Pictograph Cave

After spending the night comfortably in our car, north of Billings, Montana, we woke up with the sun and headed south into town. We stopped to get gas and breakfast at a little gas station. We then headed to the entrance of Pictograph Cave, but found we were a few minutes early, so we sat and waited for the ranger to arrive and open the gate. Meanwhile, coyotes could be heard yipping in the distance. Finally the ranger arrived, and we drove up to the parking lot. After the ranger settle himself in his trailer, he came out to take our entry fee and talk to us. I think he was a little curious why we would be there so early in the morning. When we mentioned we'd be heading to Yellowstone in the afternoon, he seemed skeptical that such a thing was possible.

The park is small, having just a simple loop trail, that leads up and past 3 shallow caves in the face of a cliff. There is a little guide book that describes what you see at various markers, as you make your way around. At this early hour, there was a herd of bunnies in the one flat area adorned with picnic tables. They were everywhere. You have never seen so many bunnies in your life. Despite the surrounding grasslands, this sloping area is still mostly scrub. There were also a lot of birds nearby, including cliff swallows, in their little mud homes, and circling hawks. The primary attraction here is the pictographs left on the wall by the former residents of the cave. After taking a leisurely walk in the early morning light, and just as other visitors were starting to arrive, we headed off for Yellowstone.

East Glacier, Uml Pishkun, & Mint Dinner

After spending the entire previous day along the Going to the Sun Road and exploring some of the relatively crowded trails there, we were excited to spend the first part of this day on the eastern side of Glacier, which is far less touristy.

Early in the morning, we headed up to Many Glacier to hike the trail to Apikuni Falls. Along the way we paused under a tree, which made a squirrel very angry. He came down to a low branch to scream and chatter at us. When we looked around we saw shells of many nuts, and realized we stopped to rest in what was probably his favorite picnic spot. As we moved up the side of the mountain we broke out of the trees onto a rocky slope, where there were Pikas among the rocks. Pikas are like tiny chipmunk/rabbits. They are incredibly cute, but difficult to photograph, especially when you don't have a good zoom. We wound our way around some mounds of broken rock, before coming into view of the falls, which was tall and narrow. There was another Little Dipper in the stream at the base, and we stayed a while to watch him play, before starting the trip down to the car. Once in the car we headed south to Two Medicine, and made the very short walk to Running Eagle Falls. This was a smallish waterfall, with the water rushing out from underground. We spent a long time trying to identify a colorful bird there, but could never agree on what it was. We left when others finally arrived, and made our way to our next destination: Ulm Pishkun, a real live buffalo jump.

We arrived at Ulm Pishkun in the afternoon, a little to late to spend any time at the visitor's center, which looked like it had been recently updated. The visitors center is below the cliff, so we then drove around to the top. The top of the cliff is heavily populated by a prairie dog village. We walked out into it and just sat for a while, taking some pictures and watching the babies play, while the adults barked at us. We then walked to the edge of the cliffs and read the interpretive signs there. According to the signs, the hunt went a little something like this: One lucky young Indian dawned a buffalo skin, and prepared to lead the herd. The rest of the group would harass the buffalo, and drive them towards the cliff. At some point the lucky Indian would get to run briefly in front of the herd, and jump off the cliff, onto a small ledge just below. The buffalo, with a poor ability to gauge distance or see well, would plummet over the edge to their deaths, while people below would finish off wounded survivors. It is just a cliff in the middle of a broad plain. It is surrounded by wheat fields, and there are enormous white windmills in the distance.

From Ulm Pishkun we headed towards Billings, where we would be visiting the pictograph caves the next day. Along the way we arrived in a sleepy little town called Lewiston. It had a nice shaded main street, and a nice courthouse. The only restaurant we saw in town was just off the main drag, emblazoned by a large neon sign: The Mint bar & grill. From the outside, it looked more like a bar than a restaurant, but we were starving, so we parked and went inside. Inside was a fine dining atmosphere that was totally unexpected. We had a wonderful dinner. I had steak with cream sauce and new potatoes, and Jake had duck. We left, full and happy, and as we were driving out of town, I noticed some deer by a hay bail. I was happy to see them and pointed them out. As we continued to drive, and it grew darker, we saw more and more of them along the road. We saw so many we lost count. I turned my head away from the glare of the headlights and looked out into the fields, and saw many, many more. I saw more deer that night than all previous deer seen in my life. At one point we came to a little town, and there were deer in people's front yards. A dear even ambled across the street, at the only intersection with a stop light, and actually stopped to look at us as if we were the intruders.

When we were finally to exhausted to drive any more, seeing deer in every rock, tree, and sign near the road, we pulled over to sleep. When we turned off the headlights we saw something they had been hiding from us. Stretched across the sky was a bright swath of stars such as I had never seen before, except in pictures. It was the Milky Way. We do not have that kind of darkness here in Tennessee. To make a perfect moment even more so, a shooting star chose that moment to blaze across the sky. This was the end of the 4Th day.

Glacier National Peace Park

We left for Glacier after our visit to Craters of the Moon. Somewhere south of Flathead Lake, the road narrowed to a two lane highway that was under construction. Despite the remote location, there was a long line of traffic, and progress was slow. It was at this point that I realized I had to go to the bathroom, which was made more urgent by the in-progress road, which had many sections of bumpy gravel. After trying to hold out for half an hour I spotted an office building complex in the night, and I was more than willing to go behind it to relieve myself. Unfortunately, there were some active lawn sprinklers to dodge, and in the wet grass I twisted my ankle, but it was worth it. Later on, we saw fire blazing up in the mountains, like rivulet of lava on the mountain's side. We finally arrived at the southern edge of Flathead Lake, where we stopped for the night.

We woke up early on the third day, and drove north along Flathead Lake, entering the park around 8:00 am at West Glacier. Here we turned our tires onto the Going to the Sun Road, the only road that runs through the park, and an engineering feat of its time. Our first stop was at the Avalanche Lake/Trail of Cedars trail. Half of the Trail of Cedars loop was closed, but we were able to access the Avalanche Lake trail at the back of the loop. Because we were up early, this trail wasn't too busy (it is one of the most popular trails in the park) and was pretty peaceful. The forest is cool and dark, and the sunlight coming through the trees made the whole place something out of a fairy tale. There were squirrels and chipmunks everywhere, and spider webs strung between the trees. The trail follows a perfectly clear stream to the lake. We were running a little bit behind due to my injured ankle, and we made a decision to stop short of actually reaching Avalanche Lake to make sure that we could stay on track for all the other trails we had planned to hike that day. After leaving that trail we headed to Logan Pass visitors center to hike the Hidden Lake Trail. When we arrived, the parking lot was very full, and it took us some time to find a parking spot, which required us to use all the people stalking skills we learned from tying to park on campus in college. Once we were parked, we took a little walk through the gift shop, and then headed out the back, taking a boardwalk up the hill.

The hill was steeper than it looked, but it was a beautiful, sound of music kind of place. There were little streams trickling down from the mountain, surround by beautiful, thick beds of flowers. As we reached the top of this rise, some evergreen trees came into view. We saw some ptarmigans nestled against some rocks, taking very good advantage of their summer brown feathers to blend in almost completely. Just a little ways further up we saw our first mountain goats, a mother with her baby. From that point on, along the trail we saw a few here and there resting in the shade. Finally, we reached the crest of the rise, and could see the Hidden Lake below. It was the most beautiful deep blue. The photographs we have do not even come close to doing it justice. While we were enthralled with the lake, squirrels were moving in. We caught them in the act of trying to chew into some one's backpack that they had foolishly left on the ground. While there is a trail leading down to the lake, it looked very long and steep, and we had miles to go… so we turned back for the car, and the next trail, but there was one more surprise for us. From around the bend ahead, and just a little higher up the mountain, came a small herd of big horn sheep. It was 3 females being herded by a male, who chased down one stray and forced her back with the group by giving her a love tap in the rear with his thick skull. They weren't interested in hanging around though, and were quickly out of sight. We passed back by the mother goat and her baby, the mother having left her baby far behind as she headed for the tree line, the baby followed, bleating plaintively. The trip down was a lot easier than the trip up.

We arrived back in the parking lot, which was filling up with the classic red convertible sedans which do driving tours along the famous Going to the Sun road. Greeting new arrivals was a big brown bear. Despite the crowd of people hugging him, and getting their photos taken with him, we were able to get a shot of the only bear we saw here.

After the hike to see hidden lake, we had a lineup of several waterfalls. The first trail took us to St. Mary Falls, actually passing a snake along the way. The falls are beautiful, having carved out its own bowl into the rock. Continuing beyond this is Virginia Falls. Along the way there we encountered a fat toad, right in the middle of the path, who lazily walked his way off into the mossy undergrowth. We reached the falls and found them to be very narrow and high. We then returned back along the trail, and once again the fat toad was in our path. He lazily walked himself out of the way again, and we were free to return to the car, excited as much to have seen 2 reptiles on this trail, which we saw no where else in the park, as we were to have seen the falls. From there it was just a skip to the parking lot for access to Baring falls and Sunrift Gorge. The stream flows through sunrift gorge, a deep and narrow passage way, then curves under the road and over the falls. The trail winds out and back, bringing us finally to the foot of the falls. We spent a significant amount of time resting, and watching an American dipper at the base of this rather small but picturesque fall. The dipper is a small, finch sized bird, which stands on rocks in the rushing stream, and dives into the water, hunting for food. While standing on the rocks, he continually does deep knee bends, bobbing up and down. He was a plain grey/brown color, but provided great entertainment.

After returning to the car, we were finally done hiking for the day, having covered over 9 miles. We then continued east along the going to the sun road, coming into St. Mary, where a forest fire had raged just weeks before. Vast stands of trees were reduced to nothing but blackened posts, but the grass was already spring up green among the wasteland. We stopped briefly to investigate a restaurant, but, though we hadn't eaten much but a few rolls and some nuts all day, we just weren't interested in their menu, or their prices. So we headed on to the tiny town of Babb. Babb consists of a hotel, general store, and cheap diner, all owned by the same people. It also has a dinner club steakhouse, which looked rather frightful: concrete and no windows. We had reservations at the hotel, so we checked in, then quickly decided to head a few miles north over the border to see what food could be had in Carway in Alberta. We had to stop in at the border station, and answer some questions about our intentions, and then we were free to drive on. Once in town, we discovered that there was nothing to eat, as every single restaurant was closed; it was Sunday. We returned dejectedly to Babb, and decided to risk the diner club, which we had been told had good steak, despite its frightening appearance.

Let this be a reminder to never judge a book by its cover. Just inside the entrance was an old fashioned bar, with lots of dark wood, and plush red upholstered swivel bar seats (with back and arm rest). Beyond the bar was a grand spiral staircase, all of wood, winding around the trunk of a tree. Seated at our table above, I couldn't help but admire the huge sculpture that hung out over the room below. It depicted a herd of buffalo being run off a cliff, and appeared to be made of stone. We ordered our somewhat expensive steaks, but were rewarded with some of the largest, and best cuts I've ever had. I had a NY strip that hung off the edges of my plate. The steaks were fantastic and so huge I could only eat half of mine, and I was starving.

Full and happy, we got our left overs to go, hoping for a microwave in the hotel room, which we had not actually been into yet. When we got to the hotel, we didn't find a microwave, but we were too tired to care, and fell into bed.