Driving to Many Glacier Campground from Pincher Creek July 28, 2013

Many Glacier CG, Glacier National Park, Montana, July 28^th

Up at 6 and on my way – another beautiful drive down to Waterton and then South East to clear Customs at Chief Mountain Station. I was able to keep tomatoes and my pepper, but only if I cored them. They took away my corn on the cob and then I was on my way again. It’s a seasonal road high above Waterton Valley and the sacred Chief Mountain dominates the skyline. It’s called the Chief Mountain International Highway but it sure gets rough and there are cattle grazing on the sides of the road, or crossing it – Baloo was pretty vocal about that and I wondered if I would become deaf in my right ear.

I was so happy to meet up with my wonderful travel friends Gaila and Dick from Michigan. They had arrived early and had secured us a great site. It’s really tough to get campsites here in high summer season,and the search for sites starts about 6:30am as vehicles drive in and people look for campers that are leaving. So to put it mildly, there is lots of vehicle noise early in the morning…but otherwise this is a lovely campground with mountains all around, beautiful lakes, and lots of hiking trails.

I loved this Parks Poster

 Gaila invited me to a delicious dinner, and after that we went to the Ranger talk on bears – he had some good stories. One theme that ran through his talk is how efficient bear spray is, if it’s used properly, and secondly, to be extremely careful with it, because you don’t want to discharge it by mistake. Later to illustrate that point Dick told us about a ranger who sprayed a bear, and then got some of it back in his face on the wind. The pain made him forget about the bear and he stumbled to the nearby stream and flushed out his eyes and nose. As he was starting to feel better, he could hear splashing beside him and when he looked over, there was the bear flushing out his eyes….