Day 17 - Glacier National Park

We woke during the night to a pretty good storm. Rain for sure. We thought we heard some hail. With rv's on both sides of us though, and with the contour of the land in this park, we didn't have any problem with wind.

But, when we got up this morning, it was still rainy and really gloomy. The people to our right were about to leave. I remembered that they had been in the KOA in Billings one night that we were there. The lady was complaining that everywhere they had been, it had rained. And, apparently, not just a little bit of rain. She said that they were in Billings hoping to dry out!!! Anyway, since the Going-to-the-Sun road was not open all the way across, they were pulling their fifth wheel trailer around the south of the park to the west side in order to drive up the road as far as they could go from there.

Jimmy and I get in the car and head to the local supermarket (and I use that term really loosely) to find some benadryl pills and cream. I apparently have been bit by some bug or am allergic to something that I have touched. I have two places on the shoulder which are bumpy and hurt. I actually think it is because I was taking ibupropen - which will give you hives or shingles in some cases. I've quit taking the ibupropen, but the still neck for which I was taking it now actually hurts all the time!!! Really pitiful - aren't I!!!!

Anyway, we head south on highway 89 to highway 49 to go to the Two Medicine entrance to the park. There really isn't much there other than another tour boat, a campground and a general store. It was rainy, but I did take a couple of pictures out the window of the general store.

There are a lot of tent campers out here. I would not enjoy that - especially in weather like we had last night and today!!!

From Two Medicine, we head further south to East Glacier. East Glacier is a little town on the railroad. There is a wonderful railroad hotel across from the railroad station. There have been a lot of PBS shows about the railroad hotels that were built way back when the railroads were the only way to get here. We didn't see any passenger trains, but we did see a number of freight trains running by the park on the south.

Our final stop today was at Goat Lick Overlook. We did not know what to expect other than what Jimmy had read on the internet. There are some cliffs on the other side of the river from the overlook which the mountain goats in the area lick! We saw a mother goat and her two babies going down the cliff to the place where they could reach the rock formation. It was so cute to see the little goats straining to get to the minerals. Luckily we had our binoculars. There were people lined up to look through our binoculars. I did get some pictures. You can see the little white dots on the cliff - those are the mountain goats.

We went back to the hotel at East Glacier for lunch. You will not believe the pictures of the interior of that hotel. I couldn't believe the place, and I was there. There are whole, tall trees holding up the lobby. Big trees. They run about three stories high. I don't know if any of the pictures will give you a true perspective. I did one series of three photos starting at the front door, then raised the camera to get the area just above the front door and raised it one more time to get the wall up to the top. My daddy used to take pictures of airplanes like that - you would have to take two or three pictures and overlap them to see the entire airplane!!!!

Hopefully the weather will clear tomorrow and I will feel a whole bunch better.