Glaicer

We arrived at Glacier National Park last night after a three hour drive from Missoula. There are still a few campsites open in the park throughout the winter. We set up at Apgar Village which is right on Lake McDonald - it’s great, at this time of year winter camping is at the picnic site which is right on the lake. Lake McDonald is huge and surrounded by snow covered mountains. Unfortunately, just as we were ready to set up our tent it started raining. More unfortunately - it hasn't stopped. In fact, I’m writing this entry in the car because it’s too cold to be in the tent (it’s only 39 degrees outside but I’ve been in there all night) and too wet to be outside. I hope it clears up and we can hike today - we have to do something other than be in the car! The Going to the Sun Road which is the road that drives through the park, East - West, and apparently the mot beautiful thing to do in the park, is partially closed for accelerated construction so we can only drive 16 miles of it. We were also planning on hiking into a Glacier. We’re out of This American Life’s until we can get more internet so I think it will just be reading in the car if it keeps raining...

By 5:00pm we couldn’t stand sitting in a still car any longer and decided to take a drive into town. Reading the bulletin board in the post office took about 4 minutes. In the next town over we found the Huckleberry Cafe where we shared a piece of pie and checked out the gift shop before heading about 30 miles away to the movies. We saw Life As You Know It - the one where they get the baby - and it did the job of distracting us. We thought about seeing Red after we got out at like 9:30 because then we would be so tired that we would sleep really well but got pretty tired without it so headed back to the damp tent.

We woke up and it was not at all sunny or clear but it was not raining and that was nice. It was Saturday too so the park had a little more life in it. We headed out on a 3.6 mile hike to the Apgar Lookout where depending on fog there would be great views of the lake we were staying on and much of Glacier. Every few minutes Matt would call out “Hey Bear, comin through” like we learned to do on the Ranger movie at Yellowstone. It got snowy up top and the fog rolled in and out - but after sitting in the car for about 12 hours and sleeping in a tent my body was pretty unhappy and I wound up hurting my hip flexer - especially when we got to the top of the mountain and we had to talk uphill in the snow with no grip. All in all, we should hit up Glacier in the summer sometime and no one should go there in the fall. We finished the hike and headed west to Washington. Pretty excited to go to Olive Garden for endless salad and breadsticks (which also turned out to be a really big bust).