We found that there isn't a lot to do in the tiny town of Choteau. But we are within driving distance of the biggest city in Central Montana. So we made the drive to Great Falls, Montana, for a full day of activities. We enjoy learning more about Lewis and Clark and their Corp of Discovery's great trek across the west to find a route to the Pacific. We found that Great Falls was another good place to learn more. We were welcomed to town at the visitor center with this statue of four of the group's most famous members.
This group was making good time with their heavy boats floating on the Missouri River on their westward trip. Even though they were having to go against the current, the wide river was still the best way to transport all their heavy cargo.
Then they discovered the five different falls that make river travel troublesome in the Great Falls area. This is a view of Black Eagle Falls today. It takes quite a stretch of the imagination to see what it looked like in 1804. A hydro-electric dam was built to capture the energy of the raging falls. So now the water going over the rocky cliffs is controlled to a trickle of its former self.
There is a bike trail that travels beside many of the Lewis and Clark historical sites in this area. We got some good exercise biking through the golden grass pastures between those sites.
We rode to another of the falls--Rainbow Falls--with barely a trickle flowing over the rock face because of another hydro-electric plant built at this site.
Our bike trail also took us through Giant Springs State Park. Mark is standing behind the tranquil springs, filled with clear water.
This view above the springs shows the water bubbling to the top. Giant Springs is a fitting name since 156 million gallons are springing to the surface here every day.
That water then cascades from that upper pond in front of Mark, to empty into the Missouri River that is behind Mark.
It was also along this bike path that we found more sculptures of the Corp of Discovery. Here Denisa and Sacajawea are pointing the way for Lewis and Clark.
Actually, going that direction along the Missouri River would not be possible because of the five falls in the Great Falls area. In fact, these men had to build wheels and axles, to turn their boats into bulky wheeled wagons. They had to be pulled up the steep banks of the river, and then 18 miles across the prairies to get around the great falls of Great Falls, Montana. A life-size model of this real-life situation was on display at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. Free with our national park pass, the center had two floors of very interesting displays, plus two well-made films.
We spent several hours in the Lewis and Clark center. It kept our attention, and we learned a lot. But standing on our legs while reading all those museum exhibits can wear us out more than a ten mile hike. By the time we left, we were hungry and tired. We headed to "Music on the Mo," Great Falls' community market and family festival on the shore of the Missouri River. They host weekly live music and food trucks at Oddfellows Park, and we love evenings like this. After we were fed and entertained, it was time to head back home. It was a good day with a little exercise, a little education, a little music, and a full stomach. Another day in paradise!
After twenty days hovering around Glacier National Park, we've decided it is time to start our journey south. At East Glacier we were in the foothills of the Rockies. But it only takes a few miles to suddenly drop out of the mountains into the very flat plains.
We have heard that northern Montana got lots of snow last winter. We see snow fences along many of the highways. But mostly we see a sea of gold around us. Whether it's wheat, prairie grass that has turned to gold, or wheat stubble--it all makes up a mono-chromatic palette of gold across the plains.
Even in late August, they are still harvesting wheat. This freshly cut field still has the machinery parked by the road. Denisa came from a family of wheat farmers, and she doesn't remember a header anywhere close to the size on this new combine.
Our destination today is in the middle of all that agriculture--Choteau, Montana. We found out the proper pronunciation for our new town is something like "Show-toe." Besides wheat, it seems to be a great place to grow vegetables. We found that there are several Hutterite colonies in this area, and in just four days we have become one of their best customers. They bring their wares to town two days each week, and we were there both days. Here is one day's shopping trip.
We learned that the Hutterites immigrated here from Austria, and live in communal colonies here in Montana and the Dakotas. Everyone in the colony has a job. The sellers brought the food to town that the gardeners and bakers worked hard to produce. They eat in communal dining halls, and live in housing that looks something like barracks. The men wear the plain clothes that we have seen on the Amish. But the women wear brightly patterned dresses with polka-dot kerchiefs over their hair. We loved shopping at their stand, and loaded up on eggs, sausage and bread to take on the road. We're pretty sure it's not exactly nutritious, but that big loaf of bread tastes more like angel food cake, rather than yeast bread.
We climbed to the top of the hill behind the Choteau Mountain View RV Park to get this aerial view of our new home for the next four days. Right across the road from the RV park is a seed company. Just 25 miles straight west is the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains. But the first day we were here, our mountain view at Choteau Mountain View RV Park was shrouded in smoke from the forest fires around us.
We are getting a better understanding of wildfires during this visit to Montana. Even though the big ones are still raging in the forested mountains, we have seen that they can spark and spread quickly across the plains as well. This fire had burned to the highway, and was still smoldering when we drove past.
We are glad that we moved our "show" to Choteau. But the one thing missing here is television. We have never activated our satellite dish, so we depend on over-the-air channels. In the middle of the plains of Montana, there are zero television channels floating around over the air. The same was true in East Glacier. That means this is 14 days without television. If anything is happening out there that we need to know, could someone please text us? We are feeling a little remote, but still loving the adventure here in Montana.
Our last day at Glacier National Park just happened to coincide with the solar eclipse. This area will see an 87% eclipse, but we found out that 100% of the eclipse glasses were sold out at our remote location. So we made a solar viewing box instead.
It took us several prototypes to get the hole just right, but it really did show the changing shape of the sun when we looked through the viewing corner onto the white screen we taped to the bottom. (We just realized this picture looks like Denisa is very hungry, searching for the last pieces of cereal at the bottom of that box.)
Mark took this picture of Denisa with the sun behind her, watching the sun become a crescent. We include it in the blog because somehow that crescent-shaped sun appeared on Denisa's cuff in the picture.
We tried to take pictures of the sun, and got a few of photos of the slivers of the sun as the moon moved across it. We noticed the temperatures cooled in our campground during the maximum coverage. We got to see it clearly when some of our neighbors let us borrow their glasses, so it was a successful eclipse viewing at East Glacier.
Once all the eclipse hoop-la was over, we made the short drive to our final Glacier National Park adventure. We had been checking out the kayaking possibilities, and decided the lake at the Two Medicine entrance would be great. So we inflated our trusty kayak, even though the wind had picked up and it was a little cool on the shore.
Mountains surround the water, so it is beautiful place to be in the middle of Two Medicine Lake.
With the wind in our face, we headed out on the lake. The waves were big enough that we found staying close to the shore was best. We also found that going slowly meant that less water lapped into the boat. Going slowly means that Denisa didn't have to row. This is turning out to be a great kayak trip!
Besides that, the water is perfectly clear. We could see the rocks at the bottom of the lake until it dropped off and the water got too deep.
We were looking for wildlife along the shore, but the trees are so thick it would be hard for anything big to make its way to the water. We did find this interesting duck--a Merganser--keeping guard.
She was guarding this fluffy group of pointy-beaked youngsters that were huddled together near the water.
It's hard to get a perspective on just how big the mountains around us are. Those are forty foot pine trees along the water, and they look tiny at the foot of Rising Wolf Mountain.
Another perspective of size for the mountains is the passenger boat that shuttles people the length of the lake. While that's a good way for most people to see the lake, we much prefer a ride in our kayak.
As windy as it was on the east side of the lake, by the time we rowed to the west end the water was perfectly still. Instead of white-capping waves, we had reflections of the surrounding mountains on the glass-smooth water.
Now with the wind at our back, it was an easy ride back to the shore. This is our last day at Glacier National Park, and these are our final views of the mountains we have come to love. With all the wild fires in Montana, we are also appreciating the blue skies that we have been blessed with here at East Glacier.
We have enjoyed some beautiful skies here in Big Sky Country. This was a view over our campground at sunset. We're actually looking at the eastern sky, as the pinks and purples spilled over to light up the eastern horizon.
It's been a great ten days on the east side of Glacier National Park, preceded by a fun ten days on the west side. But it's time to move down the road to new adventures tomorrow!
After a day to recover from our twenty mile hike, we were looking for one more good hike before we left Glacier National Park. We tried to find one closer to our campground, but Mark started reading trail reviews about the Grinnell Glacier hike. He kept reading phrases like "epic hike" and "best hike of our lives" and "most beautiful scenery ever." Alrighty then, it looks like we will make one more long drive up to the Many Glacier entrance of the park to take this hike.
It was another early morning in order to get a parking spot. (It seems like we have been using that phrase a lot since we've been at Glacier National Park!) The trail starts with a hike around Swiftcurrent Lake.
We saw a squirrel posed perfectly in a tree beside the lake, so we stopped to take a picture. That's when Denisa noticed the low battery light was flashing on her best wildlife camera. We always bring a spare set of batteres on hikes, but she had forgotten them this morning. It would be quite a long walk back to the car, so we decided against it. After all, we probably won't see any good wildlife today.
We continued hiking thirty minutes further, and found ourselves beside another body of water. This is Josephine Lake.
There is a boat ride that helps to make this hike a little shorter for the price of a boat ticket. We watched as the 8:30 boat floated by us on the lake. We later found out that the passengers on the boat spotted a black bear in the meadow above us.
There is a chain of three lakes on this hike. As we hiked closer to the glacier, we noticed the color of each lake changed. By now we are getting our first glimpse of Lower Grinnell Lake. Denisa is standing on the right hand side of the picture, looking down on that beautiful teal green lake in the morning light.
It's right about this time that we got our first glimpse of our first grizzly bear. We wrote about that encounter in the last blog, but we have to include just one picture today since we took about a hundred pictures. The low-battery light was flashing the entire time, but thankfully the camera kept working!
We spent the rest of the hike to the top watching that grizzly make his way across the meadow. But Denisa couldn't help but take a picture of the lovely wildflowers as we looked down on the lake and the bear.
We also paused to take this picture along the trail with a weeping wall. Denisa probably wouldn't be smiling if she knew that there was another bear following us on the trail.
We stopped again to take this picture of Mark on the mountain side, with more beautiful mountains behind him. The trail reviews were right, this is a great hike even without a bear sighting!
We have to include one more picture of Mark on that mountain-side, just to show the grandeur of the scene around us.
We finally got to the top of the mountain, where a herd of big horn sheep are resting by the snow close to the trail. Thankfully, our camera batteries are still hanging in there as Denisa is taking more pictures.
We are taking more pictures of the alpha male in the group, who seems to be able to convince the other sheep to move just by turning his huge set of horns towards them.
We are also talking to other hikers at the top, telling them our incredible encounter with the grizzly bear. That's when we heard another group of hikers coming up the trail making lots of noise. We found out that they had seen a grizzly in front of them on the trail, and they were purposefully being noisy so the bear wouldn't be surprised. Sure enough, the bear in front of them ran through the forest right beside us. That's when we figured out that he had been following us for the last mile or so! Denisa took this picture of the back of Mark's head as he snapped a picture of bear.
Two close-up encounters with a grizzly on the same hike. Incredible!
There are also lots of pictures of this grizzly in yesterday's blog! We watched him for thirty minutes. We also watched the big horn sheep (who had moved safely up the mountain) watching the grizzly.
It was finally time to top the final rise to see the climax of this hike--Upper Grinnell Lake and its surrounding glaciers.
There are only 26 glaciers left in Glacier National Park, and we could see three of them from here. On the upper left hand is Gem Glacier. On the right is Salamander Glacier, and on the bottom left is Grinnell Glacier.
We hiked closer to the water and got this pictorial proof that we made it to the top. This upper lake is a milky aqua color as a result of a high concentration of glacier silt.
Glaciers are solid masses of ice that move independent of the mountains. As they move, their weight crushes and grinds the rocks under them into "rock flour." It's that powder that empties into glacier lakes and gives them that interesting color.
There were icebergs floating in the lake, and the water was literally freezing cold. Two guys had taken the iceberg plunge and were still shivering because the air was cool today. Denisa is happy to report that Mark was not one of those two guys taking the plunge in the ice water.
From this vantage point, we could see the saddle of the mountain where hikers can look down on Grinnell Glacier. We did that hike a couple weeks ago.
Standing at the top of the mountain two weeks ago, we had taken fuzzy pictures of the hikers far below us by the water. Today we are standing by the water, taking fuzzy pictures of the hikers high above us on the mountain top.
Between the wind and cold temperatures near the ice, it was time to dawn our jackets. We left the water edge, and started hiking towards the glaciers. That took us over the boulders with some interesting rock formations at our feet.
We added some mileage to this hike, but we made it all the way over to stand on Grinnell Glacier. That's a lot of ice for the middle of August!
Mark is standing on the top of the biggest boulder in the middle of the glacier. We heard lots of stories about how Grinnell Glacier has receded in the last thirty years.
We exchanged picture-taking with another couple that we have seen on our last two hikes. This looks more like a January photo, rather than the hottest part of the summer.
We have totally wandered into another of God's wonders today!
Before we left the top, we took a picture down the valley. From this vantage point we could see the chain of three lakes we had walked beside to get here. Now we're headed back down the trail to see them up close again.
When the bear appeared, the big horn sheep had moved high up on the steep rocky walls. As we came back down the trail, they were relocating to the lower meadow. We caught this guy making a sure-footed leap from one rocky ledge to another.
Those camera batteries are still working as we got this close-up of the biggest set of horns.
As we hiked back down the trail, we realized that we had missed some of the trail views since we were so busy watching the first bear. We totally missed the big waterfall coming down the mountain into Lower Grinnell Lake.
We missed how tall the mountain face is that we had hiked beside.
Likewise, we hadn't realized how tall the trail was from the valley below us. You can barely see Denisa on the trail in both these pictures, dwarfed by the mountain majesty around her.
Mark was snapping all kinds of pictures as we both exclaimed over the epic proportions of this hike. We're so glad we came here today!
Denisa just gathered another handful of huckleberries, and we realized we were back at the same point in the trail when we saw our first grizzly. We saw a group of hikers gathered at the side of the trail with cameras poised. Could it be another bear? No, that would be too redundant. It was even better--a bull moose!
Surprisingly our camera batteries were still working, and we got more pictures of this big guy grazing on everything green not far from the trail. We've been blessed again!
Because we were so close to the point where we saw the first bear, we wanted to see how far he was from us when we were taking pictures. So Mark climbed down into that same ditch and Denisa took a picture of him looking very bear-like. He stepped off the distance from where we were standing--about 15 yards.
We took another picture of Lower Grinnell Lake, checking the shores for any wildlife. We didn't see any here, but a few steps later Mark saw a moose cow and her calf in the nearby meadow through the binoculars. While he was watching them, Denisa saw a black bear scamper across a gravel area beside the little stream that connects the lakes. Both sightings were too far away for good pictures, but we were being blessed over and over on this last hike at Glacier National Park!
It was almost 5:00 by the time we were hiking by the final lake closest to the car. We saw one of the tour boats coming toward us, with the lodge in the background. That big lodge looks tiny beside the majestic mountain behind it. We've been on the trail for over eight hours, and we'd have to agree with all those trail reviews that called this an epic hike. The scenery was beautiful, and our chance encounters with the wildlife were just icing on the top!
We hiked 15 miles today and we were tired! But we stopped by St. Mary's to say good-bye to some great friends we met at our campground. They insisted we stay for dinner while we showed off our bear and moose pictures. God blesses us in many ways on many days! Thanks Dennis and Judy! It was almost 9:00 as we drove on the winding road back to our home on wheels. The last rays of sunshine were streaming through the clouds.
We saw a glimpse of color in the clouds as Denisa snapped pictures of the sky. It was like our own personal-sized rainbow. It's been an epic day of wandering among God's wonders!
