360 Degrees of Awesome

I love going up to Glacier National Park in the fall, after all the hotels and restaurants are closed and the crowds are gone. It's such a different feel when the place is deserted. Last weekend we drove to the Many Glacier Hotel and it was spectacular as always, even though the day was blustery.



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Scenic View Ahead

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Today you get pictures, because my cousin sent me some fabulous new ones that I have to share. This is our ranch, looking west and slightly north. Those are the Rocky Mountains, of course, with the big square one being Chief Mountain. The Canadian border runs just to the right, along his base, so Chief and everything left of him in the photo are in Glacier National Park, and everything right of him is Waterton Park in Alberta, Canada.

See the hills in the foreground, between our ranch and the mountains? That ridge is part of the Hudson's Bay Divide. It angles to the north and east, almost parallel to the Canadian border. Rain and snow melt beyond that ridge but east of the Rockies runs into the St. Mary's river, which goes north. All that moisture will get carried clear across Canada and dumped into the Hudson's Bay. Rain that falls on our side of the ridge drains into the Milk River, which dumps into the Missouri, which dumps into the Mississippi, which dumps into the Gulf of Mexico.What a difference a mile makes, huh?

Here's a slightly closer view of the home place. You can clearly see two of our most prized possessions. The first is the big red thing to the right. That's our indoor arena. Almost a must if you're serious about training horses or roping in this part of the world.

The second is the trees. Look at both pictures again. Notice how many trees you see besides the ones right behind our house. Yeah. Precious commodities out here on the barren, windswept plains. Emphasis on the windswept. It works up quite a head of steam rolling down off that mountain front. There is no quicker way to  get yourself in big trouble around here than to mess with the trees.

Just ask the porcupines. 

And in case you get the impression from these pictures that we live on a big flat plain, here's a view of the place looking south and east. It's a gain of two hundred feet in altitude from our house to that little black spot in the upper left corner of the picture, which is a pair of granaries. This ridge is the edge of a large plateau about three miles in diameter. My cousin was standing on top of it to take the first two pictures. 

So there you go...the lay of the land. 

Calling out the Cavalry

I'm not a real news hound, but it's been hard to live in the western half of the United States without being aware of the ongoing manhunt for a trio of prison escapees from Arizona and their female accomplice. After their escape, they shanghaied a pair of truck drivers and forced them to drive to New Mexico, where they then appear to have murdered a man and his wife to steal their pickup and head north.

They split up somewhere along the way, and one of the men was captured in Colorado a few days ago. The other three were spotted in the Yellowstone Park area on Sunday. This was a bit of a concern to my family, as my brother in law is working on a bridge construction project down there that requires him to show up at three o'clock in the morning. I do have to give the escapees credit, though. What better place to hide in plain sight than in the midst of throngs of cap and sunglass wearing tourists?

Yesterday the hay was finally ready to bale, the baler and tractor were both functional, and my husband was going great guns on a field over the hill and a mile west from the house. I walked out to take him supper right before dark. He said don't bother to wait up, he was going to bale as long as he could keep his eyes open. So I went home, got the kid ready for bed and was just about to hunker down myself when I heard a vehicle. I went out into the living room just in time to see a pair of taillights going west, down a track that leads to our haystacks, north pastures and eventually, the Canadian border.

Then the phone rang. My dad. The border patrol had called. One of the fugitives and his fiance/accomplice/cousin (eeuwww) had been spotted twenty miles away in St. Mary's and they were warning all residents along the adjacent Canadian line to keep their eyes open and lock their doors.

Did I mention my husband was a mile from the house, in the middle of a hayfield, alone? Without his cell phone, of course.

"Someone just came past, headed west," I told my dad.

"Are you sure it wasn't Greg?"

"I don't think so. It didn't sound like the brown pickup." As in, minus a muffler and rattling so loud you expect to find pieces of it scattered everywhere it goes. Plus, I'm pretty sure it hasn't had both taillights since we've owned it.

After a short debate, we decided Dad should call the border patrol and report the strange vehicle, while I drove out to tell Greg what was going on. It was quarter to eleven. Pitch dark. I went outside and, lo and behold, there was the brown pickup, parked in its usual spot. Oh, right. Greg was driving the newer blue Ford because he'd had to run to town for parts. I jumped in the brown pickup, which ranks amongst its few accessories a .22 rifle and full box of shells. Too bad the dome light in the pickup is broken and I am barely capable of loading the thing in the daylight.

I bounced and rattled out to the hayfield, flagged Greg down and shared the news. He sort of shrugged. I told him about the vehicle we'd seen going past.

"Oh, that was me," he said. "I forgot my flashlight at the shop."

Which was when the border patrol helicopter buzzed us. No doubt in response to my dad's call. Um, oops. But hey, excellent response time.

For complete details on the escapees: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/apArticle/id/D9HGPS5G0/

Opening Day

Well, not exactly. But close. It has become a tradition in my family that we must drive over Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park as soon as possible after it opens for the season. Preferably tailgating the last snowplow. This year it opened on a Thursday, so we were a couple of days late.

I'm fresh out of wit and humor this morning, so I'll let you just enjoy the sights.

Indian Paintbrush

Upper St. Mary's Lake

No zoom required. He was standing on the road. And the road ain't very wide. If you look close, you'll see that beyond the curb there is nothing for about a hundred feet down.

Bronze statue by Robert Scriver, outside the Babb Elementary School.

Time Out

One of the great joys of living where we do is the ability to be in Glacier National Park in an hour, which allows us to do what we just did....take a twenty four hour holiday. Which is about as much as a soul can tolerate when dragging my child along. I'll be back tomorrow with more details. For now, enjoy the spectacular view of Lake McDonald, and hop over to my alternate blog for a quick ditty about being a country school kid that I posted earlier this week:  

My Day Will Come

Slow Going

One of the things that makes winter bearable in the far north of Montana is the occasion thaw. We've been in thaw mode--over thirty five degrees every day--for the last ten days. If you've stopped by recently, you may have seen some pictures from early January that looked like this:

Ah, what a difference a week of warm weather makes. First thing this morning, the view across the same hayfield looked like this:

What? You can't see the difference? Look real close. There are patches of bare ground showing. I swear. Unfortunately, the snow that's left has either compacted into solid ice, or is packed into drifts so hard even the horses can stroll right over top:

That stuff isn't going away any time soon. Then again, you probably wouldn't want to be downstream if it all melted at once. It also helps to remind yourself that a few months from now we'll have grass like this thanks to all that snow:

The Expedition

I am not a huge history buff, but it’s impossible to live in the upper plains or the northwest and not know about Lewis and Clark. There are Lewis and Clark caverns and Lewis and Clark festivals. I drive from our ranch to Browning on Meriwether Road, named after Meriwether Lewis. Just south of here is the Marias River, named after William Clark’s niece, and we cross the Rocky Mountains through Marias Pass to get to the Clark’s Fork River. (Yes, it’s supposed to be Mariah’s. No, history maniacs, we are not spending a few hundred grand to put apostrophes on all the signs.)

Point being, the Lewis and Clark expedition was a big deal. But since some of the people who read this blog are foreigners from places like Australia and Ireland and Alabama and New York City, I thought I should start with a brief history lesson.

After the US did some bartering with France and acquired a small acreage known as the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were hired by Thomas Jefferson to map it. They were also trying to find an all water route to ship stuff across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. They headed up the Mississippi River from St. Louis in 1804 with a crew of eleven men.

Along the way, they picked up a Frenchman named Toussaint Charbonneau and his Indian wife, Sacajawea. Her job was to act as interpreter between the explorers and the various Indian tribes. She had been kidnapped from the Shoshone, who lived near the mountains in what is now southern Montana. They supposedly knew the best way to get across the continental divide.

Basically, Sacajawea was the only one in the whole expedition who had a clue where they were going.

She did her job well. They made it clear to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific coast. Then they came back. In all, the trip took two years and they lost only one member of the expedition…to a burst appendix. Not bad, considering your guide is a teenaged girl packing a newborn baby.

On the whole trip, there was only one small skirmish with the indigenous tribes. Lewis got into a scrap with the Blackfeet, at a place he later named Camp Disappointment, which is about 30 miles from my house as the eagle flies. I like to tell people my ancestors were the only ones smart enough to figure out an infestation of white men wasn't going to turn out well for them.

It's also possible they were just cranky.

A few years back, several members of my family were visiting Two Medicine Lake. Two Medicine River flows east out of the lake. A mile or so downstream, it drops over Running Eagle Falls.

Sometimes.

The river bed is a jumble of rock left behind by the huge sheets of ice that formed Glacier National Park. When the river is high with snowmelt, it flows over the top of the falls. Later in the summer, as the water level drops, the river sinks into the porous rock and shoots out of a tunnel in the middle of the falls, like so:

Someone told my mother you could hike from the lake to the falls and see where the river disappeared. On the map, it looked simple. No more than a mile, maybe a mile and a half.

“Let’s go,” my mother said, and set off, leading the way.

September in Glacier National Park can be fickle. And dangerous. The grizzlies are power-feeding their way toward hibernation. Snow squalls can pop up without warning. No one on the impromptu expedition had any survival gear. Or even a water bottle. But heck, it was only a mile to falls and there is a parking lot just beyond where one member of the party would be waiting with the car. They’d barely get out of sight of the Two Medicine campground and they’d be there.

They hiked. And hiked some more. The sky clouded over. The wind turned cold. They stumbled along the river bank over rocks and logs and what looked suspiciously like fresh bear poop.

“Maybe we should go back,” someone suggested.

“No, no,” my mom said. “It has to be around this next bend.”

They hiked around that bend. And the next. And the next. It started to snow. Some of the piles of bear poop were still steaming.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go back?” someone asked.

“Not now,” my mother said. “We’re almost there.”

The snow was coming down in earnest, blanketing the rocks and making the footing treacherous. Huddled in their light jackets, icy hands stuffed in their pockets, they straggled along single file, heads bowed, faces grim.

From somewhere near the back of the line, a voice piped up. “You know, Lewis and Clark weren't so tough. They were just following a hard-headed Indian woman.”

Spontaneous Confusion

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I’ve heard it said that overplanning is the death of spontaneity. If that’s the case, spontaneity will never expire at the hands of my family.

Yesterday we met my sister and her husband at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. Our original plan (yes, we did have one) was relatively simple. Meet at a campground, have a picnic lunch, then we—me, my husband, son and parents—would lounge and play on the beach while they—sis and husband—went scuba diving in an underwater forest. Then maybe we’d go for a hike.

 It rained. It always rains when I go to Lake McDonald. My most vivid memory of the place is ruining a brand new pair of leather moccasins when I was a kid because it rained the whole time we were there and I hadn’t thought to bring along any other shoes. We had our picnic, huddled around the table with one eye on the clouds and the other on the increasingly aggressive waves. Just as we polished off the last of the chicken, the clouds let loose.

We grabbed up our stuff and ran for the cars. So much for Plan A. We wandered down to Lake McDonald Lodge and chased the boy child out of the gift shop and away from the piano and out of the huge fireplace and away from the electric organ and out of the restaurant and off of the balcony and down the guest hallways and out of the flower planters and away from the pop machine. Just at the point where we were debating whether to give up and go home or drive clear to Columbia Falls to toss the kid in the motel pool, the rain stopped. Time to go hiking.

 I grabbed a map. Later, it was suggested that it might have been a good idea to grab several maps. Being the grabber, I was mostly concerned that I knew where I was. The rest were on their own.

 We studied the nearby trails and determined that the one most suited to our varied ages and levels of enthusiasm was one called John’s Lake Loop. In addition to the tiny lake, the trail skirted McDonald Creek and dipped past two waterfalls, all in a short three miles. Perfect. The loop was down the road from the lodge. A couple of minutes in a car, or a short hike, according to my map. My sister and I opted for the hike. The others piled in the cars.

 And here’s where it all started to fall apart.

 My husband pointed out—after the fact, of course—that is it generally advisable to consult the little scale thing in the corner of the map that indicates miles per inch (or in this case, half inch) to determine the actual distance. We went with ‘it doesn’t look far’. We hiked. And we hiked. And we hiked some more. Just at the point where we decided we had somehow zipped right past the stupid loop and the stupid parking lot and even the stupid lake, we finally came to the intersection of the trails. Straight ahead led to the lake. Left and down the hill to the parking lot. We went down.

Approximately three minutes, it turned out, after my parents took the other fork.

We found my brother in law asleep in one car, my husband chasing the boy child up and down the hillside to keep him out of traffic, and my parents nowhere in sight. “They got tired of waiting and went ahead to the lake,” my husband said. “How did you miss them?” I should probably reiterate that I was still the only person with a map.

 My sister went to wake up her husband. My little family decided to head around the loop in the opposite direction from the lake, toward the downstream waterfall, because we figured that was the outer limit of how far the boy would hike before insisting on ‘a ride’, despite the fact that he is capable of running non-stop for forty-five minutes inside the house and does so nightly.

So off we went—husband plus child plus me plus map. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to ask my sister where she planned to go before we left.

We took our time, strolling along, stopping to watch a woodpecker that was incredibly fascinating to a four year old and almost as fascinating to his mother, figuring there was no rush because my parents were going around the loop the other way and we’d have to meet eventually. When my sister didn’t catch up, we assumed they’d gone after my parents. We reached the waterfall. Admired it, took pictures of it, repeatedly snatched the boy back from the twenty foot cliff above it. No sign of parents or sister.

When our nerves had had all they could take of the waterfall, we herded the boy back down the nice trail that ran well back from the edge of the creek. At the bridge, we stopped to admire the view, enjoy the sun that was now shining, and drag the boy down from the railing half a dozen times.

After twenty minutes or so, my sister and her husband came strolling along. Yes, they’d reached the lake. No, they hadn’t caught up with our parents. Lacking a map, they’d been uncertain which trail went on around the loop to the waterfalls, so they turned back. “No problem,” I said. “It’s a loop. They have to come by here eventually.”

 After another fifteen minutes of watching the boy whack his uncle with the stick they’d rigged up for a fishing pole and attempt to throw large rocks and himself into the water, we decided it was probably time to revert to the tried and true rodeo family failsafe plan. The one that had gotten all six of us home from every one of the hundreds of rodeos we went to when we were all young enough to still travel with Mom and Dad. Namely, go back to the truck and wait until everyone shows up.

 Which was where we found our parents. Who had gone around the loop. Just not the same loop we were on because it turns out John’s Lake Loop is divided down the middle by a trail that cuts back to the parking lot and bypasses the waterfall and the bridge where we were waiting. They’d gone to the upper waterfall, then turned back because, yes, you guessed it, they didn’t have a map and weren’t sure where that other trail went.

 As far as we could tell, at one point in time my sister and her husband were waiting at the lake while my parents waited at the upper falls and we waited at the lower falls. I’d say we managed to blanket the area pretty well. Imagine what we could have accomplished if the other two thirds of the family had been there.

So How Was Your Day?

I spent my afternoon on the Going to the Sun highway in Glacier National Park. It's about two hours from our house to the top of Logan Pass. Along the way, we ran across a few of the locals:

(click on the photos to get a full screen view)

That's a baby mountain goat, in case you weren't sure. We also saw a black bear, but there was too much traffic to stop and take pictures.

For those of you who asked, back when we were butt deep in snow, why we live here...now you know.

Chief is on the Warpath

Hard to imagine that this blog has been in existence for nearly two months and this is the first picture of Chief Mountain I've posted. Chief is the square one in the center of the picture. Together with his neighbors, he forms the eastern face of Glacier National Park. I wish my camera did it justice. When you're standing where I was standing, the mountains are about twice as close as they look in this picture. Then again, when you're standing where I was standing and Chief Mountain looks like this, you'd better have a firm hold on your hat. And maybe a fence post. We call those wind clouds. And take note of the wispier stuff around the mountains themselves. Those aren't clouds, folks. That's blowing snow.