Sunday, August 07, 2016

To The Top of the USA We Go!

It was time to say farewell to North Dakota and trail blaze to new territory. Montana here we come! 

I don't know about most people, but I actually have a bucket list. There's totally attainable things on my list (that are about making and finding the time), and some are awful big wishful dreams. Glacier National Park was totally one of those attainable bucket list items. Which finally we made the time for! 

We booked our St. Mary's campsite before we upgraded to the "wanderlust." The site fit our pop-up with room to spare. Glacier sites book early and fast, so getting a larger site was not going to happen. We sweat all the way to Montana, with fingers crossed that we could squeeze the "wanderlust" into the site . And we did! Sighs of relief and joy were breathed by the three of us! 

Here is the first travel log from our daily hikes. GNP is heaven on earth! Each hike marveled and WOWWED! When we thought one hike couldn't be topped, the park proved us wrong!! 

Our first hike: Cracker Lake, a relatively easy 12.5 round trip, that's view is the perfect prize. It was easy to forget the cold wind blowing when gazing out at the turquoise pool of water, surrounded glacier laced mountains. 

Cracker Lake is also a trail shared with horses, so we got pretty good at leaping and skipping around piles of dung. 

Walking across log bridges is always fun on a hike. Cracker Lake served a few up. 


 It was also our first Grizzly Bear sighting. As all good hiker's do we teamed up. Our team of three became a team of nine. All armed with bear spray.  We were told by a ranger no bear has ever attacked a group of three or larger. We did make sure to constantly talk as we hiked. We played "guess this movie." 

We enjoyed our backpack lunch on the west side of the lake, upon a cliff with a magnificent view of the turquoise water. We sat up there for 40 minutes. It was hard to decide to move on. 

On our way back we stopped at a road display to remember our first Grizzly sighting. 

To be continued....

2 comments:

Lin said...

EEK. I am so afraid of bears. Should I worry about that in So. Dakota?

JODI said...

Naaaa you'll be fine.