July 27, 2015 Road trip into Glacier National Park

Monday, July 27, 2015 Road trip into Glacier National Park

If you hadn’t heard there is a big forest fire up in the Northeast part of the park and the road called Going-to-the-Sun road is closed. So with that road being closed we drove the long way around to the tune of 270 miles round trip. It was a long day in the car.  FYI- glaciers are disappearing.  In 1850, they had estimated over 150 glaciers.  In 1968 the number dropped to 50 and today there are about 25 glaciers left.  They estimate that glaciers will all be gone in the next few years.

We started heading to the east side of the park and our first stop was at Goat Lick yep it is a place that the mountain goats come to lick at the minerals that they need.  In the morning we saw only one goat and on the way back we saw a mother and her young and also another by itself.  As we continued I noticed that railroad tracks ran alongside the road.  It looked pretty neat with some bridges and some rock coverings against the mountain.

Next big area we came to was called Maria's Pass.  This pass was well known by the American Indians but they tried to keep this information away from the railroad people.   It was discovered by John F. Stevens.  This pass for the railroad was the lowest pass route connecting the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast.  We then just rode to the Glacier Park Lodge that was built in 1912-13.  This Lodge is on the Blackfeet Reservation.   In showing respect to the Indians there are certain times of the year that no liquor is sold. We then continued on our way to Saint Mary.  On the road were signs that said caution free range animals.  Well we didn’t really understand this until we came upon a couple of horses and a couple of different group of cows that were not in a fenced area.  Seems strange to me why anyone would do that but they have their reasons just seems cruel to me.  We saw the Lodge at St. Mary and kept on.  We then noticed an area that had a lot of tents setup and further on down we saw an area that had helicopters then it hit us this was the base camps for the firefighters and volunteers that were trying to contain or put out the fire.  Then we started to climb and then we saw our first glacier it was called Salamander Glacier.  It then started to rain but we continued hoping that the fog wouldn’t stop us from seeing some more.  We ended up at the end of the road at Many Glaciers and then we saw many glaciers with the fog fast approaching us.  We managed a few shots but they were not as clear as we would have liked but you could still make them out.  Our last stop before heading home was Many Glacier Hotel.  This hotel looked like a swiss chalet and it is a 100 years old.  The rain was really coming down by now and we hope that it will help with the fire. 

It was a good day and the glaciers were incredible

Happy 16th Birthday to our niece, Rachel.

Mountains that we are going to be climbing

First Mountain Goat we have seen

Marias Pass

Glacier Park Lodge

Free range horse

Free range cow

Salamander Glacier is the long one, on top is Gem Glacier and at the bottom is Grinnell Glacier

Another shot of glaciers

Front of Many Glacier Hotel

Grinnel Glacier up close

Many Glacier Hotel

Helicopters helping with the fires

Big tents for the fire help

Little tents too

Railroad cover from stones

River bank stones pretty shades of pink, purple and blue

Mother and her baby