  Well, we didn’t see any grizzles but we did see a lot of bighorn sheep and a mountain goat.  Zip has been having a hard time walking on her own. Poor kid I think is just so tired after all our travels and getting up so early these park days.  But I discovered that carrying her around with the Ergo no longer works.  My hips were KILLING me but at the end of the 6 or more miles that day.  Her weight just pushed it down too far and sat on all the wrong places, not to mention her ten or so extra pounds she’s put on this year.  It was a little sad to set it aside and admit that my baby was too big for me to carry on my back.  But my poor hips were doing some kind of strange dislocating kind of thing that didn’t feel too nice whenever I stepped downwards, so we traded it out for everyone gives Zippy a round of piggy backs when we can’t stand her whimpering any longer.  It seems to have worked out so far and my hips feel better after a day off.

We spent a ridiculous amount of time on the

Shuttle to get to the end of the park so the kids could swim in Lake MacDonald. We were told it was a nice place to swim by one of the park rangers, but he failed to mention the extensive construction on the road.  The lake was beautiful but water was COLD and it was enough for me to bask in the breeze coming off the water.  We wanted to see a few more things before the day was over so, much to the younger kids’ disappointment, we headed back to the shuttle stop sooner than they would have liked. But by then everyone was a nice shade of blue so it was time to warm up. 

The shuttle took its time in arriving so we stopped to ask the ranger about a few things and Abbey discovered from another tourist that a shop back towards the lake had the only smash penny machine in the park (she’s been collecting them from each park).  We wavered about what to do but since this was one of the small pleasures Abbey has gleaned from our travels as the child-who-didn’t-want-to-come, we decided to let her and Hannah run the 10 minute trail to the lake and get one before we hopped on the shuttle.  By the time our turn with the ranger was upon us, it was nearing 5pm.  When he realized through our questions that our car was parked back midway through the park an hour and a half away he warned us that we had better catch the next bus back or we would be hiking the last 25 miles, it was getting close to the last shuttle of the day.  Now we were in a bit of a dilemma.  Abbey and Hannah had just disappeared and the shuttle could arrive at any moment.  We waited and waited…. we had told them to run but there was no way to let them know we really were in a hurry since there was no cell service in the park.  We could only wait and hope they made it.

The shuttle pulled up.  We explained our situation and he advised one of us to get on and get to the van and the rest of us could catch the next bus and make it as far back as we could.  At least that way, Tim could drive down and find us.  Tim had just climbed on and the door was shutting when the girls ran in!  Phew.  We all scrambled onto the bus and breathed a sigh of relief.  We caught the last bus out at the transfer station for the night.