Glacier National Park - Day 4

For those of you who have been following our Glacier National Park trip and have been left hanging in limbo...I finally got the pictures from Day 4 edited! I think this may have been my favorite day of all. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but we saw a lot of beautiful country and took about 300 pictures! And the best part was Tom cooking our anniversary dinner during a beautiful sunset on the top of Going to the Sun Road at Logan Pass!!! Okay, it was only a Cheddarwurst and a bag of chips...but in a setting like that, it could have a PB&J sandwich and I would have been happy!

We were both tired from hiking about 20 miles the last couple of days, so today we decided to go for a drive up the northwest side of the park, a very sparsely traveled area with a primitive, unmaintained dirt road going to Kintla Lake just south of the British Columbia border. The road went through about 30 miles of burned timber and was prime grizzly habitat, so we were hoping to possibly run across a bear since the area was so lightly traveled.

While Tom was still sleeping, I headed out bright and early to get a sunrise shot from just outside of our campground.




I headed back to the campground and Tom was ready to go, so we packed up camp and headed west back over Going to the Sun Road. One nice thing about camping in Glacier National Park is that when you leave camp, you have everything in your vehicle with you because due to the bears, nothing can be left in camp except the tent, so you always have your food, water, supplies, etc. Today we planned on stopping at all of the "tourist" stops along Going to the Sun road, which we had avoided throughout the holiday weekend due to the crowds. We came to the first stop, The Sunrift Gorge, which had previously been so packed with people there wasn't even a parking spot, and today we were the only people there!
The river running through Sunrift Gorge
The weeping wall going west over Going to the Sun Road

A glimpse of Heaven!
The view from the forest floor!
At least 60 miles of burn and fog...we never would have known if we did drive past a grizzly unless he ran in front of us!


Tom was laughing at me as I was sneaking up on these bucks and they kept going from tree to tree trying to hide from me. One finally decided just to show me how tough he was, and the other one was mouthing off!


One of the neatest tourist stops that we stopped at along the Going to the Sun road was the Trail of the Cedars Nature Trail. It was getting dark when we stopped, and very few people were left on the trail. I could have spent hours exploring on the boardwalk and well-maintained nature trail that winds through the massive cedars.




It was getting late, and we had to race up the side of the mountain (which was kind of fun in a 1-ton long-box crew cab truck!) to make it to the top of Logan Pass in time to catch the sunset, but Tom had promised me a sunset for our dinner, and we made it with just enough time to get my tripod set up! So while I happily snapped away, Tom slaved over a hot stove and prepared our gourmet anniversary/birthday dinner!



It was the perfect ending to finish out an absolutely perfect vacation!

The complete gallery from our trip to Glacier National Park can be viewed at Thompson Photography !