The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I've taken and places I've seen.
48 hours into our time in Montana, Elizabeth and I had seen many of the biospheres that the state had to offer. There had been the flat Big Sky Country, the rolling High Plains, the rugged granite-covered mountains, and the heavily wooded slopes. Herron Park south of Kalispell made an entirely new one. There were …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Foys Lake Overlook”
One moment, twilight was spilling forth brilliant oranges and pinks across the northern Montana sky. The next, it was morning and early sun rays were lighting up those same mountains golden-green. At least that’s how it seemed to me following a wonderful night of sleep at the Belton Chalet. You can easily overexert yourself on …
After most of a good, hard day, Elizabeth and I had been delivered to the end of Going-to-the-Sun Road. Apgar Village lies in the far southwestern corner of the park, where McDonald Creek exits Lake McDonald and begins its terminal sprint down toward the Flathead River along US-2. This is the commercial side of the …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Apgar, West Glacier”
When you are with someone long enough, you are able to interpret context clues much more easily. With that said, you don’t need to be an expert at Elizabeth Studies to know when she’s hungry. My lovely fiancee has a way of letting people know. And as we got back into our RAV4 on the …
Below me, Avalanche Creek boiled through its gorge. Obviously it was swollen with runoff, but I didn’t really expect there to be this much water in one of the little creeks way up in the mountains. It was quite loud. As a natural lover of creeks and rivers, I loved it with every fiber of …
When the YouTube videos said that Glacier National Park was teeming with some of the greatest biodiversity in the United States, the videos were not lying. The previous night, we had stayed in the northeast corner of the park. That area had been referred to as a “desert”, but clearly it was just like the …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Trail of the Cedars to Avalanche Creek Canyon”
Holy shit. The Logan Creek valley of Glacier National Park suddenly opened up as we drove past the Logan Pass Visitor’s Center. The first thing I noticed was that this was all so *big*. The mountains were huge around us. The Garden Wall loomed on the right side of the valley. Miles and miles in …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Going-to-the-Sun Road, West Side”
Logan Pass is the stuff of legend. Somebody had the bold idea to take a cleft in the continental divide right at the terminus of the Garden Wall, and blast the artery of one of the world’s great national parks right into that cleft. And then someone got the idea to put an entire visitor’s …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Logan Pass, Part One”
First of all, I apologize for how long this post will inevitably be. We’re about to take a trip through one of the most magical drives in the continental United States. I took a billion pictures. When I go through the pictures, I wish I’d taken 10 billion. There’s basically no way to shorten the …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Going-to-the-Sun Road, East Side”
Before I get much further into this blog series about Glacier, I think it’s important to mention the geography of the national park and how it shaped the week Elizabeth and I spent there. When you’re planning for a trip, all you have to go off of is YouTube videos and maps. Those two things …
Continue reading “Glacier National Park: Understanding the Geography”
