West Glacier - Lake McDonald

Pictures to be added later:

So I’ve been planning this trip since February, yet once we got here we didn’t really have a plan. I booked two nights at Fish Creek Campground on the west side of the park, and two nights on the East side at St.Mary’s campground. I bought a travel book, a map or three, and watched a video, then I joined another band, got busy at work, started my summer adventure, and thought I’d make a plan for Glacier when we were on the road. Well, I was really busy retreating at the Chod Retreat, and I can’t really read in the car while Ru drives, so a plan (nor a map) unfolded.

Leaving Spokane went smoothly, at about 930am, we stopped at grocery outlet on the way out of town and bought food and ice for the cooler. Ruben drove out of town with no problem, and with only one missed exit along the way we got to Flathead Lake. It was about 2pm, and we were hungry so we stopped lakeside and got a pizza and watched people swim off the docks while we ate.

Trucks with Cowboy hats on the dashboard

What I noticed about Montana that was different from the Willamette Valley is how affluent it seems. New trucks, big ranches, even the trailer parks looked classy. As we passed the lake we could see the huge mountains rising up in front of us. We drove north through the valley for a while, then headed in to a gap between two mountains. Soon we were paying our park fee, and were directed to our campground.

Fish Creek Campground was located. I handed a printout of our reservation to the camp host and he checked us in. We found our spot, set up the tent and were settled in within minutes. Ru and I are pros at this by now. It was about 5:30pm, and still warm so we put on our mosquito proof clothes and went for a walk. I was nervous about Montana mosquitoes, but they seem about the same as Oregon mosquitoes here on Fish Creek.

The campground is located at Lake McDonald, and there is a hiking trail that starts at camp and goes around the west side of the lake so we headed toward it. We walked a few miles beside the lake and to a rocky hill and took some pictures. The water is deep teal. The rocks are very colorful. I was hot and almost went for a swim. I heard Lake McDonald often is very windy, but there was hardly a breeze, and the lake was glassy.

We headed back to camp, and along the way I saw a guy with a guitar sitting on his camp chair. I asked when the jam session would be, and he said it would be whenever I wanted. I smiled and said 8pm. It was about 7:30pm, and Ruben needed to eat so I made him a cup of noodles. Yes I know, not the classiest of camping meals, but we’re on the road for a while, so I’m keeping things simple. I asked Ru if he wanted to come, they had a campfire going and he could roast a mallow, but he declined and sat down at the picnic table with his phone, where I found him an hour later.

At 8pm I walked my guitar down the path to jam with random camper guy. He quickly became guitar playing friend, although I can’t remember his name for anything. He and his wife live full time in Florida, and are on a 3 month tour of anywhere but Florida. They had bikes, kayaks, instruments, and a little RV with which to haul it all. They were sitting outside, he was drinking a beer with a cozee and playing guitar, she was doing a crossword puzzle from a book. Both looked early retired age, fit, and content to be where they were. GPF (guitar playing friend) has been a professional fiddle player, and was from Tennessee before he retired to Florida. Recently he’s been doing solo gigs, using the an amp, same acoustic harmonizer pedal unit I just bought, and had just came from a vocal coaching camp for adult singers. He also plays harmonica. I was duly impressed. This dude is living my best life.

So we played some jazzy country stuff, some blues, but with all the talking my hour was up fairly quickly. I told him if I saw him around tomorrow evening I’d try to drop by again and he seemed excited about the prospect. His wife was friendly, but non musical.

So I walked back to camp, tore Ru from his screen and we walked to the amphitheater for the program. It was a ranger talk at 9pm called Interconnected Nature. It was interesting, talked about how fire plays an important role in the ecosystem, how fungi mine rocks to provide minerals for trees and how the trees provide the sugar for the fungi, and how the glaciers disappearance will be disastrous for trout and some small insects that rely on the cold water.

We didn't stop and get firewood, and we didn't hang out much at camp anyway. 

Popped collars to keep mosquitoes off our necks. 

After that downer, we walked through the dusk back to camp, made some jiffy pop, put everything that even possibly smells like food into the car so we wouldn’t get attacked by a bear, and we went to bed. All the kids next door were in the camper, and it was silent.

I slept like a rock until 1am when it started to rain. I had thought it might so I had a tarp handy, and I pulled it over the tent, and we went back to sleep. I love warm sleeping bags, air mattress, my soft pillow from home, and for the first time in a week I woke up without a headache. WONDERFUL. The campground was silent all night, except wind, birds, and periodic rain on the tarp.

I was up and ready to go by 7am, but Ruben was NOT moving. He whined at me, and then barked at me, so I left him alone. It’s his vacation too, and if he was too tired to get up and go for a hike, or get a parking spot at the top of the Going to the Sun Road (parking usually fills by 8:30am), I wasn’t going to push it.

I rested, read a book, cooked bacon and fried some eggs in the bacon grease (no bears came to eat me), made Ru candy cane hot cocoa, and gave him breakfast in the tent at 8:30am. He complained his stomach hurt, so we laid in bed and watched a movie on my computer called “Ruby Sparks” which I thought was good, but Ru said “sucked”.

Note about life intruding on my vacation: Nate quit the band No Shade. He was the main guitar player. He took a job managing a residential home for people with mental disabilities, and he is working 12-16 hour shifts. He said he doesn’t have time for a band.

So now two guitarists have quit no shade in the last two months, and we have two gigs at the end of August. After visiting Lama Inge, It’s clear to me it would be beneficial to spend more meditating, for my Buddhist practice, but also for my health and well being. FBI hasn’t been doing much, and I’m not doing much with madrigals right now, but it would be a good time to drop No Shade if I’m going to. After talking to GPF last night, I’m leaning toward trying to book solo gigs anyway. $200 for 2-3 hours, and I don’t have to leave home to rehearse.

So I’m thinking about stuff.

The rain slowed and Ruben and I decided to take a drive to get our bearings and some firewood. We got some new neighbors in the campsite on the north, and they were hanging their tarps. I used my amazing knot tying ability and some old clothesline to lift the tarp off the tent in places so we would have fresh air, heated a can of soup for Ruben, and we took off in the car. 

There was some sun in patches, and puffy clouds, and we drove to Apgar villiage where Ru bought some firewood (camping and firewood cost the same at Glacier as Baker Bay, but bear spray is $45. We decided to hike without it). Then we found the beginning of the GTSR (Going to the Sun Road). I drove along the side of Lake McDonald, then to Avalanche, then up the mountain to the spot in the road where there is a 180 degree corner, and a cliff on one side and a rock wall on the other side and the rain started pouring and I started to panic. So I turned around at the next pullout and we came back down. I figured we could tackle that tomorrow… or never!

GTSR Pics:

The rain let up a bit as we came back down the mountain, and we stopped at Apgar picnic area for a banana. Ruben said he’d really like to swim, and the temp had climbed to 70 with patches of sun again (although the rain was headed toward us) so we went back to camp. Ru got his swimsuit, I got a book, and we hiked down to the lake.

As much as I like to think of myself as someone who is in good shape and hikes, I have to say the people here are in incredible shape and hike are wearing specialty hiking clothes, (their boots probably cost as much as all my camping gear put together) have muscles bulging on their legs, and who are on the trail at 6am. I’m dead asleep at 6am. My hiking clothes consist of overalls and a long sleeve shirt, and running shoes that still have some tread on the bottom.

The other two categories of people in the campground are the retirees, who still have kayaks, bikes, and are fit, or families with young well behaved children, with exceedingly fit parents, who wear designer flip flops, and probably only eat organic food. Some of them have adorable little campers that they pull behind their subarus and hondas. There are no overweight people in the entire campground. We did see some exceedingly fit Asian families, and some Nordic types, but they all had the proper wardrobe.

Glacier is crowded. Crowded on a Tuesday, at least the part we are at. Every parking space in Apgar was full, every seat at the restaurant, there was a row of traffic on the GTSR, every parking spot at Lake McDonald lodge was full, and every pullout on the first 20 miles of the GTSR. You would totally have to get up at 6am to get a parking spot, so you could hike. Or be like the ultramarathoners who jogged by me, just bring your hydration pack and you could go anywhere.

I’m not that type of hiker. We hiked the half mile to the lake from our campground, and peacefully sat alone on the shore, Ru looking at rocks, and me reading my book. As soon as Ruben’s thighs touched the water he wasn’t interested in swimming anymore. I watched some bugs, swatted a mosquito (yes I felt a little bad about it), and relaxed. When the rain started, I put on a poncho, (the one I bought for Disneyland that Cab said I would never use) and Ru wrapped up in his towel and we went back to camp. We hung out in the tent, under the tarp, listening to the rain fall. I read my book, he played a color game on his phone, and we chatted about our time at Padma Ling.

The rain stopped about 7pm, I made some rice noodles (boiled some water) and we went to the showers. My shower was tepid, had one of those low flow showerheads that provides nothing but a stinging mist that hurts but doesn’t really get you wet. Ruben’s shower was great he said, with the “best showerhead I’ve ever used” and lots of hot water. Sigh.

We discussed going to the evening program, and we discussed making a fire, but in the end we went to the tent, to continue our sporadic conversation and listen to the remaining raindrops fall from the trees onto the tarp. It was too wet to take out my guitar and see if anyone wanted to jam. The temperature had dropped and I saw my breath in the flashlight I was reading my book with. I went to the bathroom to try to dry my hair in the hand dryer, but it was motion activated and didn’t work very well on hair. I fell asleep chilly and damp, and a little homesick.