Glacier National Park

Hi again! Since the last time we posted to the blog, we were just leaving Yellowstone NP. Now we are in Glacier NP. We arrived about 3 days ago from the Apgar entrance, in the southwest part of the park. In that section, there are some primitive campgrounds next to a row of beautiful mountain lakes between the ridge lines. We have most of our new pictures up on flickr, but this has been our view for the past three days:



We have mainly been hanging around Bowman Lake and the little town of Polebridge. Bowman lake is so nice, with a little campground right next to it. The first night we slept there, and the next morning we took a hike over a mountain ridge from Bowman Lake to Lower Quartz Lake. The lake was also beautiful and sooooo clear! You could see the bottom even though the lake was maybe 20 feet deep. The middle of the lakes were much much deeper, who knows how deep. We swam at Quartz Lake, and saw a lot of fish. We had lunch there too. Then on the way back, the hike was so steep that our legs were giving up on us! We got back to Bowman Lake, swam some more, and then left to go back into civilization. We parked by Coal Creek in the National Forest next to the park and slept there. There was a crazy thunderdtorm that came through that night. The lightening was so bright, it blinded you even with your eyes closed!!

At the creek, we met a guy staying at the Polebridge Hostel, and he told us that they rented kanoes there for cheap. So the next morning, we were at the hostel renting out a small red kanoe. We took it back to Bowman Lake and kanoed about half way up the long finger-like lake. We got some amazing pictures! You can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/jennromyphotos. We took our lunch with, so were were on the water for about 5 or 6 hours. On the way back, the wind picked up and we were, of course, trying to paddle against the wind!!! We made it back eventually, but we were so hot from paddling so hard, we just jumped in the lake to cool off!




There is a tiny saloon at Polebridge and since it was Friday night, there were a lot of people gathering with live music. They had local microbreweries on tap, like Moose Drool, IPA, and Porter Organic beer. We tried them all, and even some in bottles, like Cold Smoke and others I can't remember. It was pizza night, so we got some good veggie pizza too. Good thing we were camping close by, because I could hardly walk. :-)

Today we woke up and had some coffee and sweet rolls at the same little town. We're so soar from paddling and hiking that today we're going to take it easy and finally drive on the Going-to-the-Sun Road!