Today is our last day in Glacier.  We decided to do one last hike out at Many Glacier area.  Since it is just Rich and I, we decided to take it easy.  I didn’t sleep well last night, so unfortunately Rich was up earlier than he would have liked.  We were lying in bed comparing train sounds.  Exciting, right?  Rich says that the sound that comes from far away and builds must be a turbine engines.  There is a whistling sound and then what sounds like a tornado coming in.  I heard a couple of old style trains with the normal rumble last night.  Rich is probably right about those different engines.

We got our stuff together and headed out to breakfast.  Luna’s did a fine job yesterday, so we decided to do a repeat.  Rich went for the Denver omelet and I got just standard bacon and eggs.  The coffee was good and the waiter was talkative.  We enjoyed our start to the day and then headed out on my favorite road.

On the way out, Rich was still deciding where to go.  We talked about a couple of different trails.  One of these was to the Swiftcurrent Fire Tower.  After hearing the mileage, I explained he would have to get Alex or Zerah to do that with him.  My Dad was famous for his pronunciation of certain words.  Fire tower is one of these.  It actually came out more like “faar taar”.  We come up with reasons to say fire tower just to pronounce it that way.

We can tell the newcomers to the road now.  They drive it slow and unsure.  I know every bump, dip, and turn now.  The one rule the newcomers don’t know how to handle is the turnout.  If you are going slowly and there is traffic behind you, you are expected to take the turnout and let everyone by.  Most of the visitors on the road don’t use this.  Then they wonder why everyone passes them in a hurry.  Big thanks to those people who do use it!  We love you!

We had to cruise at 30 miles at an hour forever on the main road to St. Mary’s.  I was finally able to get around the guy at the head of the pack and get up to speed once we were out of town.  I really like going 70 mph and not the enforced 30 of the temporary visitors.

We took the turnoff to Many Glacier and caught up with another slow car.  The line to enter the gate here was pretty long.  Luckily, most of them had passes and could just spend a couple of minutes.  There was a caravan of 5 cars that each had to pay and talk to the ranger.  Too bad the rangers don’t have time to teach each visitor the proper park etiquette.

I overheard someone at Logan’s Pass complaining how some people treat the park.  I saw a lot of that today.  Let’s start with the man and woman picking wildflowers at will!  Come one, this isn’t your backyard.  Kids are allowed to run wild and rampage over the sensitive areas of the park.  Not to mention putting themselves into dangerous situations.  The use of turnouts could be part of the instruction as well.

Oh well, back to today’s blog.  We ended up following a large van creeping very slowly through the park.  I overheard them at the gate saying it was their first visit.  That figures.  We could almost to the Many Glacier Hotel when a juvenile grizzly bear appeared on the far left side of the road.  This was my very first grizzly!  The bear calmly sauntered in front of the van to the other side of the road.  The van stopped and wouldn’t continue forward.  This is what’s known as a bear jam.  I waved and waved at the guy to keep moving.  He finally pulled up where we could see the bear, but any good photographs weren’t possible at that point.  Darn van!

I managed to pass the van and head down to the Swiftcurrent Pass trail just on the other side of the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn.  Amazingly, I got a parking spot right at the trailhead.  We suited up and hit the trail.  Rich had decided to go back to Redrock Falls, which was 1.8 miles back.  We had done this hike back in 2003 with Rick.  He was Andy at that time.  The trail was fairly level with some high ridges.  The climbs were terrible, but did hurt the calves a bit.

We passed an older lady with a cane who was making her way up the trail.  I figured it was going to take her a little bit.  Most of the other traffic consisted of younger family and one group of college age or a little older.  They were moving a lot faster than we were.  We met one guy who told us he had seen a bull moose up the trail.  Turns out, this was a whole lot further than we had planned to go.

We reached Redrock Lake and could see the falls at the other end.  At least we knew where we were headed this time.  We walked the steep hills down to the falls.  This is a multi-layered attraction that came spilling down over dark red rocks.  They were almost blackish red.  This all really stood out with the environment around them.  We walked around and around taking pictures from different angles.  There were just so many ways to see this set of running streams.

We rested a while enjoying the view before it was time to head back. On the way, Rich was doing his best John Lee Hooker yodel.  It sounds more like a serious of grunts than yodeling.  I have to take Rich’s word on this.  He was doing this to make sure the bears knew he was there.  From the grunting, I seriously thought this would attract more bears than drive them away.

We made it back to the trailhead in good time.  We didn’t let a little 250 foot gain hold us back.  We walked up to the motor inn and sat on the front porch for a while.  Rich had gotten coffee and we just kicked back.  There was a guy talking to his wife in what sounded like German.  He was rattling off all kinds of things and she just nodded.  There tend to be a lot of foreign tourists in the park.  I’ve heard French, Japanese, German, and a couple of languages I was sure about.  Then there are kids from other countries who come to work in the park to be in the U.S.  I don’t think they get to see too much.

After taking a breather and pretending we belong at the inn, we headed back to “the crib” as Rich calls it.  I needed to pick up and clean up from the Zurek clan.  We started to pack our things and get ready to move tomorrow.

Then we both started hearing the dinner bell ring.  Not literally though.  Rich made an executive decision to return to the Whistlestop Restaurant for BBQ.  The food was really good and we could get beer again.  We got seated and ended up with the same waitress we had the other day.  I got a BBQ pork sandwich with homemade potato chips.  It was really good.  Rich went for the Buffalo burger.  His beer of choice was the Dancing Trout.  At one point, the waitress stopped to tell Rich that this was formerly known as Trout Slayer.  But because they sponsored trout habitats in Montana, they had to change their name and logo.  That explains the cheap Trout Slayer shirt I bought a couple of days ago.  The t-shirt is already vintage!  Oh yeah, we stayed for pie.  I got huckleberry again while Rich got lemon meringue.

Back at “the crib,” we got all of stuff together.  But the rain finally arrived after threatening to descend on us all afternoon.  Packing the car can wait until tomorrow.

So tomorrow, we leave the U.S. and enter the Canadian side of the International Peace Park.  Our destination is Watertown Lakes.  I can’t wait to see it and hike a bit.