Another cold and rainy day in Glacier National Park. This morning we drove the van around the south end of the park, along the Theodore Roosevelt highway to East Glacier. We stopped in at the historic Glacier Park Lodge – it was built in 1913 and the lobby interior is really something to see. When they built the place they used sixty Douglas firs and cut them into pillars, each 40 feet long and around 40 inches in diameter. The effect is stunning. It looks fake, but the manager assured us that each pillar is original and retains its real bark.
We continued up the road to the Two Medicine area. On the way is Running Eagle Falls, named for a Blackfeet woman warrior. For the best view of the waterfall, you have to cross a narrow little bridge. The waterfall is also called “trick falls” because there are actually two water sources – a typical waterfall spills out over the top, but there is also an underground chute of water that comes pouring out from behind the main cascade about midway down. If you look closely at the photo, you can see it.
It wasn’t much further to the Two Medicine campground, where we’ll be staying for the night. We are literally (in my best Chris Farley voice) “in a van down by the river”. (I’ve been waiting four weeks for a suitable opportunity to use that line.)
Our Moon guidebook told us that if we really wanted to see bears, we should camp in either loop A or loop C of the campground, so that’s what we did. Within the first half hour, we were rewarded with our first grizzly sighting of the week, just across the river from our campsite.
We are now sitting in the driver and passenger seats of the van with our binoculars and camera at the ready to spot more of them. Kevin is kind of hoping that there will be a bear parade through the campground later this evening. There’s a meadow just behind our campsite that he says looks like prime bear stomping grounds. I’d rather the bears stick to the other side of the river at a safe distance. Guess who’ll be wearing the bear bell for any late-night bathroom breaks?
Update: Well, the bear parade started just two hours after I wrote this post. I noticed out the window that a car was slowly driving past our van with its windows rolled down and a telephoto lens aimed at that meadow. Note that I didn’t see the actual bear, at first – even though it was three times the size of any dog and only a hundred feet from the van – just the people with the camera. (I am the worst wildlife spotter ever.) But it was just like Kevin called it – there was indeed a grizzly (probably the same one) stomping right through that meadow. In fact, it had probably shuffled right past our van to get there only we weren’t paying attention. Anyway, it stood up on its hind legs for a moment (cool!), then casually ambled across the road, and finally ran off into the woods in the middle of the campground. Rangers came and circled for two hours, trying to find where he went and herd him back across the river, but they didn’t have any luck. We are now keeping a vigilant watch out the windows instead of just relaxing with our books – thus ensuring that we probably won’t see another one tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment