This trip was supposed to complete our visits to the major National Parks, but Glacier, like Yellowstone, has too much to offer. So, we're planning another visit (or two).
The drive north was an experience in itself. Once we entered southeast Idaho, we found ourselves on Idaho National Laboratory (INL) land where major work was done in developing atomic energy.
The town of Arco, Idaho, revels in its distinction of being "The First City in the World to be Lit by Atomic Power." Another plaque entitled "Atoms for Peace" details the event. But in the city park, there is the actual conning tower of the decommissioned, nuclear-powered submarine USS Hawkbill along with one of its torpedoes.
What really makes this celebration so strange is that, down the road, is Atomic City, a virtual ghost town due to two catastrophic nuclear disasters.
In 1955, Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 (EBR-1) had the world’s first partial nuclear meltdown. Then in 1961, the Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1 (SL-1), exploded, killing three workers who had to be buried in lead coffins sealed with concrete due to radioactive contamination.
Strangeness continued when we drove into southern Montana. The town of Butte sits at the base of the Continental Divide where a 90 foot statue of the Virgin Mary looks down on it. I wasn't sure what I was seeing when I first spotted the giant, white statue above us and I really thought it was some sort of college prank. But it's a very sincere, if controversial, display.
That afternoon we arrived in Helena, Montana, where, for the first time in our years of travels, we found ourselves in a room that was simply unlivable. Thanks to the internet, we quickly find a suitable alternative.
From there, we continued our drive north into Big Sky Montana, or Big Land Country as Nancy noted. We then entered the Blackfoot reservation heading north to the Many Glacier Hotel. We found ourselves first on gravel roads due to extensive road construction and then on the park entrance road that was nothing but pot holes and a completely deteriorated road bed.
At the park entrance itself, we joined a long line and watched as vehicle after vehicle was refused admission and turned around. It seems the park was at full capacity and there were no more parking places in this area. When our turn came, we were asked if we had reservations and when we answered "Yes", they smiled and said "Welcome to Glacier National Park" and let us continue.
Things immediately began to improve. The place was beautiful, our room was ready early, and, despite the warnings, I immediately found a parking space.
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| Many Glacier Hotel |
The glacier situation there is not good. In 1966 there were over 100 glaciers in the park, of which 35 were named. All have receded in size since then and only 26 named glaciers remain. There are now more glaciers in North Cascades National Park than in Glacier National Park.
In neither park are they the massive frozen rivers of ice like you see in Alaska. Instead, they qualify as glaciers because they are moving masses of ice that are 25 acres or greater in size.
Snow covers most of these glaciers and it's hard to tell when you're seeing a glacier and when you're seeing a snow patch. The rule of thumb is simply to assume that What you see is a snow patch since only four glaciers can be seen from the road and the rest require serious, strenuous hikes.
So the name Many Glacier Hotel is a bit of a misnomer, but there is no denying that the hotel and the views are spectacular.
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| Serenity |
MANY GLACIER HOTEL
Glacier National Park exists because of the Great Northern Railway. Passengers from the East would disembark at Glacier Park Hotel (now Lodge) which is actually outside the park.
Many Glacier Hotel was built soon after and was designed to be a Swiss hotel in the American Alps. The site was chosen for its views which are indeed spectacular.
The lobby area common room is large and inviting with ample, comfortable seating and a large fireplace. The original hotel lobby was lighted with paper Japanese lanterns and the refurbishment stayed true to the concept while using safer electric lighting.
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| Many Glacier Great Room |
The hotel sits on one of the smallest lakes in the park that really functions as a feeder to the much larger Lake Sherburn. We discovered that a boat tour of the Swift Current Lake would take just about 20 minutes, so they added an additional part of the tour to the next lake over, the much larger, Lake Josephine.
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| Boarding the Morning Eagle on Lake Josephine |
The Chief Two Guns took us over to the far end of Swift Current Lake where we hiked a quarter of a mile to the Josephine dock where the Morning Eagle continued our excursion closer to Salamander Glacier. There is a stream connecting the two lakes, but it's not navigable.
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| Salamander Glacier |
Grinnell Glacier and Salamander Glacier were orignally joined into a much larger glacier but they are now split with Grinnell obscured from the lake behind the ridge line. A strenuous hike is required to get up to see down towards it with Salamander across the chasm, higher up.
On our journey back, we saw the most extraordinary sight. The first part of the trail to the Grinnell Glacier overlook follows the lake on the north side about 100 feet above the water line and we could see hikers going in both directions.
One group of hikers, returning from the overlook, didn't know that they had a companion. On the hillside about 200 feet above them, a grizzly bear was moving at about the same pace in the same direction, probably looking for early season huckleberries and keeping at his own level. Neither the hikers nor the bear seemed to be aware of each other and only the boat passengers could see just how close they were.
We lost sight of both as we docked at the pier, but since we never heard any reports of bear encounters, it seems they never were aware of each other.
WATERTON-GLACIER INTERNATIONAL PEACE PARK
Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada and Glacier National Park in the United States share a common border with Upper Waterton Lake divided between the two countries. The combined park became the world's first International Peace Park.
Our border crossings in both directions were simple matters, but our visit there was not very timely. There had been a devastating fire in Waterton after a severe lightning storm in August 2017 and the park is a very long way from recovery with major portions still closed to the public.
In addition, while a boat tour is still operating, it doesn't make its stop in the United States at Goat Haunt at the southern end which is closed for the year.
And, finally, the weather had changed dramatically, with high winds and choppy water that would make a boat tour more of an ordeal than a pleasant excursion.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed our visit. It was quite obvious that we weren't in an American National Park. The town of Waterton sits in the middle of the park and is something you would only see outside park boundaries in the United States.
But, my main interest in visiting was to see the Prince of Wales hotel. It sits above the town and the wind was blowing ferociously nearly knocking me over when I stepped outside.
I thought this was the weather front we were experiencing but I learned that the hotel was blown off its foundation twice in 1927 during construction. They chose a very windy location for the hotel, but the result is quite remarkable.
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| Waterton Lake Marina with Prince of Wales on Hill |
GLACIER PARK LODGE
Great Northern's first hotel providing access to Glacier National Park was actually outside the park but right across the road from the railway station. Visitors arriving from the east could disembark and walk right over to the hotel.
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| Original Walkway from Train to Lodge |
Things have changed slightly. Now the Red Bus Station Wagon takes passengers and their luggage in both directions.
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| Red Bus Station Wagon with Porters in Railroad Outfits |
Being outside the National Park, the lodge offers resort style amenities including a swimming pool and a golf course, but Red Bus tours start from here and the building matches the Swiss architecture seen at Many Glacier.
One interesting difference is in the support posts. Both hotels use giant, Douglas Fir, but the ones at Many Glacier don't have the bark. It seems that dragging these down the road to the Swift Current Lake site stripped the bark from all of those posts.
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| Interior of Glacier Park Lodge |
GOING TO THE SUN ROAD
Just as with the Road to Hana in Maui, if you want to see anything on the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, you have to let someone else do the driving. The Red Bus tour was something that I definitely wanted to do, so this was an easy choice.
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| Checking out the Red Bus at Many Glacier Hotel |
The Sun Road is only open from end to end for 100 days, so everyone shows up at once and it is a mess. The parking lot at Logan Pass on the Continental Divide fills at 8:45AM and cars drive up and down the rows waiting for someone to leave. Fortunately, the Red Buses have designated parking.
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| Parking at Logan Pass Visitors Center |
All along the route, we would stop to get out to explore or stop for a moment so we could 'pop-up' through the open roof to take pictures.
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| Riding the Red Bus |
From the east side of the park, the Sun Road goes through the forested area alongside Saint Mary Lake. We stopped to take in the view of the lake, Wild Goose Island and the mountain peaks farther up the road before beginning to climb.
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| Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island |
The first really major stop is at the Jackson Glacier Overlook. This is the easiest glacier to spot and only one other is visible at all from the Sun Road.
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| Jackson Glacier As Seen From Going to the Sun Road |
Logan Pass, at 6,647 feet, is the highest point on the Sun Road and has tremendous views of both Reynolds Mountain and Clements Mountain with a popular trail leading to Clements.
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| Mt. Clements |
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| Mt. Reynolds |
Snowmelt creates large numbers of waterfalls leading primarily to Saint Mary River to the east and to McDonald Creek to the west. Every snow patch here results in a waterfall and some are a danger to the road and have to be accounted for.
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| Heaven's Peak and Waterfall Below |
LAKE MCDONALD LODGE
All of Lake McDonald is in the park, but Lake McDonald Lodge is only at the midway point of the lake's length just about 10 miles from the park's western entrance and this was our stopping point on the Red Bus tour. This means that there is a portion of the Going to the Sun Road that we haven't explored, thus necessitating our return.
Lake McDonald Lodge is a good place to stop, however. Surprisingly, it wasn't built by the Great Northern Railway but by a Montana land speculator. Still, it followed the lead of Glacier Park and Many Glacier and was built in the Swiss chalet style.
Access to the hotel from the railway station outside the park is now by Red Bus shuttle, but was originally by steam boat so that the front of the hotel actually faces the water rather than the road.
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| Lake McDonald Lodge Lakeside |
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| Lake McDonald Lodge Roadside |
Despite the similar Swiss architecture, the interior decoration of Lake McDonald Lodge is quite unique.
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| Lake McDonald Lodge Interior |
This visit ended far too quickly and we are planning to return to stay at both Lake McDonald Lodge and Glacier Park Lodge, and we are going to seriously explore the possibility of taking the train from Portland or Seattle. Could be fun.
GRAND COULEE DAM
We headed west to visit the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. On the way, we kept seeing signs reminding us that we were either crossing or on the Lewis & Clark Trail, but judging by the place names, it was clear that the French trappers were the ones to leave their mark.
Coeur d'Alene is one of the most fascinating cities we've ever visited. When I think of the panhandle area of Idaho, my first thought is of skinheads and private militia groups but it seems that period is over.
Waterfront Coeur d'Alene (forget the French, they pronounce it 'core'--when they don't just shorten it to CDA) is a beautiful, lively place. The local chamber of commerce calls it the "Lakeside Playground of the Pacific Northwest" and they're not wrong. The mix of young and old and the bustling boutique stores and eateries as well as the resort hotel were more like Santa Monica than a former mountain mining town.
Continuing west, we drove through Spokane and headed slightly northwest to the Grand Coulee Dam. The Grand Coulee gets its name from the French, of course, and was an attempt to describe that portion of the Columbia River valley that wasn't created by slow river erosion but by cataclysmic ice age flooding.
The dam was a New Deal project built to provide irrigation to arid eastern Washington. The cost was to be subsidized by the sale of electric power, however, World War II delayed the irrigation project while power generation was needed for the war effort.
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| Grand Coulee Dam |
We toured the pump-generating plant (on the left facing downstream) and got to walk along the top of the dam, but the highlight for us was the laser light show.
We were staying at the Columbia River Inn which is just across the street from the Visitors' Center but it wasn't until after checking in that we discovered that there was a light show scheduled for 10:00PM.
We walked over at about 9:30 and joined the spectators starting to assemble. We watched for a while and then the water coming over the spillway began to increase until the entire spillway was covered in white foam creating a backdrop for the laser light show. That was fun.
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| BofR Aerial Photo Showing Foaming Release - Note Irrigation Channel at Upper Right |
GOING HOME
We headed south out of Coulee Dam through the dramatic landscape of the Coulee Corridor where Banks Lake in the basalt canyon is the major reservoir of the Columbia Basin Project. Further on, we passed Hanford Reach National Monument.
The Hanford Site is famous for its production of plutonium for the Manhattan Project and has been called 'the Most Toxic Place in America.' The Nuclear Reservation itself is generally closed to the public, but the surrounding buffer area, untouched by humans since 1943, is now an Involuntary Park much like the area surrounding Chernobyl and is considered returned to wilderness. We didn't stop.
Farther south, in Oregon, we reached Pendleton and made a stop at the woolen mills. Its really a nondescript, little place and I actually missed the turn and had to backtrack.
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| Entrance to Pendleton Woolen Mills, Retail Store, and Factory Outlet |
For example, National Park blanket rejects were double reduced in price with 30% off the sale price, but the blankets, which had only minor stitching defects, did not receive either the Pendleton label nor the National Park label. If you buy for quality, no problem; if you buy for labels, well, you do exit through the retail store.
From Pendleton, we drove south on I-84 into Idaho. This is an interesting route noted for having the tightest curves in the Interstate System as well as multiple Oregon speed traps in Oregon. That was fun, too. Fortunately, Google Maps now warns you about these.
From Caldwell, Idaho, we made the long, simple drive home.
WILDLIFE
We didn't see much wildlife on this trip, but there were some good ones. The best, of course, was the bear sighting on Lake Josephine
The mountain goat is the symbol of the Great Northern Railway and the most numerous large mammal of Glacier itself and we saw several on the Going to the Sun Road.
Nancy had a small herd of deer trying to cross the road in front of her in Idaho and we saw a Big Horn ewe, lamb, and yearling on the road in Waterton.
At Coulee Dam, we had an encounter with a stag deer, but the most interesting "animal" sighting was a road sign we saw in Idaho.
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| This is a real Idaho Transportation Department Road Sign |
For a few more pictures, go to:
