Episode 49 | Glacier National Park & Kalispell, MT
I shot stars the night before. The sky out here cooperates in ways that Florida simply doesn’t, and I’d been dragging the tripod out at odd hours all week trying to take advantage of it. A family of deer crossed the road on the way back to the cabin, two parents and two fawns, which apparently is unusual. Normally you get a mama and the kids. This one had the whole setup. There were also turkeys, which I genuinely did not expect to find in this part of Montana, and I made a note that wildlife tends to appear when you’re not specifically looking for it, which is something I keep relearning on this trip.
Coffee. Journal. Last full day in Glacier.
Lake McDonald Lodge
Denise and Becca were heading home the next morning, so we wanted to make this one count. We drove back into the park and made for Lake McDonald Lodge, which sits on the western shore and has been sitting there since 1913. Built to look like a Swiss chalet, which tracks given that the early vision for Glacier was to market it as the American Alps. The architecture earns it — heavy timber, stone, decorative alpine details, the kind of building that makes you want to sit on the porch and not move for several hours.
We were there with a specific mission though. Boat tickets.
The afternoon tour on Lake McDonald turned out to be one of those low-key experiences that quietly becomes a highlight. The lake is over ten miles long, nearly 500 feet deep, fed by glacial melt and cold enough year-round that swimming in it is more of a statement than a plan. The water is that deep blue-green that comes from suspended glacial silt catching the light, and the peaks rise around it on all sides. I was ostensibly looking for bears on the shoreline. I was also just standing on the upper deck watching the mountains go past and feeling like the trip had delivered on every promise it made.
We spotted bald eagles. Not bears. The bears on this entire trip remained a theoretical concept, despite the spray we’d been carrying since Bozeman Walmart Week One.
The Storm
We got back to the cabin in the late afternoon and the sky started doing something interesting, which in Montana is often a prelude to it doing something serious. I set up a time lapse and watched the clouds build over the ridge. Then I took a nap.
I woke up to the power being out.
The storm had knocked out electricity across the area — stores, gas stations, traffic lights, the works. In Florida we’d have had three days of warnings and a shopping list before something like this. Out here it just arrived. I drove out to find food and found closed doors instead. We made do with what was left in the cooler, which is the travel equivalent of cleaning out the refrigerator before a move.
Then at around 4:30 in the morning, something in the wall started moving. A mouse, by the sound of it, conducting some kind of project with great focus and absolutely no concern for the hour. This made Denise laugh. It made me less enthusiastic about the wall.
The power came back on. The mouse continued its work. We went back to sleep.
The Goodbye at Kalispell
Morning came cold and clear after the storm, the way mornings do out here when the weather has run its course and decided to be beautiful again. We packed up, said goodbye to the Pioneer Cabin and its seven indifferent horses, and drove to the Kalispell airport, which is small and apparently expanding and exactly the right size for a regional airport in the northern Rockies.
At Walmart on the way — because this trip began at a Walmart and apparently every leg of it passes through one — Becca needed a bag for the thrift haul overflow. We ran into a woman at the checkout who mentioned she sees bears in her yard regularly. I have driven through two national parks and a significant portion of Montana and Wyoming and have not seen a single bear. She sees them from her house. I did not record her.
Quick goodbye at the curb. Becca said horseback riding was her favorite part. Denise agreed. Yellowstone got partial credit for the mud pots and the geysers but lost points for the trees, which apparently all look the same after a while. Fair.
Idaho Next
And then they were gone, and it was quiet in the car again, which is a different kind of quiet than when you’re traveling with people. Not bad. Just different.
I pointed the car toward Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which I had to look up twice to confirm I was saying correctly. A night there, then down along the lake, then maybe Wallace before working my way out. The Wyoming and Montana chapter was closing. Somewhere ahead there was another state and another version of the trip.
The bear spray was still unused. I was keeping it.
