The Journey is the Thing: Day 28 - Glacier National Park

Our site at Glacier

Ruth turned 14 today. We had french toast for breakfast. Love it when we have a family birthday. Yummy breakfasts!

We went out on Two Medicine Lake. Near the campground, there is a camp store and a small rental marina. The kids were in kayaks and Greg and I shared a canoe. First of all, canoes are very tippy -- at least this one was. It was crazy. We did not dump into the icy glacier-fed lake but we really felt that if we sneezed the wrong way, we'd be swimming!

Gage getting set in his kayak.

Ruth was a kayaking machine.

Off she goes!

They've kayaked before in the Sierras so they are old pros!

The lake was so lovely!

It was so beautiful on the lake. We had some sore shoulders when we were done but everyone agreed that it was worth it.

After lunch, we took a long drive. Glacier Park has an amazing road called the Going to the Sun Road. It goes through the heart of the park, over a dramatic pass, past two enormous glacier-made (and fed) lakes.

These are some Big Horn Sheep hanging out on a glacier.

The mountains are so beautiful.

As you can see, I was totally dressed for hiking on a glacier!

We stopped at the pass and walked up on to one of the glaciers. I hadn't planned to climb the glacier myself but then I heard someone walking by talking about the Rocky Mountain Goat that was up there and off I went. Greg and the kids were up there and saw it first. The goat was heading back down towards me at the same time they were heading down as well. I got some good pictures and then the goat decided to cross the path that all the people were on. Wow.

Hey there, you old goat!

I have to say that I wasn't overly impressed with many of the other people on glacier that day. From the guy who was stalking up to the goat to snap a close-up picture to the several people who ignored the "no dogs" signs and brought their dogs up to the glacier where the goat was tromping around. Argh . . .

Anyway, once we were on the road again, we were pretty impressed with the scenery. The road was under construction which was cool because we were stopped for about 20 minutes at the Weeping Wall. The water just seeps out of the cliff face. It's beautiful and amazing. Flowers were growing on the rocks and the water was so cold!

Watching creeks and rivers appear right out of the mountain.

Yes, that's the road you see cutting up that mountain.

The drive was truly spectacular. And the best part was that at the end, we turned around and did it again. As we drove, we were, of course, looking for wildlife along the way. We'd seen one of the species we'd really hoped for at Glacier (Rocky Mountain Goat) but still hadn't seen a Moose. Imagine our glee when Gage shouted . . . "A MOOSE!!!!" Greg pulled a u-turn and then another and we pulled over to see not one, but two moose. Wow!