East Glacier

September 4, 2007
Tuesday
Up at 0300 for phase two of our journey. Bob and Lynn arose also and Lynn fixed us a bag of muffins to take and Bob gave us ice for the cooler.
On the road at 0330 back to Coeur d’Alene and north around Pend Oreille lake. My French is inadequate to understand whether that means hanging ear or earring. We crossed into Montana and our cell phones reset to Mountain time.
We had to pull over near Flathead Lake to let a house go by. We arrived at Glacier Park Lodge just after noon and checked in. The temperature was 78, considerably warmer than we have been observing for several weeks on the Yahoo weather watch.
We checked in and then took a picnic lunch underneath the trees in the front garden. The Amtrak station is across the road, a handy thing because the lodge was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1913 as a way to increase passenger traffic. Elevation is 4,800 feet and we are on the edge of the Blackfoot Nation.
The bedroom was large and the bathroom was not. The shower stall was small enough to hold one person standing upright. In order to wash below my waist, I had to stand on one foot and lift the other foot within arm reach while trying to avoid bumping the temperature control of the shower water.
We had dinner in the lounge and watched the sun set over the mountains and that was just fine.
Wednesday
We signed up for the Red Motor Coach tour, which are White Motor Company buses that were put into service in 1933 and refurbished in 2003 by Ford Motor Company. Larry Perry from Detroit drove us on the Big Circle Tour.
We started by heading for Marias Pass where we stopped and admired the statue of John Stevens who surveyed the route through Stevens Canyon for the Grand North Railway. He named the pass after Maria, who was either Merriwether Lewis’ niece or mistress or both.
The air was smoky from the Skyland fire which has burned 45,000 acres so far. Larry said snow will eventually put it out.
Larry showed us the basic geologic layout of the park. The Rocky Mountains were formed when the Western tectonic plate overrode the Eastern plate. The top two layers of colored strata that we see are sedimentary rock and the beige layer is igneous intrusion.
We stopped at Goat Lick Rock and watched mountain goats lick the green rocky cliff that apparently contains a low concentration of salt.
We saw examples of two different styles of fire suppression. National Park Service believes that wild fire is part of the natural process and lets natural fires run, except to try to protect people, buildings and sensitive habitat. Forest Service has a different mission and tries to save trees by jumping on fires to contain them and put them out. So on one side of the highway in Stevens Canyon, we saw lots of green forest and on the other side we saw blackened sticks of trees with brush and young lodgepoles growing in between. Same fire, different results.
Following the natural progression of nature, lodgepole pines, whose cones require great heat to germinate, grow rapidly to fill in burnt areas at about a foot per year of height. Fifty years after a fire, Doug firs grow up amongst the lodgepoles, surpass them in height and the lodgepoles die from lack of sunlight. They fall onto the forest floor and create conditions for another wildfire.
After entering the park at the western entrance, we drove to Apgar, a private town at the foot of Lake McDonald, a cirque lake that was named from a wood carving. After Mr Apgar acquired the land, he discovered a name carved into a tree, "McDonald," and named the lake and the valley and so on accordingly.
At this point Larry rolled back the canvas top and we were treated to panoramic views of the mountains filling the horizon around us.
We had lunch at the Lake McDonald Lodge and were happy that we had the same food choices as at the Glacier Lodge so we didn’t have to spend a lot of time reading the menu.
From there we embarked, or embused, on the Going to the Sun Highway, carved out of the Garden Wall, a glacial arr te that separates McDonald Valley from Many Glacier. The highway was deliberately designed to minimize visual impact by following a straight line as much as possible rather than ascending the wall in switchbacks.
We observed goats from an observation point just below Logan Pass, on the Continental Divide. A few minutes later we observed bighorn sheep on the other side of the highway.
At the Logan Pass visitor center, we read a mural that told us:
"Far away in northwestern Montana, hidden from view by clustering mountain peaks, lies an unmapped corner–the Crown of the Continent."
–George Bird Grinnell, 1901
We descended Logan Pass and stopped to observe Jackson Glacier. Larry told us that glaciers are defined as being at least 75 acres, 100 feet deep and moving, pulled by gravity. In 2000, scientists counted 35 glaciers in the park; in 2007, 26 glaciers and they predict that in 2030 they will all be gone.
We rounded a corner and Larry pointed out rock ledges where goats give birth in the spring. During their first week of life, they are small enough to be picked up by eagles, which are their only natural predator, so the mothers spend that time standing over the kids defending them while eagles circle overhead and make occasional runs to see what develops.
As we wended our way the last thirty miles along the edge of the Blackfoot Nation, Larry told us that Merriwether Lewis followed the Cutbank River north almost into the park to see if it provided northern access to the Pacific, but gave up after the river turned westward into the Rockies. Larry said that historians have been able to locate all of the Discovery Corps campsites during their journey. Captain Lewis was advised before leaving St Louis that, in order to prevent constipation among his men, he needed to administer daily doses of mercury. This left telltale markers in the daily camp middens that scientists have located. It wasn’t clear to me whether the researchers looked for mercury deposits or simply followed a trail of tuna cans.
At the end of the day, we had driven 140 miles in a great loop that bisected the park and took nine and a half hours.
We stopped by the great fireplace after supper to check a presentation by Chief Curly Bear about the history of the Blackfoot Nation.

On the Way to Canada

August 29, 2007
Wednesday
We got on the road at 0320, leaving Nevada City headed for Sandy, Oregon. Daylight eased over the horizon as we passed through Redding. We arrived at Cousin Nancy’s house at 2:30. Nancy is the daughter of my Dad’s first cousin, Irving. Our paternal grandfathers were brothers.
Nancy drove us to Timberline Lodge where we sat in a window seat and had a beer and dips and chips and looked at the mountain that defeated us a couple of decades ago. Cousin Jim, Catherine, Doug and Greg and I drove to Mt Hood one day with the intention of climbing it the next day. Weather was not kind to us. We climbed through knee-high snow to the top of the ski lifts and encountered a thick blanket of fog. Choosing discretion over valor, we retreated to the lodge and warmed ourselves before the fire before returning home.
Thursday
We drove to Edgefield Resort in Troutdale, owned by the famous McMenamin brothers of Portland. They specialize in restoring old properties that are otherwise destined for destruction. Edgefield was a poor farm during the Depression. The McMenamins have restored the hotel, built a golf course, turned the powerhouse into a brewpub and were preparing that night to host Stevie Wonder in an outdoor concert.
Nancy introduced us to Lemon Drops and we carried the glasses as we toured the gardens and looked for the statue of Jerry Garcia, formerly hidden in a patch of wild blackberries. The berries have been cleared and Jerry was in full sight, an unfortunate circumstance for the people who used to hang out there.
We drove up the Historic Columbia River Gorge to Chanticleer Point, a scenic view point from which we could see Vista House on Crown Point and the broad Columbia rolling toward us. Then we drove to Vista House and admired the view of Chanticleer Point and the Columbia River rolling away from us.
Nancy took us next to Multnomah Falls, the number one tourist destination in Oregon. Then we went to Bonneville Dam, where Woody Guthrie wrote
"Tom Jefferson’s vision would not let him rest,
An empire he saw in the Pacific Northwest’
Sent Lewis and Clark and they did the rest,
So roll on, Columbia, roll on."
Nancy persuaded the security guard to allow us to visit the Visitors Center where someone counts the number of fish who climb the ladder every day on their way upstream to spawn. Then we visited Herman the Giant Sturgeon in the fish viewing ponds. Sturgeons don’t climb ladders so they inhabit less of the river than the salmons.
We called our motel in Coeur d’Alene and told him we would be late arriving. He said he’d leave the light on for us and the door unlocked and we could register in the morning.
We had late lunch/early dinner at the 6th Street Bistro in Hood River, sitting on the outside deck and watching windsurfers sail above the Columbia.
We said good-bye to Nancy at 5:00 and headed up river for Idaho. Gail drove to Kennewick just over the border into Washington. I drove the rest as we passed through a cold front that put a few drops of water on the windshield and we arrived at the Flamingo Motel in Coeur d’Alene at 10 pm.