Short Trip to Many Glaciers

Last weekend Rich, Lily, and I took a quick trip to the East side of Glacier National Park and stayed the night at Many Glacier Lodge, built in 1910. We live about 20 minutes from the West entrance to Glacier National Park. There are several entrances on the east side though, near Browning, a Blackfeet reservation – Two Medicine, St. Mary’s, and Many Glacier. We visited all three in the 36 hours or so we were there. The weather did not cooperate with us. It was cool…in the mid 40’s and raining a majority of the time we were there. Thankfully, we lived in Norway for three years and learned there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. So we hiked for over 6 hours the first day….dried out our clothes, and then went back for a hike to Apikuni Falls the second day, after a quick jaunt to Fishercap Lake, looking for moose. We saw a moose hind end on the drive in, but never got to see the whole thing. We did, however, see several bears. Rich was armed and I had bear spray for all of our walks. There was a main hiking thoroughfare that was blocked off due to a bear feeding on a moose carcass. We went along the other side of the lake and stumbled upon a mama black bear and her two little cubs. The cubs were very curious and kept coming our direction on the path. We took a few photos and then moved on as they got on the path. We also saw a brown bear eating dandelions along the side of the road at St. Mary’s. He was pretty close, but it was also 9:30 at night and the light wasn’t so great. The lodge at Many Glaciers is very Swiss-looking. As I said before, it was built in 1910. The bell hop greets you in lederhosen. He is tasked with bringing in your suitcases and keeping the great standalone fireplace in the center of the lobby (which is 4 stories high, lined with huge tree trunks as posts). So the guy is wearing lederhosen and has soot on his knees. It is the little things you notice that make you smile. The winds were howling the whole night we were there. That made for some pretty cool lenticular cloud formations, which is Lily’s favorite. I think she took 20 photos of the clouds. Of course the mountains were gorgeous, even with the obscured views.