Moose, Elk and Bears, Oh My...

Of course we spent time in Helena finding an appropriate coffee—not perfect, but the General Merc, an old store turned coffee shop, novelty and game emporium—filled our cups with cappucino and latte. Not bad, but not perfect. However the bagel that Unōhu had was good, as was the bearclaw that Unōhu-gōzalong enjoyed. Last Chance Gulch is a hoot, and Helena will go down as one of our gems.

The run from Helena to Glacier is lovely. Through serious canyons and over serious prairies, occasionally narrow two lane roads at 70 mph, and at the end very winding roads through the Blackfoot Reservation (poor—only a few thousand live here) leading to Glacier.

Glacier National Park is grand. It's been difficult for us to categorize the various aspects of the Rockies. After all, we have seen them in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and now Montana. In each place the geologic structure is different, the snow and treelines move up and down the mountains, the flora vary a little, and some regions are more populated than others. Some have more wildlife. Moose and elk abound. Some special wildflowers abound in Glacier, particularly the glacier lily.
In all, we tend, as of today, Saturday night, June 14, 2008, to think Glacier is the grandest.

We took a Red Bus tour, really a kind of char-à-banc bus, dating from the 1930s. Fine, very chatty driver and a group of tourists, mostly in their 60s and 70s from all over the country. We ventured through the park's eastern side in this bus; regrettably much of the Going to the Sun highway over the park to Lake McDonald is still under 20 feet of snow so we could not see the more lush scenery of the western park.



Instead we saw magnificent lakes, glaciers, flowers and yes, BEARS!

An awe-inspiring day, full of mountainous wonder.


Now, the Many Glacier Hotel: If you think these old hotels are long on luxury, forget it. The rooms are comfy enough but spartan. The food is adequate, the wine list is sort of adequate, the service is basically college students who try hard and do well enough. It's the site that makes up for the hotel drawbacks. Forget dressing for dinner--in sweaters and slacks we were overdressed. But the views in every direction, meeting a mountain sheep outside before breakfast, seeing the lakes, the snow, and the flowers, makes up for it. Like Yellowstone, you don't come here to be pampered, you come here to view and see and enjoy the mountains. I do hope the condo in Banff is more comfortable for a couple of days. I don't hold out much hope for the BnB in Edmonton.

We've arrived in Banff; it's a long drive from Glacier,in part because we detoured through the cener of Calgary--interesting big city with lots of tall buildings and rapid growth.

We also were delayed for the first time in probably 20 visits to Canada by a "random" check at immigration. It was a small port of entry and it appeared that the Canada Immigration was stopping everyone for checks who was not a returning Canadian. That of course meant mostly Americans. Part of getting back at the US for our silly passport rules no doubt. It's time we did something about them. The Bush Administration continues to think we should make life difficult for Canadians coming to the US and I don't blame them for doing the same. I just don't deal well with it when it's Ben and me.

Anyway, we're in a pleasant condo where we can cook breakfast with a view of mountains and pine forests about a 15 minute walk downhill to the center of Banff. We will explore this evening.

Wireless in the condo! Yippee...of course it was down when we arrived and the maintenance guy had to work on it to get it up. That's been the story of today! Except for the very fine rhubarb pie we had for breakfast at a pie shop in St. Mary's, Montana.