Glacier National Park

Enjoy our "Going to the Sun" Slideshow:

After getting our alignment done this morning, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the scenery! We drove through Glacier on the "Going to the Sun Highway" - beautiful! It is a narrow, winding, mountain drive that hangs on the edges of cliffs, goes under and over waterfalls, up above timberline at Logan Pass, and is generally gorgeous. Highlights were seeing Mountain Goats - even if they were right in the road, surrounded by tourists, licking water off the road (instead of drinking from pure mountain streams nearby - I guess they liked the saltiness? The "Weeping Wall" where we drove under misting waterfalls with the top off the Jeep and I got a little shower, views of Bird Woman Falls and numerous others, beautiful mountains, and , yes, even some glaciers. We also enjoyed the area behind the visitor center at Logan Summit - meadows full of Glacier Lilies, snowfields, and scanning for wildlife.

I mentioned previously how Devin stayed in a cabin in Glacier years ago, and read "Night of the Grizzlies," which happened right in the area where he stayed. I read it, too, so I could share in that memory with him, and we drove by Lake MacDonald on our way out and looked at the cabins in "Kelly's Camp" area where he stayed. Though we kept our eyes out, we didn't see any grizzlies today, though.

The weather was VERY warm - it was 100 degrees in Kalispell, and not all that much cooler in Glacier - no wonder the glaciers are melting at such a rapid rate! Glacier is still a beautiful National Park, though it will be sad to see its namesake glaciers all retreat into tiny snowfields as world temperatures rise. In places like this, as well as above the Arctic Circle, Global Warming is a very real and very serious threat. Here it is to scenery and the local ecosystem, but other places it is to people's very way of life and even ability to live there. No one in Alaska is arguing about global warming - they see it up close and personal. But more on that later...

After our long day's drive (and yes, we are contributing to carbon emissions that contribute to global warming by doing so, as is everyone who drives - we have bought carbon offsets through TerraPass, however, and we hope that helps), we returned to Kalispell by way of Whitefish and the UPS store, where we picked up packages in the nick of time - we walked in just as they were about to close! Now we are ready to head north.

Back to Kalispell to get ready to head to Canada tomorrow!!

Kalispell - Legacy Timber Town

Saw a sign in a store window that said "We Support the Timber Industry" and it reminded me of Humboldt County, where I went to college. It made me sad, because it reminded me of the divisiveness and polarization of that community around forest management issues. Politicians like to reduce complex issues into simplistic sound bites and talking points, like "jobs vs. owls" which is SO untrue - but gets people elected as folks fear for their livelihoods. Logging is an old and time-honored profession, and I hope there is still logging hundreds of years from now - because of course, that'll mean there's still forests big enough to log. Sustainability isn't just for forest ecosystems, wildlife, fisheries, watershed, and recreation, but also for the economy and jobs. If loggers want to retire and have the next generation also able to retire doing what they love doing, we can't cut down the last remaining forests!

Kalispell is a "legacy" timber town, because although the timber industry still seems important here, there is a large amount of growth and new construction, shopping malls, and suburbs sprawling out from the town's center, which is also beginning to see renewed growth.

It's a beautiful area, obviously undergoing some difficult changes in economy, but I see lots of hope there for it to become a really wonderful place to live and enjoy.