Daddy/Daughter 2010 part 7...the final installment.

August 29

Yuck.
It rained all night. Hard enough that when I put my hand on the tent floor sometime in the middle of the night, it felt like a waterbed from the water running under the tent.

Uh-oh.
It's also cold. Probably 40* when I get up to make coffee. It's still drizzly with a low ceiling of clouds. The mountain tops are covered in snow. Sheesh.

I make the executive decision to forgo breakfast in camp. I get the truck started to get the heat going, wake up the girls, and off we go back to Johnson's RV camp/laundry/ect...and restaurant. I figure that since we have been able to stay below our budget, a hot breakfast is in order. So we head east out of the park.

Here's what it looked like across St. Mary Lake;

We head over to Johnsons for french toast and cinnamon rolls with hot chocolate. We take our time in there and thaw out gradually. Several really miserable looking bikers drag in and drop their gloves on the hearth in front of the fire place. I did mention this is August right?

After we eat we head to the St. Mary Visitor Center. They have a half an hour long movie about the history of the park, and some good displays throughout the building. Afterward we jump on the bus again and head up Going to the Sun Road. We figure we will ride all the way to Apgar if the weather is going to be weird. We can see the visitor center on that side of the park and just kill some time while waiting out the weather.

As the bus climbs up the mountain, the driver tells us that there has been a decent snowfall up at the pass. He guarantees that no one will get stranded up at the pass, but he won't guarantee we can make it back from the other side. OK. We will take a ride up to the pass and see what happens from there. The ride is actually kind of boring. We have spectacular mountain vistas to admire out the bus window like this;

Awesome views of the St. Mary valley.....or not.

Going to the Sun Road my butt. All we can see is clouds. Oh well, there was a camaraderie amongst our fellow passengers that we were all in this together and there wasn't much that could be done about it anyway. We did score big tough guy points with our mostly retired companions when they found out that we had camped through the storm last night. Or they may have seen me as an abusive father...whichever, there was more conversation than usual among strangers. Having finally completely thawed out, and  while now enjoying the heater and the gentle rocking of the bus....it was getting kinda drowsy in there. You know how that is. I became vaguely aware of my eldest earnestly engaged in a conversation with a couple from Pennsylvania. She is not very shy (anymore) about striking up conversation...with anyone. I don't know where that trait came from, as her mother and I are pretty anti-social whenever possible. Anyway, once I heard the conversation delve into her past gastro intestinal health issues, I figured it was time to reel her in a little. Later, the gentleman would say to me "God bless you...your're going to have your hands full with those two". Well yes sir, He has blessed me, more than I deserve, and yes-I have my hands full. But what a cool ride with those two.

As we ascend above the clouds, the landscape has been changed significantly since yesterday. A four inch snowfall will generally have that effect.

Approaching Logan Pass

     The wildflowers were still pretty though;

I was getting kinda concerned about the whole getting back from the west side of the Divide thing, but the bus driver said that it had only rained on the west side and it would be fine. Good deal, cause it looked kind of nasty to the east from Logan Pass

As we disembark the bus, a lady from New York who was travelling with her sisters looked at all the snow and offered to put us up in the extra room they had at their hotel if the weather was bad that night. Very thoughtful.

Once we are actually convinced that we can continue west and come back, we board another bus and head for the Avalanche Creek area. By the time we get there, the weather has gotten a little better, probably in the low 50s and kind of a misty rain. There is a trail here that goes through an old growth forest of cedar and then follows Avalanche Creek up to Avalanche Lake. Its about a 4.5 mile round trip and if the weather would hold, would be a good lunch hike. We pack the stove, soup and drinks and off we go.

When we hit the Trail of the Cedars it's still raining, so the girls seek shelter.

The cedars were impressive and the creek was beautiful. Check it out;

Avalanche Creek

nice hat

The rain was light enough that it didn't bother us, so we decided to head up to the lake. Em was in a hiking mood. Jori wasn't as sure. Jori sometimes hikes like a butterfly....over here on this side of the trail...then over there to that side of the trail....then maybe backwards for awhile. She probably sees more than we do, but covers the least amount of ground. Em wants to follow the trail and get some miles in. Consequently, there were several times that Em was sort of frustrated with our pace and asked to go ahead of us.

I wasn't really excited to let her take off on her own. This is big time bear and mountain lion country and while the chance of something walking out of the woods on the trail to eat my daughter is slim, the phone call home might not paint me in the most favorable light. So the deal was that Em could hike out ahead a little ways where we still had easy eye/voice contact.

A little while later Em was maybe 30 yards or so ahead of me when a black bear walked out of the woods onto the trail about 10 feet in front of Em. Swell.

Em froze in her tracks. I continued to walk towards her sorta curious as to what was going to happen next. We had talked about this situation before, but I didn't know if she'd remember. I was worried she would run away or scream or do something that would scare the bear.

Meanwhile, the bear seemed pointedly unconcerned with my little drama, he was effectively vacuuming as many huckleberries off the surrounding bushes as he could. Fortunately, neither of my daughters are berry flavored.

As this is going on, more and more people are arriving on the trail. Em looks at me impatiently and makes a motion with her hand like she's taking a picture. She's irritated that I have not arrived with the camera yet. I guess she's all good with the bear. I finally get close enough to take a picture just as the bear walks into the bushes on the other side of the trail.

He just walked into the bushes on the left side of the trail in this picture ...kind of a pretty spot huh?

Unfortunately, as soon as I took that picture, the batteries in the camera died and the spares were back at camp. Great. I take the batteries out, warm them up and manage to fire off one bear photo...you have to trust me, that is a black bear in there.

Big fun. Em was really psyched about this and we stayed until the bear wandered out of sight. Jori kept telling me in a quiet voice that we were too close. Later she would describe this as one of the best parts of the whole  trip.

After the excitement subsides, we continue our hike to the lake.

Avalanche Lake

After lunch we hike back to the bus stop. We have the whole bus to ourselves on the return trip to Logan Pass. The girls take advantage of this by sitting in every seat on the bus.

We get back to camp just as the sky starts to clear and the sun cracks through the clouds in a few places. Just in time to make dinner. Here's the view from camp.

Since the weather has cleared up, tonight will be a big campfire night. Tomorrow is get away day when we will break camp and give ourselves plenty of time for the long trip home. The tent is still sitting on water, but we managed to keep our bags dry.

August 30

We get up to  sunshine...good deal. The plan for this morning is to take our time and get the truck cleaned and organized and get all the camping stuff dry and packed. We won't be using it anymore this trip. As a matter of fact, the old Coleman tent, which we have affectionately called the purple people eater may have seen its last big trip. We began to have some issues with the zippers that might not be repairable. Too bad, we've only gotten about 13 years and several hundred nights into it. Not too bad.

The Purple People Eater...going out a hero.

I release the girls to explore the campground while I get the final chores done. It's that time when a long trip winds down and I get a little depressed...or maybe melancholy is the better word. Every time we take one of these trips I try to savor every bit of it that I can. It's never far from my mind that the someday in the near future it might not be fun for the girls to go camping with me anymore. It's enough to choke a guy up.

So I have gear spread out all over the place, the tent and fly are draped over some bushes facing the sun to dry, the air mattresses are learning against trees and the sleeping bags are spread over the table. I can hear the girls down the road on the bikes laughing and yelling to each other. The sun is out and we will be on our way home in a couple hours. Another successful trip.

I take a walk to take the garbage out and Jori runs down to catch up with me, she wants one more picture with the mountains behind her...

We get all the gear packed efficiently back into the truck, check the oil and leave the campground. We are going to stop by the visitor center one more time. Jori has finished her Jr. Ranger book and wants the badge to pin on her hat. She also wrote a thank you note to the ranger that did the fire side talk on wolverines the other night. So we do that. We also notice that the mama osprey at the nest by the center is feeding her babies. Nice touch at the end.

We leave the park and stop at the gas station down the road to fill up and get out. When I go in to pay, the clerk asks where we're from and what did we see. He tells me about a spot up the road, the opposite way of home, that has a lot of active bears. He mentions that he was up there a couple days ago and saw about a dozen grizzlies. Apparently the berries have ripened in this river drainage and the bears are gorging for winter. An adult grizzly bear needs to put on several hundred pounds over the fall to make through the winter. One ranger told us that the average adult grizzly will eat 100,000 berries a day. Wow.

The area he's talking about, Many Glacier, is about 10 miles north of here. There is a 16 mile long road that leads into the interior of the park from there that follows along Swiftcurrent Creek. This is supposedly where the bears are bein busy.

What the heck. It's only another 56 total miles to a 1305 mile ride home. Off we go on one last adventure.

It's a beautiful area, and would be worth the trip even without the hope of seeing more bears.

At the end of the road is Swiftcurrent Lodge. It's pretty spectacular. Maybe someday....

     The lodge sits at the end of the road. We don't see any bears on the way in, but as soon as we leave the lodge parking lot we see something on the hillside across the road. Actually we see four somethings, because its a sow grizzly and three cubs. Never seen that before. We watch them for awhile until they move out of or sight. As it was they were so high up on the hillside you could barely see them without binoculars.

We leave that area and drive another half mile when we see a cinnamon colored black bear and then a mama black bear with three cubs and then a little further we see one last black bear on the side of the mountain. We are almost back to the park's border when we see the last bear. We pull off the side of the road and the girls sit on the roof of the truck so they can see above the roadside bushes. Very cool and a great way to end the trip on a highlight.

We all know that this is it so we watch the bear for a long time until he lumbers into the forest. I announce the official end of the adventure portion of the trip and tell the girls to saddle up. Jori hops into her spot behind the drivers seat. Em just doesn't want it to end. She stays up there hoping for another glimpse of the bear. No deal. I finally have to order her down. She complies and leaps from the roof. Unfortunately, she is not entirely familiar with the finer points of BASE jumping from the roof of an SUV and catches a boot on the open window of the truck. This causes her heel to come up rapidly....good thing Jori's face was there to catch it flush. The ninja-like belly flop of death continues for three more feet until Emmers splats onto the pavement of Many Glacier Road. Rats. And with an audience too.

Jori in the meantime has started that horrific scream that takes a second before it starts and then goes on until your ears bleed. Em, who I am more worried about at the moment, is strangely silent. Uh-oh.

Turns out that she is acutely aware of the group of bear watchers in her presence and refuses to lose control in front of them. I take this as a positive sign. She gets up gingerly, walks behind the truck out of sight and lets it go. I rapidly inspect her for the broken bone I am convinced I will find sticking out somewhere around her elbow. Concurrently, I steal a peak at Jori to see if her left eye has been kicked out or pushed in. She appears to be intact.

Good, maybe only one of them will have to be airlifted to Kalispell or Mooseknuckle or wherever the heck they airlift clumsy flatlanders. Good grief. After a while, it appears all will survive. Jori will come home with a nickle sized bruise on her cheek and Em has some roadrash on both elbows and one hip. I'm going to call it a win.

Figures. We have been in the woods and mountains for almost two weeks. We have seen all kinds of wild animals and their carnage. We've hiked on precipitous mountain trails, hopped across icy rivers on wet boulders and ate chow mein out of a can with no ill effects. Now, in literally the last moments of the trip, it all almost splatters on the street. Thank you God for having your hand on us.

Now we can go home. We leave St. Mary, Montana at 3 pm on Tuesday. We get home around lunch time on Thursday. Its a long long way to get here. We decide that we probable won't try to make a drive like that again. We have preliminarily voted to go back to Colorado next year. Maybe we can talk Mom into going with us.

We like to keep lists and a journal so for our record, we drove 4,808 miles on this trip. That was including the better part of three days at Glacier when we took shuttle buses. Yikes.

The girls added Montana and Idaho as states that had not visited yet.

We visited 4 National Parks (Badlands, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier).

We passed through, camped or hiked in 13 National Forests or Grasslands (Buffalo Gap, Black Hills, Big Horn, Custer, Shoshone, Bridger-Teton, Caribou, Targhee, Beaverhead, Deer Lodge, Helena, and Flathead).

We saw some animals that the girls have never seen in the wild before including; Grizzly bears, black bears, grey wolves, golden eagles, and mountain goats.

Mostly, as usual, we collected some awesome memories of time well spent with each other. We prayed together every night in the tent and we discussed some really important family issues (which you will be reading about here soon).

We were privileged to live in some of the most spectacularly unbelievable places that exist on this earth for two weeks.

How cool is that?

.....to be continued in 2011.