Glacier National Park

As you may have guessed, we've been gone this past week off to the north country. Last Monday, the day after a grand birthday (our son and me)/Father's Day (early) celebration at our daughter and son-in-law's condo, we hopped in the car and headed for Glacier National Park. When we'd gone about as far as Ellensburg, we realized that despite our checklist, we'd forgotten our camera. Turning around was out of the question, so when we got to Spokane, we stopped at Target and purchased a stand-in, not a very fancy one, but adequate for everything but closeups. As a result, we arrived at our destination an hour later than planned.

So far this summer, the weather has been unusually chilly and rainy in Glacier, like it has been here in Bellevue. On Wednesday though it was relatively clear, so we decided to drive to East Glacier. (The "Going to the Sun" highway isn't open yet, and folks were saying that it probably won't open until mid-July, about a month later than normal!) All the streams were running high with lots of cascading waterfalls along the road.

Look at all the snow!

Since 1936, these red touring cars have been taking visitors to the various points of interest in the park. Aren't they cute?

We were greeted on this trail, glad that our greeter wasn't a bear.

We saw another deer off the road at a helipad and some mountain goats off in the distance further down the road.

With our binoculars and spotting scope we could see about 15 goats perched on this cliff. They are certainly sure-footed! Oh, how we missed our good camera to take a closeup of these tiny white spots that are really mountain goats!

Despite the chilly weather, we saw lots of flowers. Fields of glacier lilies and shooting stars were everywhere along with heart-leaf arnica.
arnica
shooting stars
On our last day in the park, we hoped for a nice day to hike to Avalanche Lake which takes off right where the road is closed. Well, it rained hard, and all we managed was the nature trail.

This is my Morton Salt Girl moment!

On Friday we left the park and headed for Libby, Montana, to visit a high school friend of Dick's whom he hadn't seen for 50 years! More about that later, I need to go do some laundry!