Day 6 and 7 on the Road

Day 6 dawned bright and early as we made an early morning getaway from Bozeman MT. On the road nice and early in order to make the long trek north to Glacier National Park. Open plains, wheat fields and plenty of long, straight poor quality roads, interspersed with some miles of excellent quality roads. A 3pm arrival at the park, setting up the tent right next to a berry patch which we were informed by the helpful ranger is the snack food of choice of the black bear....which according to the very informative movie at the visitors centre, they need approximately 100,000 berries a day to satisfy their hunger. The bush next to our tent site had about 3000 berries. We were hoping that it still had 3000 berries on it when we left.
After setting up the campsite we headed for the visitors centre and then a 40 minute drive to the Many Glacier portion of the park. It quickly became apparent that 1 day is grossxly insufficient to do this remarkable park justice. The photos and videos will have to try their best. A close encounter with a baby black bear as it crossed the road in front off us, and the telephoto was going ten to the dozen as the little fella clambered up the hill at the side of the road.
Trev was dropped off at 715 for the 730 rangers presentation whilst Wayne went off partway up the Going to the Sun road to take some late afternoon shots. After an hour of photgraphing the park, Wayne returned to find Trevor freezing his nuts off in the car park because the presentation was actually at another location. Trev's lack of foresight in not taking a windcheater with him to the talk was shall we say regretted, as the 30C evening temps of Vegas were replaced by 30F temps in St Mary.
A night spent with one ear focusing on anything resembling berry chewing noises, and the resultant prick of a nights sleep culminated in waking up with the tent covered in condensation causing the air mattress to come close to floating in the tent. A 715 wake up and on the road by 745 led us to take the most magnificent 51 mile drive you are likely to take. Vistas everywhere you looked....each one outdoing the previous one.....mountains, rivers, waterfalls, islands, glaciers, wildlife....the list goes on and on. An encounter with a deer by the side of the road was a particular highlight as well. Add in road works at three seperate locations and 4 hours later, we had traversed the length. Magical!!!!

From then on we took turns driving as far as we could before we stopped for the night....and the luckt town is.....Wilbur in Washington State. About 150 miles past Spokane. $69.95 incl tax in a delightful little farming town and the (single female) manager was suitably impressed by her 2 Australian lodgers (especially the Senior single one), to bring out her home cooked Zucchini and Walnut bread for us to try. Trev needed little encouragement to happily return the plate to the office. But I digress.....

Tomorrow we head to North Cascades and onto the Seattle region. Mt Rainier will possiblt also get a guernsey depending on our route.