September 2019 trip: Glacier NP

All three of us–E, J, and me–have memories of being taken to Glacier National Park when we were kids, and it had been on our planned itinerary from the start. We were able to keep it in our revised itinerary, so we headed east on Highway 2 toward Kalispell, where we spent two nights so we could do a day trip in Glacier. The drive over was beautiful, enhanced by seeing blue sky for the first time since Saturday, but I didn’t stop to take pictures.

I stayed in a private CG along the Flathead river that was quite nice. First on the agenda was setting up for the night–I set things up as though expecting rain, largely for the practice, since chances were we would get rained on at some point before getting home, but those clouds made me feel less foolish about this (as it transpired) unnecessary effort.

The red peeking out from under the tarp is Scamp’s crate, which I put out so she’d have a shelter in the morning. She sleeps in the van, but is still too puppyish to be confined in there when I’m having my tea and dealing with cats and such in the morning, so I tie her outside where she can get into the crate if she wants to. Which she often does.

The next morning Scamp and I made our way under the highway that crosses the river right there and found good off-leash walking. She also found a stick somewhere on this rocky shore . . .

. . .which honestly astonished me–where the heck did she get it? But since she had it, I threw it in the river for her a few times.

E&J picked me and Scamp up in their car for the trip into Glacier. We stopped for lunch just before heading into the park at a rather large but nicely done tourist lodge that was still open (just beginning to close things down for the season). The food was good but way too much, so Scamp got my leftovers.

She does good work–plate now ready for the dishwasher.

I almost left my ipad there–panicked when I couldn’t find it, but it was right where I’d left it–on the counter, not the table but the counter where we ordered, in the restaurant. What with conversation and Scamp, I didn’t even miss it until we were getting ready to leave.

Now we’re inside the park. Jo indulged me by stopping a few times so I could jump out and grab a picture or two.

As we got further in, the road got more crowded and stopping spots harder to come by. Nonetheless, I got a couple of shots of them at a couple of different stops.

The park is still beautiful, but is very different from my memories of it. Back in the day, as they say, there were what I consider actual glaciers there. Large, close to the roads and visitors centers, persisted throughout the year, and we could and did walk out onto them. No more, at least not on the roads I’ve taken in the past several years. Park rangers insist there are still some in the back country, and there were a few bits of persistent snow in shaded areas on some of the peaks, but they don’t really compare.

E&J insisted that any snowbank that persists year-round counts as a glacier, and they are probably right, but it doesn’t seem quite right to me to call those little white dots up there glaciers. Even though they probably are, officially.

Took just a couple of pictures at this stop.

But things got much more spectacular as we climbed. Took a lot at this stop, and had to remind myself to stop taking more and more shots of the same scene. With only limited success.

A couple of times I managed to turn my camera the other way, across the road instead of out over the valley.

More spectacularity.

As you can see, I had a hard time choosing whether to zoom in or out or do a panorama or . . ., so tried them all . The scenery strikes you anew every time you turn around, and the temptation is to try to capture it all.

Eventually we made it up to the top. I took Scamp out for a short walk around the parking lot while Jo got her scooter out. Not much to see from the parking lot, but if you look closer to, there is still beauty worth capturing.

Jo and I headed up the trail, which is paved and intended to be accessible, and that turned into a bit of an adventure. E opted to stay in the car.

Jo’s scooter is fairly powerful, and she had a fresh charge on the battery, and it started up the incline with confidence. However at the first turn, the longer, less-steep branch was blocked off (I later learned it was because of bear activity, but I tend to get annoyed when prevented from going where I want to go for no apparent reason, so I was not happy.) The alternative was quite steep, so I called down to warn Jo, but she had faith and persisted–and her scooter died about halfway up that section. I was in front and didn’t realize until I got to the top . . .

. . . that she wasn’t with me, so I hurried back to see what the problem was. I found Jo on her stalled scooter, surrounded by three men, which soon became about six, trying to help her. She was maintaining her cool, calmly telling them what they could do. The problem is that the scooter has no brakes when it has no motor, which I personally consider a major safety issue because of situations exactly like this one. The men helped her down to a level section, holding the scooter with her on it back so it didn’t run out of control. I watched this operation awhile, but decided she had plenty of help for now, and hurried back up to the top to grab a few more pictures before returning to her to do my bit.

When you zoom in, the snowbanks do look a bit like glaciers to me, though nothing like 50-60 years ago. Climate change is happening whether people want to admit it or not.

When I got back to Jo, she was waiting –calmly, as far as I could tell–and knew what the problem was and what we needed to do to fix it. The scooter had blown a fuse, but she had a spare fuse and a wrench of the correct size to open things up to replace it. Should be simple, to my mind, changing a fuse, but nope–it’s a middling major operation. First you have to remove the seat, and then . . .but I’ll tell you about “then” when I get to it. She and I tried for 10-15 minutes to get the seat off, but we couldn’t manage it and finally gave up and decided the thing to do was to get her back to the car. But even though the lower section of the trail was much less steep than where the scooter blew the fuse, I knew I couldn’t be her brakes all by myself, so started looking for some official help. Since there was no cell service up there, this meant running around looking for someone in a uniform. Ha! None to be found. Picture me running around not quite like a chicken with its head cut off but getting there, circling the parking lot two or three times in increasing anxiety, asking people if they’d seen a park ranger anywhere (no). Somewhere in there I stopped by their car to let E know what was going on, though he’s also mobile only with the aid of a scooter and couldn’t help with the immediate need (being a human brake for Jo.) Eventually I asked the driver of a sightseeing bus that had just pulled in, and he directed me to the entrance of the parking lot, where there was indeed a helpful young man in a uniform. Who called another (less young but equally helpful), and between the two of them, they helped her down the trail and all the way to the car.

So, we were all there, in the car, and ready to figure out how to cope with the scooter crisis. Which had become an even bigger deal. I no longer remember at what point I remembered to go back to fetch the fuse and wrench, which I had carefully set aside when we were trying to remove the seat so I wouldn’t step on the spare fuse, but when I did–it had disappeared. Someone had taken it. Who knows why, though I still think negative thoughts about whoever it was.

The first step was to drive down to where we could get a cell signal so Jo could call her scooter guy–with whom she is on a first-name basis–and find out what kind of fuse was required and where one might be obtained. Needless to say, there is no scooter dealer in the area who could take care of the situation for us. We ended up driving back down to where we had lunch, and I walked Scamp around while Jo made many phone calls–first to the scooter guy to find out the details on the fuse and the exact wrench needed, and then to several hardware stores. Eventually she located a hardware store in Columbia Falls that didn’t have one on hand, but could have one there first thing in the morning. At this point, life–and continuing the trip–began to seem doable. To me–as near as I could tell, Jo had been confident we’d cope all along.

So, we now had a plan. They would drive back up to Columbia falls and buy the fuse and wrench in the morning, then back down to meet me; we would then replace the fuse together, and carry on. We also had to figure out the logistics of getting both her and E up to their room and back again in the morning, which we eventually did. By the time we got back to their hotel, it was getting late (for me–past both wine and supper time) and I was tired and getting hungry (AKA, low blood sugar), so I was neither as bright nor as sweet-tempered (heh) as I would prefer, but we all coped that evening with no blood shed, metaphorical or otherwise.

Once back to the CG, where I fed critters and wined and dined and restored body and spirit, I took Scamp for an evening walk around the CG. The blessing to the whole situation was that walk, which was later than usual; the moon was just coming up full, a beautiful gold color, and reflected beautifully on the river. The pictures only partially capture the effect.

Obviously we were successful the next morning in fixing the scooter, but I’ll leave you with the above, and tell the details in the next post.