A whole lot of blogging to do

As Dad points out, I am way behind.  It isn't just because it's time-consuming, it's also because the internet connection at our eccentric semi-Asian-decor, seal-view house on Totten Inlet in Olympia was really really slooooooow and trying to get it to upload a bunch of photographs would have made me even crazier than I already am.  Also, I haven't transferred the photos in my "real" camera to the computer yet, and there are a lot of them.

Howsomever. Here are some photos from August 8, the last day of our trip west, in which we drove from Moses Lake, Washington to Olympia.  We took I90 west, traveling across the immense basin scoured through the center of the state by the repeated emptying of glacial Lake Missoula when its ice dams broke over and over again around 15,000 B.C.  The Columbia River occupies a deep gorge remaining from that cascade of water, which began in Montana and flooded its way to the Pacific.  Here's Dad overlooking the gorge and the river in Vantage, Washington, where I90 crosses the river just below the still-visible site of an old ferry crossing.

Just across the river is the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park, where we took a quick look at petrified wood from forests that grew millions of years ago.

Then we drove down to the point where I82 swings south toward Yakima, and stopped at a rest area to photograph distant smoke from forest fires in the mountains

and nearby scarring from a forest fire on the ridge just above the rest area

and a firebreak carved by a bulldozer to keep the fire from reaching the rest area and the highway.

We drove west from Yakima on Route 12 through stunningly beautiful mountains and forests in the Cascace Mountains.  This is Rimrock Lake.

And this is Mount Rainier, seen from afar from an overlook on Route 12.  We planned to go back for a closer look, but as it turned out the weather didn't cooperate, and this was as close as we got:

Not close enough. We'll have to go back. That night, we arrived in Olympia, drove over to Liz's flowery house in the midst of busy wedding preparations that included the building of a homemade tent and fence, unloaded Liz's boxes and sculptures, and shared a fine salmon dinner and an evening around the firepit with Liz, Rob, members of Rob's family, Ana, Selena, Chris, Eszter, Trevor, Alex, and I don't remember who else before returning to the hotel for a well-earned rest. Next: our house on Totten Inlet, the night before the big event, and The Wedding!!

Our Mt St Helen's volunteer

This is the guy who walked up to us and asked us if we had any questions at MSH. Then he entertained us for the next half hour.

And here is a guy who survived the MSH eruption in 1980:

Where'd We Go?

So. Mom left off blogging more than a week ago. Me: How come you left off blogging? She: Well, it was so time consuming. It took me a couple of hours to do a post. Me: Why don't you make simpler posts? She: Oh, no, I can't do that. So. Briefly, we went to Olympia, Washington. Our children and their spouses/whatevers joined us at a rental house on a Puget Sound inlet. We went to a wedding. We went other places, such as Seattle, and Mt St Helens. If we're lucky, Mom will make blog posts about these things as time permits. This morning, we left for home at 7:30 PST. We drove about 800 miles over 11 hours drive time. There was an additional hour of stoppage time (for all you soccer fans). We arrived at the Super 8 in Big Timber MT, at 8:30 pm MT. We averaged about 72 MPH and 18 MPG for the day. Montana is staggeringly beautiful.

Montana to Idaho to Washington

We left Flathead Lake early and drove south on 93 through the Flathead Indian Reservation, bordered on the east by the high wall of the Mission Range of the Rocky Mountains, into the National Bison Range.  There, three to four hundred bison live in a small mountain refuge that has been protected since the early 20th century.  We spent two or three hours driving on the gravel loop road that climbs through grassland into mountain terrain where the bison live, along with pronghorn antelope, eagles, mule deer and (we're told, though we didn't see them) elk, mountain lions, bobcats and bears.

The visitors' center has this:

Scenes from the narrow, one-way mountain road:

A buffalo wallow:

Pronghorn antelope were plentiful, but we reached the highest point in the park -- just under 5000 feet -- without having seen any buffalo.  Well, bison, really, but even the interpretive signs in the park visitors' center call them buffalo, after carefully explaining the difference.  

However, the views were worth it.  The refuge is a spur of the Mission Mountain range lying in a huge flat valley, the remnants of glacial Lake Missoula.  You climb through gullies and over ridges through a series of switchbacks to the highest point, just under 5000 feet above sea level, looking out in all directions over ranchlands, lakes, gullies, rivers and forests on the valley floor below and mountain ranges bordering the distance.  The dry Western sun feels wonderfully hot on your shoulders, so high up, so close to the sky, with a breeze always blowing and the whole world at your feet.  

We could smell smoke on the air and see a dark haze filling the mountain valleys to the west.  More about that later.  Driving down from the summit, we finally spotted bison: a few strays here and there, then the large herd grazing too far off to look like more than interesting dots, and finally this guy, resting in a dusty wallow fairly near the road:

I think we saw an eagle, too, flapping slowly near the ground.

We left the bison refuge and turned west on Montana 200 along the stunningly beautiful Flathead River, a flow of that same Rocky Mountain crystalline aquamarine water we saw in Glacier, bordered by high sandy hills studded with Ponderosa pines.   We were headed for Thompson Falls, where we planned to cross into Idaho via Thompson Pass.  But before we got there -- fire!  We found ourselves on route 200 passing just under the forest fires we'd seen from the bison refuge, burning in forests on top of steep rocky bluffs and mountains.  

  

We drove right below the fires, close to flames and embers, past a sign warning motorists not to stop because of the danger of rolling debris, under two or three helicopters buzzing back and forth to the river filling huge buckets that they lugged back up to the mountain tops and then dumped on the fires in seemingly useless streams -- so little, compared to all that smoke and flame.  At least one airplane flew through the smoke, too, dumping -- as we later learned -- fire retardant.  We passed a parking area of firetrucks and firefighter buses, and when we left the fires behind and reached the next town, saw signs directing firefighters to a sleeping area.  It turns out the fires have been burning since August 1, following lightning strikes in a series of storms, and because of the rugged terrain, if the dry, hot weather doesn't change, may burn - contained but not extinguished by the firefighters -- for several weeks.  

We left the fires behind, drove through Thompson Falls, and climbed along a narrow, twisting creek higher and higher toward Idaho.  We were near the top when Montana gave us one last gift: a quick glimpse of a young bear, a pre-teenager, I'd guess, glossy and fast-moving, galumphing across the road to the shelter of the woods.  Black, well-fed, strong and happy-looking.  We were happy, too.  

Thompson Pass is a lovely place, a narrow mountain pass that is closed in winter by snowdrifts but, in summer, is a glory of views, wildflowers, trails and happy hikers picking huckleberries.

We drove down and down and down and down from the pass into Idaho, past a river bordered for miles by RV camps filled with what seemed to be hundreds of campers and trailers, lined up along the stream with hammocks, grills, swings, tents and canopies on the shore and swimmers and fishermen and rafts and kayaks full of happy kids bobbing in the river shallows, everywhere you looked for miles.  Funland!  

Then we reached I90 west, made short work of a steep climb through the rest of Idaho -- with a quick stop at a Walgreens for an Idaho keychain for Ana -- and drove a couple of hours out of the mountains and across the grasslands of the Columbia Basin in Washington State, where we're spending the night in a resort town called Moses Lake.  Views from the sliding glass doors of our motel room as evening gathers:   

We'll be in Olympia by tomorrow evening.  Time to shift our thoughts from traveling to wedding preparations and family.  

Waterfalls

The videos won't work right in the larger post, so they'e getting a post of their own.

Glacier

Well, there aren't really any words, except: go there.  Soon.

First, sunrise in Shelby, with trains:

There were prairie dogs, too, or something very like them, popping happily up and down in the weeds right under the Best Western sign.

  

From Shelby, it's about a two-hour drive to St. Mary's, where the Going-To-The-Sun Road through Glacier begins -- first through more golden, rolling prairie lands,  where Lewis and Clark passed through in 1806:

Then you leave the prairie and enter sagebrushy grazing land in an Indian reservation, and swing north on narrow, twisting 89 where the land begins to mount into hills, higher hills, and finally small mountains, with impossibly higher mountains more and more visible beyond.

And then you enter the park, driving first along St. Mary's Lake.

By the lake, we ran into the best traffic jam ever: a 15-minute wait for road construction, with views on all sides of glacier-carved mountains, lakes, snowpacks and wildflowers -- and a bossy middle-aged traffic-guard lady who held up her stop sign and scolded the tourists spilling out of our stopped cars to marvel at the views and take pictures. "Now, stay on your own side of the road! There's traffic coming.  You can't be wandering all over the place like that."  But we did.  How could we help it?

The traffic wasn't bad.  We didn't have the park to ourselves -- there were always other people around, but it wasn't oppressive.  The park's campgrounds were all full, and by the time we reached Logan Pass, the highest point on the road, there were no parking spaces left.  But the road was not jammed, there were always places to pull off as you drove along, and often you'd have them to yourself or share them with only a few other people.

Here's Jackson Glacier, the seventh-largest of the 25 remaining glaciers in the park, and (according to the sign) the easiest to see from the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Views from overlooks.

A huge waterfall far below us in a massively deep river valley.

We hoped to see bears, but didn't.  However, we did see mountain goats!  Mother and baby.  Dad spotted the mother napping on a rock, and we circled back to take a second look just in time to see the baby emerge, and the two of them wander off with a slightly disgruntled air.

We also saw a pair of eagles, falling in and out of a stand of pines high above us on a rocky slope, tangling somehow in mid-air, clawing at each other and shrieking and tumbling together out of sight.  I said, "Mating or fighting?"  Dad said, "Yes."

There are waterfalls at every turn, near and far, and rivers in the distance.

We found a private picnic lunch spot, just a few steps away from the road but entirely our own, on the gravelly bank of an icy cold crystalline river.  For once in my life, I was wearing the right shoes for the occasion -- Keen sandals made for water or climbing.  I waded in over the multicolored rocks: cold!  But not too cold, and for the next hour, my feet were pleasantly cool inside the slowly-drying shoes.

Waterfall.  Indescribable aquamarine water.  We climbed over a guardrail and down over the flat stone-step banks, polished and potholed by generations of water, and sat beside it for a while, just watching and listening.

Reluctantly, we emerged on the other side of the park, turned south to Kalispell, and then headed down the western shore of Flathead Lake, the biggest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi.

Now we're in Polson, MT for the night (three nights in a row in Montana!) in the KwaTagNuk Best Western hotel, operated by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.  The lake's right outside our door.  I could get up in the morning, walk a few steps to the gravel beach and have a swim, and I just might.  Here's the view from the patio by the hotel bar (which is in the casino, by the way.  Of course the hotel has a casino -- every place of business in Montana has a casino -- and this one is divided into two rooms for smokers and nonsmokers, just to make the gambling that much more convenient. Thoughtful, eh?)

One more thing: Polson, Montana has the most amazing hanging plants I have ever seen.  I can't imagine how they do it.

We took a walk through town, found a little BBQ joint, and brought sandwiches back with us -- Dad's pulled pork, mine chicken, both delicious.  Tomorrow, we're planning another early start.  With two days left to travel, we're nine to twelve hours from Olympia, depending which roads we take.  A little bit of Idaho, then Washington.  See you soon!

A break in the action

Today we drove through the great wide expanses of northern Montana. After the events of yesterday, today was quiet, though not always relaxing -- we were on a two-lane road with a 70 mile-per-hour speed limit, with the opposing lane full of trucks headed for the North Dakota oil fields.  It's beautiful, though.  They aren't kidding when they call Montana "Big Sky Country."  We watched a fierce little rainstorm approach us for at least fifty miles before we got wet.

We drove at first across dry rolling cattle lands with bluffs carved by the Missouri River to the south -- much of that in the Fort Peck Indian Reservation -- then through increasingly flat grazing lands with the only trees in deep gullies running south toward the rivers, and finally across high, perfectly flat, immense, apparently infinite golden prairies, rolling uninterrupted south as far as we could see and farther, and to the north into Alberta, Canada  (only 30 or 40 miles away -- now and then we saw Border Patrol vehicles or signs about customs and ports).   For hours and hours, we drove across those prairies, just rolling forever, interrupted occasionally by little towns, grain bins, and of course, trains.   If you grew up here, you'd have different ideas about space and time,  and you'd know a lot more about the sky.

The big sky, amber waves of grain, yet another oil train in the far background, and an occasional bicyclist:

Jamie would like it here in Shelby, where we spent Tuesday night. The town sign:

Shelby is all about trains.   The hotel is hung with train pictures.  That's a train siding across the road from the hotel (you can see it in the background of the sign picture).  We counted four long trains made mostly of oil cars at the siding, and as we watched, a fifth came rolling in from the west, made mostly of oil cars that must have been empty and on the way to North Dakota to load up.

We paralleled the train tracks all the way across Montana, through the area known as the "Hi-Line," and I mostly took pictures of trains.  Most of them were freight trains, and most of those were oil trains.  But there are Amtrak passenger stations all along Route 2, and here's the Amtrak "Empire Builder," rolling east:

Here, just for fun, are some non-train scenes from when we were stuck in road construction traffic for an unreasonably long time in a small town somewhere along the Hi-Line.  You'll have to enlarge the mailbox picture, at the entrance to a trailer park, to see why I took it.  We wonder what it means. I took the motel-sign picture just because I liked it.  Dad and I puzzled out the code: MW is microwave, Inet is internet, single is ??? we don't know because it says two beds. 

and finally, I'm adding this, because Dad loves it and insisted:

It's 6:15 in the morning here in Shelby (we're waking up early because we've crossed two time zones and our bodies think it's two hours later than the clock says it is.)  We're off to Glacier National Park today -- two hours west -- and then we'll see.  More tonight!