July 22 - Glacier N.P. Lake McDonald, Montana

After another great night's sleep we reluctantly hitched up the trailer after breakfast and headed north to Glacier National Park. The drive along the east side of the lake was on Montana 35, a broad, well paved 2 lane road that had no unpleasant surprises. In fact, we had great views of Flathead Lake on our left, and Monika tried to take pictures while we were driving along. That's always a chancy proposition at best, but it is digital so it doesn't cost anything and it gives the passenger something to do. The mountain massifs of Glacier National Park hove into view to the northeast a little over two hours later.

Our last visit to Glacier had been between the Army and graduate school in 1972, and we had been limited by a lack of time and money plus the fact that the replacement engine in the 1960 Chevy that we had had installed in Port Angeles was not running all that well. At that time we drove through the park on the Going to the Sun road and then camped over on the eastern side for a couple of nights before heading home. As a result, we had never really seen the western side of the park, so this time we decided to camp on the western edge of the park at Apgar campground. I remembered on our previous visit that a Ranger explained the western side of the park was a wetter climate than the eastern side and consequently had more and different trees and other flora than the eastern side. In fact, the trees grew high and thick in Apgar campground; our campsite was a nice pull through gravel strip in the middle of the forest. Although the campground has well over 100 sites, we felt visually isolated enough from our neighbors that we raised all the blinds and put up the shutter so that we could see out the front window.

The campsite had no water or electricity hookups, of course, but it had a beautiful view of the forest and cost only $15 per night. We took the bikes down from the truck to ride over and pay for the night at the self service stand for loop B (we were in B101). Curiously, they did not allow us to sign up for more than one night at a time, and I wondered what had prompted that policy. Still, we cheerfully stuffed the money in the envelope, deposited it in the slot, and continued our ride over to the Apgar village, which consisted of a small motel with cabins, several gift shops, a restaurant and bar (but NOT casino!), a boat rental, a camp store, and a ranger station.

The Ranger station had maps and information, and after considering some of the offerings we proceeded over to the Village Inn to register for a bus tour and hike the following Saturday. We also stopped into one of the gift stores and bought a thimble for all the sewing we were doing and bear bells. Bear bells, are identical to the bells on horse collars (think "One Horse Open Sleigh") except these cost $1 apiece and are guaranteed to attract any grizzly bears in the vicinity! Actually, the bells are to warn the bears that humans are approaching in time that the bear can amble off and avoid human contact, which is better for all concerned. I tied mine to my belt and found that it also made a useful bicycle bell while we were riding around, so that saved me some money right there; instead of yelling "On Your Left!" when I pass folks I just yelled "Jingle Bells!"

>We were searching for peanut butter for Saturday's sandwiches, but we thought the prices in the camp store were a bit high so we decided to take the bikes over to West Glacier after lunch and see if we could find a real, honest to goodness grocery store. There is a bicycle path part of the way from Apgar to West Glacier, but it kind of peters out around the park headquarters complex. A passing motorist, probably with the best of intentions, told us to follow Ruhle Road. Following her advice gave us an unexpectedly wild ride down into a gully and back up to the bridge leading into West Glacier. West Glacier was really not any bigger than Apgar, but it did have a slightly different selection of tourist traps, among which was a store with slightly cheaper groceries. Monika bought some Jiffy Extra Crunchy and we returned using the shoulder of the entrance road rather than the gully route, which was a lot more relaxing.

We were unpacking back at the campsite and I was jingling around with my bear bells when Monika motioned for me to be quiet and look left. A deer was no more than 20 feet away calmly grazing on the low lying bushes and shrubs next to our campsite. The camera, of course, was locked up in the truck. I didn't want to use the remote to unlock because that would have beeped the horn and probably frightened the deer, so I had to unlock the truck with one hand while holding my other hand on the bear bell to keep it quiet, then reach in and get the camera. But the deer patiently waited while I was fooling around like a one-armed paperhanger, and I managed to get the camera turned on and get some nice shots before it slowly wandered off.

We relaxed with a snack of peanuts and Gatorade (a balanced diet for sure!) while Monika downloaded pictures on Daddy and I worked on the journal on Baby. With no 120 volt AC available, we were careful to use the computers for the minimum possible time since we had only about 3 hours capacity with Daddy and 7 hours capacity with Baby. After the computer work Monika crocheted and I took a nap until we had a dinner of sandwiches where we tried out the new jar of peanut butter and found it was quite good. We had planned to catch the evening cruise on Lake McDonald, so we jumped in the truck and drove up the Going to the Sun road from Apgar at the lower end of the lake to the Lake McDonald Lodge area at the upper end. This part of the drive offered great views of the lake and the huge wall of mountains forming the Continental Divide high up to the east, which is spectacular scenery.

The lodge itself appeared to date from the 1920s or earlier. It was constructed of the huge, rough hewn posts and beams with a very pretty rustic interior. The main room had a mammoth fireplace at one end and various heads of stags around the side, but it also featured a set of pretty lamps hung from the ceiling. The hall gave a nice ambience and really seemed a cozy place to settle in for the evening, but we were here for the boat trip so we continued on to the docks just below the lodge.

Our ship was named the "De Smet" and was a wooden lake cruiser dating from the 1920s. Originally it might have been a steam launch, but if so it had been refitted with modern diesels in the interim. We cruised slowly down the lake and back for about an hour while a nice young Ranger talked about the geology and ecology of Glacier National Park. She came around to chat with each of us several times during the cruise and gave us a running commentary on what we were seeing. I was not aware, for example, that the sides of the lake were lateral moraines and the end of the lake was a terminal moraine, so this was a lake constructed entirely by glacial action. It was also quite deep for being only 1.5 miles wide, an average of about 400 feet deep she said, but it was also about 11 miles long and really very impressive.

After our cruise we slowly drove back to camp, stopping at the overlooks to get views of the sun starting to set over the lake. When we turned in to the campground I decided to drive over to Apgar Village just to get a picture of the nice view of the lake and mountains from the dock there. But serendipity struck again when we drove by the greensward in front of the Village Inn because there we saw 3 Alpenhorns (think Gricola commercial!) being played by two guys in lederhosen and a woman in a dirndl dress (think Bavarian beer hall!). Serendipity doesn't get any more serendipitous than that, so we parked the truck and listened to the concert they put on until the sun set. Those huge horns are somewhat like a natural horn but on a huge scale and they give out very mellow, low notes (think tuba only lower and with a mellifluous wooden sound rather than brass). I never even knew that you could play 3-part harmonies on them, but these folks were good and the music they played sounded great. The woman played the bass part and the two men switched off playing the melody and harmony parts because the highest part was, as she put it, "really hard on the lips" or embrasure. So we had a completely unexpected open-air concert of alpenhorns with the Alpine peaks of the Continental Divide jutting up from the end of the lake and glowing red in the sunset. It is, I think, and experience that you would almost never have this side of Switzerland or Bavaria, and probably very rarely even there. After it was dark and the concert ended, we drove back and downloaded the pictures and brought the journal up to date before turning in for the night.