July 25 - Glacier Park

The morning we left for Glacier Park was an interesting one. First, we had to get up at 6am because Ben and his roommate were leaving to work a fundraiser. Then, on our way out to the park we stopped to get gas. I noticed two stray dogs at the gas station drinking out of a puddle and laying in the parking lot. Being the animal lover that I am, I got out of the car to check the dogs out. As soon as I got close they both ran off. No one else around seemed to give two cents about the dogs. I thought maybe for a second they belonged to the people who ran the gas station and people were just used to seeing them all the time. As we headed down the road, not far from the gas station, we came across a pack of wild dogs. Dogs of all different kind of breeds and sizes. Apparently this town was littered with stray unwanted dogs. They were attempting to cross the road in front of us so we stopped. Then one, what looked like a Saint Bernard, started chasing our car! We couldn't speed up in fear of running him over so Jason just crept along honking the horn hoping to scare him away. The dog eventually stopped jumping on the car and running along side and we had just enough time to speed away. Further on down the road we came across dozens of horses that must have gotten free from their pens. I don't remember where we were, but they clearly suck at caring for animals. We finally made it to the park and we came upon loose cows! We couldn't do anything but laugh. It was as if we were in a really strange safari.

We made it inside the park in one piece and quickly realized that Glacier Park is more the type of park that you pack up enough stuff for 4 days and disappear into the woods. Not the type you just drive through. But we had no choice but to drive the main road through the park because we were on a tight schedule.

A strange tree.

This is actually a picture of the last glacier in the park. Its somewhere in there.

Because Glacier Park is famous for its glaciers and it being summer time and all there were a tremendous amount of waterfalls and raging waters from the melting ice.

A very long trickle of water.

I finally saw a mountain goat!

This was pretty cool. A stream of water had made its way through the thick sheet of ice and snow, slowly eating away at it. So what was left were these 7 foot tall walls of snow with a pathway etched through.

Weeping Wall. Because of the melting snow caps this and several other rock faces are covered with trickles of water coming from hundreds of feet above. Weeping Wall is one of the biggest and wettest.

It took much longer than we expected to drive through the park. On our way out we stopped at a diner for BLTs and mountain brewed beer.

Later on the road while I was driving the weather went psycho. It went from perfect sunny day to a slight rain to ridiculous hail storm in about 20 seconds. I had no idea hail was a big thing in Montana but this was only the first of three hail storms we passed through. I pulled off to the side of the road because it all come on so suddenly and ferociously. The hail was so thick and hard I really thought it was going to damage the car. Thank goodness it did no such thing.