Monday, June 6, 2011

Glacier National Park -- Day 3

We learned that the drive time from West Glacier to East Glacier was about an hour.  So, we decided to move our location to East Glacier so that we could see this section of the park.  We made our evening's reservation at the Glacier Park Lodge which is constructed with huge 40 foot long Douglas Fir timbers supporting the lobby. This historic building was called "Oom-Coo-La-Mush-Taw", The Big Tree Lodge by the Blackfeet Indians. 

East Glacier is described at the Switzerland of North America and is very beautiful.  We drove to the St. Mary's Visitor's Center and watched a video about the park and talked with the park rangers about possible hikes.  We drove 13 miles on the Going to the Sun highway to St. Mary Falls and hiked the .8 mile one way trail.  We then hiked the Sunrift Gorge trail which was .3 miles one way. Our final hike of the day was Baring Falls which was .7 miles one way. 

We then drove to the Many Glacier Lodge.  Here we saw a mountain goat right on the roadway and big horn sheep up on the mountain side.  The lodge look very pretty.  We could not go inside since is was not yet open for the season. 

We returned to St. Mary and stopped into a grocery store to pick up some food.  The shelves were very bare and there was very little fruit and vegetables.  We asked why there was so little food and were amazed to learn than the store had only opened for the season last week.  The Going to the Sun road is not yet open and there is very little tourist traffic in the town.  Therefore, little food at the grocery store.  

We were very tired and happy to return to our room at the Glacier Park Lodge.  We changed for dinner and had a view of the mountains from our window side table.  It was quite beautiful.

We leave for Yellowstone in the morning.

Pictures can be seen at:  https://picasaweb.google.com/tschick62/201166GlacierNationalParkDay3?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2z76Dsz4jGqgE&feat=directlink

More later . . .  

 

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