On the Menu

A recent comment by Laura Eno reminded me of this one. I’ve told this story before as part of a longer post, but it’s one of my favorites.

My first trip outside the U.S. was to Costa Rica [a beautiful and friendly country and I highly recommend you go there]. I know only a little Spanish. [The basics, you know: Cerveza, Baño, ¿Tiene una hermana?] We relied on a phrase book and the English skills and good graces of our hosts to muddle our way through. One day we were sitting in a small restaurant and I was reading the menu posted on the wall. I saw the word “Perro” and thought, “I know that word! ‘Perro’ is ‘dog’. I have dos perro at home. Holy crap, do they really serve dog here?” Then I noticed that it was followed by another word that I recognized, “Caliente” — hot. Whew! Hot dogs on the menu I can handle….

Candid Camera

I have discovered one of the great annoyances joys of travelling with friends is that they can take candid photos of those little moments you might otherwise forget.

Warning: Some of you* will be sorry if you CLICK HERE.

*including me

Vistas

Montana is Big Sky country. Many of the views I encountered on my recent trip were just too vast for the widest angle lens I had. For example, as much as I like my shot of Hidden Lake it is a fraction of this:

And there just didn’t seem to be any place to stand where I could really show the cirque AND Iceberg Lake like this:

Neither of these is very good video and every photo/video I took pales in comparison to actually standing there [but that's sort of the point of going, isn't it?].

Getting My Goat… and more

Mountain goats on the trail to Hidden Lake Overlook:

A marmot on the Highline trail:

New Grizzly Plan

I still hope to get a decent view of a grizzly bear on one of my trips. There are lots of tips offered to hikers when they will be in areas where encountering bears is possible. Common suggestions include wearing bright clothing, carrying bells to alert bears to your approach, and using pepper spray if an attack occurs. Stay alert to signs of bear activity — marks on trees, tracks on the ground and bear droppings. You can recognize bear droppings by the remnants of bright cloth and bits of metal and an odor of pepper…. [nyuck nyuck nyuck]

Seriously, being alert is your best defense. While bells are still commonly sold, they are falling out of favor as a way to alert bears to your presence. Clapping your hands or making other loud noises was the most common suggestion I heard on my latest trip. One ranger even told me that he has seen bears following hikers wearing bells and speculated that the noise is too similar to the wind chimes on some of the mountain cabins. The bears have become too familiar with the sound and may even relate it to a source of food. Yikes!

So with all this fresh in my mind I offer thanks to Heather Anne for sharing the following site:

Created by The Oatmeal

I would still prefer my bear encounter [and there will be a bear encounter some day] to exclude any actual physical contact, but just in case this is good information to have. Just like the other advice usually offered to hikers,

You don’t really have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your friends….

Glacier in a Can

Here are some of the details of my recent trip to Glacier National Park — stuff you don’t care about. But since I haven’t really done anything worth writing about since my return I may as well get another post [or two?] out of it. [I did have a dream a couple nights ago in which I was wearing my pants inside-out. I have no idea whether that means anything and it certainly doesn't warrant a post.]

So, we flew into Calgary because it was cheaper — as near as I can recall it was about $150 less [per person] than flying directly into Montana for the dates we needed to travel. I don’t think I would go that way again though. It added a few hours of driving at each end of the trip, time I would rather have spent hiking or something. The drive from Calgary was pretty boring — very flat, mountains sometimes visible to the west, nothing but farms to the east — pretty, but boring.

On Highway 2 south of Calgary

We stayed one night in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta before crossing into the USA for Glacier National Park. The most striking thing about Waterton was that the campground was totally riddled with ground squirrel burrows and there were lots of deer that were obviously used to people. Most people respected them as wild animals. I saw a few that tried to feed them, pose with them, or allowed their children to chase them. People are idiots. [That's why I hate people.]

Overall, I wasn’t all that impressed with Waterton. [To be fair, we didn't spend enough time there to really explore it.] It was kind of cool though to take the Chief Mountain Highway to the U.S. border. We caught a glimpse of a grizzly bear just a few feet from the road. But it wasn’t safe to stop at that point on the road so I have no photos. Just minutes prior to that we had passed two people on bicycles and I wish I could have seen their faces when they pedaled past!

Canadian border marker

We had reservations for two nights on the West Glacier side of the park and then three nights on the East Glacier side of the park. We chose the only campgrounds in the park that took reservations [because wouldn't it suck to travel all that way and then have to scramble for a place to stay?] and one night [the first of our three on the east side] at a KOA. If I go again, I’d rather stay in one place. The free shuttle bus system inside the park is pretty good [as long as you remain a little flexible in your schedule] and there are outside shuttle companies that go places the park shuttles don’t. Besides, private vehicles are allowed almost everywhere except that large vehicles [like our RV] are prohibited on parts of the Going to the Sun Road. Also, the KOA in St. Mary is big and ugly and the staff was rude.

Here’s something you’re not likely to see a lot of in Glacier National Park: glaciers. Most of them have melted away completely and those that are still there are rapidly shrinking. But they leave behind some gorgeous topography. Here’s something I saw a lot of in GNP: wildlife! We saw marmots, deer, mountain goats, and longhorn sheep [oh, and more ground squirrels -- those things are everywhere!] in close proximity to people on more than one trail. We heard reports of sightings of bear, elk, and wolves — all of which I’d have liked to have seen. One of the trails we hiked had been closed a couple days prior to our hike due to bear activity. The Park website has extensive lists of plants and animals and where you might spot them.

One of the reasons we traveled north was to get a break from the oppressive heat of a central Florida summer. Turns out we landed in a heat wave — daytime high temps in the 80s every day! At least it was cooler in the evenings, but the weather did curtail my activity a little. [Not to mention that we packed cold-weather clothing that was totally useless.] I bailed out on our first big hike and took an easy day the next day because the heat and the altitude [more than 1800 feet elevation gain over about 3.3 miles] just sucked all the energy out of me. To be fair, the description of the trail [the Apgar Outlook trail] did explain that due to a loss of foliage to a fire the trail is in full sun pretty much the whole way. Plus I could be in better shape. My friends both continued on to the summit, but one of them took it easy the next day as well.

Fortuitously, the rest of my hikes I weathered much better and there is a lot to see even on easy hikes. In fact, that Hidden Lake Overlook is just 1.5 miles [and only 460 feet of elevation gain] from one of the visitor centers. Even with some of the trail still covered in snow as it was [in late July!] it was well worth the effort. [If you make the trek in flip-flops or high heels -- as some people do, believe it or not -- you will be the source of derision to the better-prepared hikers. Probably not to your face though. We'll just shake our heads in bewilderment and laugh at you behind your back. But if that's how you want to enjoy your travels, more power to you, I guess...]

Overlooking Hidden Lake

For sheer panoramic beauty I loved the first one-third or so of the Highline Trail. Acrophobes won’t be comfortable with the sheer 1000 foot drops at the edge of some parts of the trail though. We hiked the whole 11 miles [it has a shuttle stop at each end] but that first part was by far the best.

Watch your step on the Highline Trail

The only other longish hike I did was to Iceberg Lake — 4.8 miles each way with 1200 foot elevation gain. The first half mile is pretty steep but the rest pretty gentle. We almost skipped this hike because it had been raining since the night before and there was thunder and lightning even as we ate breakfast. We got a really lucky break though [because, honestly it was a rather foolish decision] when the rain stopped shortly after we set out. Three hours later we were sitting in the sun next to icebergs.

Iceberg Lake

Would I go again? Yes. There are over 700 miles of trails and I covered a small fraction of that. The park rangers and volunteers were all friendly and ready to help and answer questions. The wildlife viewing was terrific. The only drawback… there’s still so much else in the world I want to see….

Glacier NP Photos

I have some photos from my trip posted. I still have to add captions. Here are a few from this album:

Deer in Waterton campground.

Hidden Lake

Mountain goat on Highline Trail

Iceberg Lake

I am Not a Pod Person

In my recent post on the tech services at Glacier National Park I inadvertently left off the fact that they have podcasts too. How could I forget podcasts? I dunno, I just did.

You can download from the GNP site here or for free from iTunes. They encourage you to do so before your visit, but you can bring your laptop to a visitor center in the park to get them too.

And I still think it’s cool.

National Park Tech

I’ll have more info (and photos, of course) from my trip to Glacier National Park (GNP) soon. But here are a few things I found interesting:

GNP has webcams.
This one has a nest of ospreys and is right next to one of the visitor centers. They had a telescope set up in the visitor center when I was there aimed at this nest too.

GNP has RSS news feeds.

GNP has blogs.

GNP has fans on Facebook here and here (and others).

GNP now Twitters too.

For a park that is a year away from its centennial celebration I think this is all pretty cool. (I haven’t checked how many other National Parks are stepping into the 21st century this way — I hope it’s all of them. I found these useful when planning my trip.)

Glacier Sneak Peek

I’ll have much more to share, but I had a great time last week. See?

And Glacier NP is a really good place for viewing wildlife!