Here we are, over three years after my visit to Glacier National Park with Elizabeth. I’m finally writing out my 34th and final blog post from that trip. The reason to finish it now when there are certainly other, more fresh trips in my head to try to blog about is simple: next weekend, I’ll be back up in Glacier for another week with my parents, Taylor, Kyle, and Wyatt. Gotta be able to separate the memories of Glacier during peak melt from those of the park during fall color! This last post will cover our final afternoon and evening in the park when we’d run out of steam, our final morning, and then our farewell to Montana.
I think if there was a word to describe the mood between Elizabeth and myself on July 18, 2022, it would be: drained. The two of us had spent the previous week waking up early, flying, driving, hiking, kayaking, climbing, sleeping on tent pads, arguing, in awe, staying up late to see the stars, dealing with tough life news. That’s a lot to deal with, especially if you spent the previous night sleeping in a car. We had hit just about every major item on our Glacier itinerary. There’s always something else you can do, especially in a park with scenery as incredible and wide-ranging as Glacier. We could consult a park ranger. We could consult AllTrails. We could just drive until we saw something that struck our fancy.
Instead, Elizabeth and I chose to take a nap.
It was so out of character for the two of us that we tried to resist. There’s a couple of trails over on the other side of St. Mary Lake. We drove over to the trailhead to check out the historic ranger station, because why not? It was in a pretty spot at the bottom of the St. Mary valley, and the sun even came out for a while.
But as you can see from the picture, we weren’t done with the stormy weather that had plagued Logan Pass not long before. So even if we had wanted to hike further down from the ranger station (and there’s really only so many miles your body will let you hike without proper training), it was going to be getting wet. More than anything else, this functioned as the excuse that the two of us needed to head back to the tent and wait out the rain. Elizabeth stretched out in her sleeping bag and let the sound of the rain and the wind lull her into a midafternoon nap, while I settled down with a book freshly purchased from the Rising Sun gift shop the night before. Night of the Grizzlies, it was called, a chronicle of the events of August 13, 1967, when Glacier’s record of zero bear fatalities was shattered twice in two separate incidents. It was a really good read but maybe one I should have kept to myself knowing how on edge Elizabeth was about bears in the park.
Elizabeth woke up before dinnertime rolled around. Given that it was our last meal in the park, this was the last chance to cook whatever was left in our trusty styrofoam cooler. For me there was a Backpacker’s Pantry packet with chicken, rice, and beans. Elizabeth had a packet of her own with mac and cheese. And we still had several slices of bacon left to really get the calorie deficit from the last few days swinging back into our favor. It must not have been enough though, because Elizabeth convinced me and my ever-dwindling bank account (things were looking really rough for me financially at this point) to go get ice cream at St. Mary village. I guess I decided that since she had put up with my rotten mood ever since getting the email from my advisor, she deserved at least two more scoops of huckleberry in a cone. And you know what? That’s the right call.
Back to our campsite once more. The Montana sky seemed to know that the trip was almost over, because it put on an unforgettable grand finale sunset show.
A steady breeze rustled in off of the continental divide, blowing our tent around a little and making the task of packing everything back up into a form suitable for flying home a little more challenging. Our little campfire crackled and popped cheerily while I desperately tried to keep tent stakes from popping out of the ground the moment we put them back in. Even these little distractions petered out as the sunset deepened. Now there was nothing left to do or worry about other than roasting some of the bag of marshmallows that had sat in the car untouched for the past week. In a day (really the entire week) full of wild emotions, this quiet time for reflection and end-of-trip melancholy was relaxing.
The sun slid further and further behind the mountains and I poured lots of water on the fire pit to avoid running into any issues with the still-whistling breeze. We gathered up toiletry bags and headed over to the campground bathrooms to brush our teeth. I was ready to pop back into the tent and get one more night of reasonable sleep – that new sleeping pad had held up pretty great, all things considered! – but here is where my afternoon reading caught up to me. Elizabeth insisted that with the wind continuing to whip, she “wouldn’t be able to hear a bear coming”. Not sure what kind of benefit that would provide her, but Elizabeth refused to sleep anywhere but inside our CRV. So that’s how I spent my last night of vacation with my sleeping bad laid out in the trunk while she slept in the backseats. Night of the Grizzlies this was not.
The final morning of our trip (July 19, 2022) dawned bright and clear. Somewhere down in the center of the country, Oklahoma City was going to set a record high temperature at a blazing 110 degrees that day. Up here in St. Mary, it wasn’t quite cold enough for frost to develop, but it also wasn’t all that far away from it either. We each savored the bite of the morning air while folding the tent up. The process of putting everything away went smoothly and barely required any verbal communication between Elizabeth and myself. By this point, we were experienced tent campers who knew how to collapse our stuff.
There’s only so many flights from Great Falls every day. Ours was in the afternoon, meaning we at least had a little bit of time this morning before we had to make the drive back. There was one corner of Glacier National Park that is relatively accessible that the two of us hadn’t been to yet – Two Medicine.
Nestled there in the southeast corner of the park is an area known as Two Medicine. Back in the long-forgotten days when the Great Northern Railway was the only way to access Glacier country, Two Medicine’s relative proximity to the rail line meant that it was the main location to visit in the park. With the construction of Going-to-the-Sun Road, it has faded into a relative backwater, as evidenced by our spur-of-the-moment decision to visit on our last morning rather than a planned trip.
The drive to get to that park entrance was a little bit adventurous. First there was an extensive construction delay on US-89 at the top of the ridge that separated the St Mary and Cut Bank valleys. The road was scenic from there until we took the turn-off onto State Highway 49, a shockingly exposed 12-mile long highway that connects US-89 at Two Medicine and US-2 at East Glacier. Elizabeth was not a fan of the exposed switchbacks of the highway and was more than a little glad to be back on the relatively flat road of the Two Medicine entrance road.
Neither of us was particularly prepared for what to expect in this part of the park. Isn’t the surprised part of the fun? It turned out to be a miniature version of Many Glacier, with a rapidly steepening valley and a small village arrayed at the lower outlet of a long lake. There was a ranger station with a prominently displayed NPS stampbook cancellation station, which you can rest assured that Elizabeth appreciated. The ranger station also had a donation box for tourists getting rid of their bear spray, which tied up a loose end for us; you can’t exactly fly with bear spray in your carry-on.
Elizabeth and I parked by Two Medicine Lake and wandered down to the water. If anything, the view across the lake might be even more pretty than Many Glacier, though not as downright spectacular.
Even the rocks themselves seemed to shine just a little bit brighter at Two Medicine Lake. Gosh, I’d miss those colors.
Elizabeth and I had some time to wander through the general store, though I’m sure by now my bank account was so low that I was doing anything possible to avoid paying extra money. Just had to hang in there a few more days – we were already just two days away from leaving for Rehoboth Beach, though who knew what my thesis struggles would mean for that trip (editor’s note: we went on the trip anyway. I spent almost the entire week holed up on the top bunk, cranking my way through thesis edits. At least my bank account didn’t run out of money while we were there).
This part of the park had felt like one last chance to bear witness to God’s greatest testimony on earth. One last chance to witness a miracle before returning to the notably non-miraculous Norman, Oklahoma. One last slice of heaven. Turning our backs on heaven on earth wasn’t easy, but Glacier National Park would always be there the next time we wanted to visit. What really stunk about getting in the car to leave was that there weren’t any more of those testimonies left for us to witness on this trip. It was the experience that we would miss the most, not the place.
Which is what made our last bear sighting of the 2022 Glacier trip that much more special. It was like our own personal encore.
The bear was a cinnamon-colored beast lumbering on the north side of the entrance road as we drove back out. After a moment, we gasped in unison; trailing the bear was a chocolate-brown cub no larger than the size of a dog. Based on the colors, these must have both been black bears. Elizabeth hissed at me to grab the camera. It was among the many other things that were semi-packed-up in the back of the car, in large part because the battery had started to die yesterday near Hidden Lake. I couldn’t really complain – it had lasted a long time through the previous week and I’d gotten so many pictures. Usually you could squeeze out a couple more when the battery was dying right as you turned the camera on. I fumbled into the backseat to grab it and throw on Sam’s “big dog” lens one final time. By then, the mama bear and her cub were lumbering off into the woods, but she managed to get a few pictures (not necessarily in focus).
After a minute or so they receded into the trees. That put our final bear count at 9: one near St. Mary Lake on July 14, one on the Piegan Pass trail on July 15, three at Many Glacier on July 17, two more from the Many Glacier hotel on July 17, and then these two. How could you ever top something so majestic?
This time there really were no surprises left for us. We left the park for the final time, drove through the village of East Glacier, then turned onto US-2 and angled up toward Browning from whence we could retrace our steps from eight magical days ago. The mountains slowly receded into the background as the Big Sky of Montana pressed all around us. The RAV4’s gas tank inched ever closer to 0, urged on by our desire to get every last cent out of the prepaid gas refueling we’d gotten from the rental company the week prior (and let me tell you: gas in July 202 was NOT cheap). Security in Great Falls was a breeze; I had time to shoot the shit with a TSA agent about all of the bears we’d seen while my camera bag went through the scanner. There was just enough time for a panini and onion rings at the airport before our flight back to Denver.
The rest of the travel went smoothly enough. It was still unbearably hot when we walked out of the OKC airport and into the parking lot despite the fact that the sun had long since gone down. If I closed my eyes and thought about our campsite in St. Mary, probably a full 50 degrees cooler than this parking lot, the magic was just enough to make it feel a little less hot.
Ending the trip of a lifetime is never easy, but it helps when you’ve got a friend who’s excited to see you return home:
This officially brings my Glacier National Park series to a close. I doubt I’ll ever have time to write an official postmortem, and this trip was well over 3 years ago now anyway, so what would be the point to trying to describe that feeling? Instead let’s talk about what has stood the test of time.
Glacier is still far and away my favorite national park, even though since that trip I have seen parks from the Everglades to Denali. There’s just something so magical about the mountains and the wildlife. The snow that threatened to ruin our trip turned out to be the greatest thing that could happen for us. Trails and roads opened just as we arrived. Waterfalls were absolutely roaring and every single tree, shrub, and flower was in a burst of lush color. The weather was a perfect blend of summer warmth and mountain coolness. The crowds weren’t that bad, and Elizabeth and I consistently outwitted the little piggies to get where we wanted without any issues. If anyone ever asks me what national park they should visit, there’s no question. This is the one.
This trip was also a major life lesson for me – how do you manage to acknowledge when an awful thing happens and keep it from destroying your day? I think about that last day at Hidden Lake and St Mary after the thesis news often, and that memory provides an urging to me to try to accept whatever is happening with more equanimity. On a more granular level, this trip helped Elizabeth and myself learn what our absolute limits are. We drove ourselves ragged for a full week and I have no regrets, but we’ve since learned the value of taking a deep breath and leaving some downtime in travel plans.
I cannot wait to go back to Glacier at the end of this week and see what it looks like in autumn. I cannot wait to take my children back one day. To take them to the Jackson Glacier Overlook and show them where you used to be able to see a wall of snow and ice coming off of the high peaks of the continental divide. To show those children one of the last preserves America has created for the mighty grizzly bear. To show them nature’s beauty and what we as humans have both failed, and succeeded, in preserving what God gave us.
That’s the lesson from Glacier we should all take home.
