And Now for Something Completely Different

We were admittedly apprehensive about Glacier National Park. First was that word. Glacier. We are pretty sure Penny is a warm weather girl. Or at least not interested in snow. Everything we read reassured us that snow usually holds off until October, but the weather has been very weird lately and not to be trusted. And as we wended our way into the Montana hills we couldn’t help but notice that the mountains off in the distance were some of the biggest we had seen yet. And that was the direction we were heading. But the drive was beautiful, and we left very early so we got to see the sun come up which was gorgeous. At this point in the trip Montana gets my vote for the most beautiful state in the country.

We stopped for a late breakfast in Ennis at Yesterday's Soda Fountain & Restaurant. Bob had a burger and fries and I ordered a blueberry pancake. Just one. Because the waitress told me one was enough. And was she ever right. One pancake covered a whole dinner plate and was bursting with blueberries. While we were there a local woman came in and announced that she was there for her annual Mountain Huckleberry Malt. She sat alone in a booth and savored every sip.

We began climbing and climbing and the mountains were breathtaking. And scary. And daylight was waning fast. I wanted to find this hotel before it got dark because being lost in those mountains would be terrifying. And around 7:30, we finally came upon the Glacier Park Lodge. Now I had congratulated myself on scoring this reservation, as reservations in National Parks are pretty hard to come by. The lodge was built in 1913 by the Great Northern Railway and sits at the corner of the park itself. Douglas Fir logs tower over the lobby, there is a huge stone fireplace with plenty of rocking chairs strategically positioned for guests, and the hotel actually sits near an Amtrak station for easy access by tourists. There is a gift shop, a restaurant, a full bar, many cozy porches and nooks for playing cards or reading a book. Sounds great, right? Move out of the lobby area, though, and you are strangely reminded of the Overlook hotel from The Shining. The halls are narrow and dark. The carpeting is aged. The rooms are small and the furniture is sparse. There is little insulation so you hear the wind blow, and every other guest walking, speaking, slamming doors and windows. There is no television, which doesn’t ever bother me, but there is no internet to speak of either. The shower has great water pressure, but only very small people will fit in it. Lucky for us. The bed was billed as a queen, but I doubt it, although we were beat and got a good sleep.

Next morning, we were up early for our tour of Glacier National Park. This tour was difficult to arrange as most of the tours were completely booked. However, I finally found Sun Tours, which offered interpretive tours of the Glacier Mountains by Blackfeet guides on Going-to-the-Sun Road and through Blackfeet Country. Until now, our tours had been provided by highly educated young people with a great love of the outdoors and adventure. Their knowledge of the parks was encyclopedic and filled with data, facts and science. And we loved it. But the tour we had in Glacier was completely different.

Our guide was a member of the Blackfeet tribe whose name was Thunder Rain. He told us we could call him Roland if that was easier. I was hooked immediately. Thunder Rain was the perfect name for the mountains, and Roland is the name of our daughter Jessica’s well-loved cat, so I knew we in good hands. For the next 5 hours he drove us up and back from the scariest mountain pass ever, sheer rock wall on one side and nauseating drop on the other, as around every curve the scenery became more frighteningly beautiful than the curve before. And told us stories. About his childhood on the reservation. His family. His history and the history of the Blackfeet tribe. About the young Indian boy who hadn’t found his place in the tribe, and went to live with the beavers, learned to speak their language and live their ways and returned to become the chief. About the dances, the owl and the rabbit, and their significance to the tribe. About the ghost ridge, where the ancestors walk today. About their governance, their struggle to preserve their drilling, hunting and fishing rights, and how the young people in the tribe are working to preserve their culture, heritage and customs. It was mesmerizing. And good thing, because otherwise I would have been terrified by the drive. Thunder Rain knew the road well, and pulled over many times to allow us to get good pictures, but nothing compares to what the eye could see. When we reached the top of Going-To-Sun-Road (which is perfectly named), we were enveloped in clouds, and Thunder Rain was sad that we couldn’t see the vista from the top. I was almost grateful. On our way back to earth, we stopped at the visitors’ center, and he brought out his headdress for us to take pictures with him. His headdress also had a story, each feather and bead has meaning, and we truly felt honored to have spent the day with him. And to have lived though it!

Another long day was before us, as our next day was 500 miles to Yakima Washington, to visit our nephew David, at Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences. So early to bed and early to rise, hopefully to negotiate the mountain paths without hitting any wildlife.

And for those of you keeping track of such things, Gigi says hi from the amphitheater at Mt. Rushmore, the Snake River, the walking path below Old Faithful, a field in the Grand Tetons, and a lake at Glacier National Park.