Day 5: smoke falling on cedars
Friday
This was our one full day in Glacier National Park, MT. We were based in East Glacier, which is right at the edge of the park, not too close to any serious trails or sights. We didn't have a car, and it's an enormous park, so we were only too happy when Brian told us of his plans to rent a car and drive up to Many Glacier. He offered to drop us off at the visitor center in St. Mary on his way, and we could hitch a ride or take the expensive Red Bus back in the evening.
Because of M's bum ankle, we didn't plan on doing any hiking and didn't even bother trying to cram hiking shoes etc. into our already-stuffed luggage. This meant that we were restricted to accessible routes into and around the park and excluded from trails through rocks and rivers, i.e. the ones that went to any of the fast-waning glaciers. (We ended up getting the Vicarious Glacier Experience via Brian's report later.) Instead, the plan was to catch the Going To The Sun Road bus into the park, have a picnic lunch, walk the Trail of the Cedars, and take the bus back out.
I mentioned the smoke already in my last post, but this picture shows how poor the visibility was.
We were supposed to be able to see Jackson Glacier in the distance from the bus, but we couldn't see more than the outline of the next ridge. Even the swails of all-season snow on the high rocks looked grimy and brown through the smoke.
Here's M where we picnicked. The haze was actually clearing up a bit by this time, but it worsened again as the afternoon wore on. The smell of smoke lingered everywhere.
The Trail of the Cedars was indeed the awe-inspiring, breathtaking walk of wonder that it was cracked up to be. At the level of the boardwalk, a number of cedars were at least as wide as a man's height, and they could've been twice as wide at their base.
The giant cedars commanded everything about the place, from the shape of the banks...
...to other plant life, like the moss dangling from dead cedar branches...
...to water-flow and the climate itself. The air was cooler and moister than elsewhere, which meant that the area hadn't burned since 1500. Some of the cedars were easily that old. It was especially easy to believe when I looked at monstrous roots like these, with their primeval look like something from Beowulf or Tolkien.
I wanted to get M posing with this burl like Edvard Munch's The Scream, but she wouldn't. (M: "I think the picture speaks for itself.") We dubbed this burl the Butt-Face Cedar.
At the end of the trail was my favorite cedar, because it looked like an elephant's head. See the ears, tusks, eye, trunk? (Please won't someone tell me I'm not crazy?)
Even the hemlocks and cottonwoods were big.
Halfway up the trail's loop was Avalanche Gorge, a narrow ravine that fast-flowing glacial melt had dug out of the rocks. Even up on the bridge, we could feel the water's chill rising up in the air.
I was impressed with how the eddies and pools had gouged sharp, perfectly round grottoes...
...as well as with this cedar, which had grown out from the bank only to have the bank erode away beneath it. (It's hard to tell in this picture, but there's about a foot or two of space between the bottom of the trunk and the rock below.) It looks like a nose, but there's something tragic in the tree's trusting reliance on the unfaithful soil.
That was the Trial of the Cedars. We hopped back on the bus, which culminated at Logan Pass before heading down to St. Mary Lake and the visitor center. This is the peak across from the Logan Pass stop, and maybe my best Rockies Picture amid the smoke.
As the bus was pulling out of the Logan Pass parking lot, lots of people were lined up at the edge, snapping pictures of this bighorn sheep who was just grazing and mugging for the papparazzi.
One awesome thing about the St. Mary visitor center is that they have an osprey nest right outside the door. Inside the door is a telescope trained on the nest, so we got to see the magnificent hawks so closely that we could almost count the feathers. There was a pair, and maybe there will be chicks soon.
Did you know that ospreys always carry fish facing forward because it's the most aerodynamic way to carry fish? I didn't.
On the bus back to the visitor center, we'd met Joseph, an 11-year-old who might be the most-into-dinosaurs kid I've ever met (my childhood self included). He and his family were on a road trip from New Orleans, and they'd stopped at one of these sites they have in Montana now where the tourists pay some money to help out the paleontologists for a day. When we got back to the visitor center, Joseph eagerly unpacked the boxes of fragments they'd collected - he'd uncovered a triceratops skeleton but was only allowed to remove small fragments from the site - and even gave us a couple chips of dinosaur bone and petrified wood. (Did you know that if you lick your finger, touch it to the rock, and it sticks, then it's dinosaur bone? I didn't.) They also gave us a ride back to the hostel, which saved us $32 on the stupid Red Bus. In a sudden flash of Mitzvah-spirationTM, M ran into the hostel and came back out with one of the 10,000-cedi notes that The I-Man had given us from Ghana. Joseph's parents had a road-trip allowance system of giving him a penny for every mile travelled, so we figured the now-worthless note's curiosity value would be a fair contribution.
Ready for something completely different?
East Glacier is home to The Spiral Spoon, a.k.a. The World's Largest Wooden Spoon Shop (If You Don't Get Out Much).
The spoons were gorgeous, and the shop was really neat. This was one of the many occasions on the trip when we encountered local art we wished we could afford. At least we got to meet the proprietor, a true Georgia spitfire and certified Real Southern Character. (One of the many wacky signs on the walls read, "Y'All Spoken Here.") She demonstrated her and her husband's six-step process for shaping and polishing the spoons, and she gave us a tour of the back showroom, the ceiling of which was practically a wooden spoon museum. (There were wooden spoons used on Bonanza, the second Flintstones movie, and Xena: Warrior Princess, as well as antique and Soviet-era spoons.)
It was also home to The World's Largest Purple Spoon (Maybe).
I'm not sure if the train bridge at East Glacier is actually the border between the park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, but I loved the bridge.
We ate dinner in the town on the other side of the tracks, at the Glacier Village Restaurant that
M's mom and
brother had recommended. MMMM, buffalo burgers. MMMM, huckleberry vinaigrette. MMMM, Western microbrews. By the time we plowed through all that, we were feeling a little queasy, so we skipped dessert. I'm sure the huckleberry pie would've been amazing too. :(
This was our one full day in Glacier National Park, MT. We were based in East Glacier, which is right at the edge of the park, not too close to any serious trails or sights. We didn't have a car, and it's an enormous park, so we were only too happy when Brian told us of his plans to rent a car and drive up to Many Glacier. He offered to drop us off at the visitor center in St. Mary on his way, and we could hitch a ride or take the expensive Red Bus back in the evening.
Because of M's bum ankle, we didn't plan on doing any hiking and didn't even bother trying to cram hiking shoes etc. into our already-stuffed luggage. This meant that we were restricted to accessible routes into and around the park and excluded from trails through rocks and rivers, i.e. the ones that went to any of the fast-waning glaciers. (We ended up getting the Vicarious Glacier Experience via Brian's report later.) Instead, the plan was to catch the Going To The Sun Road bus into the park, have a picnic lunch, walk the Trail of the Cedars, and take the bus back out.
I mentioned the smoke already in my last post, but this picture shows how poor the visibility was.
We were supposed to be able to see Jackson Glacier in the distance from the bus, but we couldn't see more than the outline of the next ridge. Even the swails of all-season snow on the high rocks looked grimy and brown through the smoke.
Here's M where we picnicked. The haze was actually clearing up a bit by this time, but it worsened again as the afternoon wore on. The smell of smoke lingered everywhere.
The Trail of the Cedars was indeed the awe-inspiring, breathtaking walk of wonder that it was cracked up to be. At the level of the boardwalk, a number of cedars were at least as wide as a man's height, and they could've been twice as wide at their base.
The giant cedars commanded everything about the place, from the shape of the banks...
...to other plant life, like the moss dangling from dead cedar branches...
...to water-flow and the climate itself. The air was cooler and moister than elsewhere, which meant that the area hadn't burned since 1500. Some of the cedars were easily that old. It was especially easy to believe when I looked at monstrous roots like these, with their primeval look like something from Beowulf or Tolkien.
I wanted to get M posing with this burl like Edvard Munch's The Scream, but she wouldn't. (M: "I think the picture speaks for itself.") We dubbed this burl the Butt-Face Cedar.
At the end of the trail was my favorite cedar, because it looked like an elephant's head. See the ears, tusks, eye, trunk? (Please won't someone tell me I'm not crazy?)
Even the hemlocks and cottonwoods were big.
Halfway up the trail's loop was Avalanche Gorge, a narrow ravine that fast-flowing glacial melt had dug out of the rocks. Even up on the bridge, we could feel the water's chill rising up in the air.
I was impressed with how the eddies and pools had gouged sharp, perfectly round grottoes...
...as well as with this cedar, which had grown out from the bank only to have the bank erode away beneath it. (It's hard to tell in this picture, but there's about a foot or two of space between the bottom of the trunk and the rock below.) It looks like a nose, but there's something tragic in the tree's trusting reliance on the unfaithful soil.
That was the Trial of the Cedars. We hopped back on the bus, which culminated at Logan Pass before heading down to St. Mary Lake and the visitor center. This is the peak across from the Logan Pass stop, and maybe my best Rockies Picture amid the smoke.
As the bus was pulling out of the Logan Pass parking lot, lots of people were lined up at the edge, snapping pictures of this bighorn sheep who was just grazing and mugging for the papparazzi.
One awesome thing about the St. Mary visitor center is that they have an osprey nest right outside the door. Inside the door is a telescope trained on the nest, so we got to see the magnificent hawks so closely that we could almost count the feathers. There was a pair, and maybe there will be chicks soon.
Did you know that ospreys always carry fish facing forward because it's the most aerodynamic way to carry fish? I didn't.
On the bus back to the visitor center, we'd met Joseph, an 11-year-old who might be the most-into-dinosaurs kid I've ever met (my childhood self included). He and his family were on a road trip from New Orleans, and they'd stopped at one of these sites they have in Montana now where the tourists pay some money to help out the paleontologists for a day. When we got back to the visitor center, Joseph eagerly unpacked the boxes of fragments they'd collected - he'd uncovered a triceratops skeleton but was only allowed to remove small fragments from the site - and even gave us a couple chips of dinosaur bone and petrified wood. (Did you know that if you lick your finger, touch it to the rock, and it sticks, then it's dinosaur bone? I didn't.) They also gave us a ride back to the hostel, which saved us $32 on the stupid Red Bus. In a sudden flash of Mitzvah-spirationTM, M ran into the hostel and came back out with one of the 10,000-cedi notes that The I-Man had given us from Ghana. Joseph's parents had a road-trip allowance system of giving him a penny for every mile travelled, so we figured the now-worthless note's curiosity value would be a fair contribution.
Ready for something completely different?
East Glacier is home to The Spiral Spoon, a.k.a. The World's Largest Wooden Spoon Shop (If You Don't Get Out Much).
The spoons were gorgeous, and the shop was really neat. This was one of the many occasions on the trip when we encountered local art we wished we could afford. At least we got to meet the proprietor, a true Georgia spitfire and certified Real Southern Character. (One of the many wacky signs on the walls read, "Y'All Spoken Here.") She demonstrated her and her husband's six-step process for shaping and polishing the spoons, and she gave us a tour of the back showroom, the ceiling of which was practically a wooden spoon museum. (There were wooden spoons used on Bonanza, the second Flintstones movie, and Xena: Warrior Princess, as well as antique and Soviet-era spoons.)
It was also home to The World's Largest Purple Spoon (Maybe).
I'm not sure if the train bridge at East Glacier is actually the border between the park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, but I loved the bridge.
We ate dinner in the town on the other side of the tracks, at the Glacier Village Restaurant that
M's mom and
brother had recommended. MMMM, buffalo burgers. MMMM, huckleberry vinaigrette. MMMM, Western microbrews. By the time we plowed through all that, we were feeling a little queasy, so we skipped dessert. I'm sure the huckleberry pie would've been amazing too. :(