The weather today turned out to be much better than
expected. We got lightly sprinkled on only once, the temperatures stayed
really nice and everything went well. The skies stayed overcast all day,
though, so the pictures didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.
We drove the very beautiful 70 miles over to the Two
Medicine section on the east side of the park. This took us over the
continental divide both going over and coming back. We hadn’t been able
to see the monument on our way from Great Falls with the RV (because we missed
the turn), so we stopped this time.
The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial is on the continental divide
at Summit on US-2. Summit is called a town but certainly doesn’t look
like one. There’s nothing there but the railroad and a campground.
The land for the memorial was donated by its owner, William “Slippery
Bill” Morrison who had squatter’s rights on 160 acres at Summit. His 160
acres wasn’t surveyed and the boundaries weren’t defined, but every time
someone tried to make a claim on anything he would protest and say that his
claim included that area. When he died his land reverted to the
government. He was quite a character, preferring to make $10 playing
poker than $100 any other way. He didn’t work at a legitimate job for the
last 30 years of his life, surviving instead on prospecting and trapping and
who-knows-what.
Next to the Roosevelt Memorial is this statue of John
Stevens, a civil engineer who was hired in 1889 by the Great Northern Railroad
to find a suitable rail route across the continental divide. In December
1889, after enduring a blizzard, he located and recorded this pass which had
been used by Native Americans for many centuries. By 1893 the railroad
was running trains over Marias Pass, the lowest pass (5,216’) and shortest link
between the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast.
In 1930 the 56-mile section of highway over Marias Pass was
the last section of the Theodore Roosevelt International Highway to be
completed (now designated US 2). Until the highway was finished travelers
had to load their vehicles onto railway cars to be carried over the pass.
Our first stop in the park was a short hike to Running Eagle
Falls and its nearby nature trail. This is also called Trick Falls
because of the trick the water plays during the spring snow melt when there’s
so much water flowing it also goes over the top of the rocks. This can
obscure the fact that even more water is coming through the middle under a rock
bridge.
The water coming over the falls is crystal clear and its
stream bed is full of very colorful rocks.
The view across Two Medicine Lake. Boat tours of the
lake run several times throughout the day. The wind was whipping across
the lake so boating would have been neither warm nor comfortable. Taking
the boat is the only way to reach the trails at the west end of the lake,
unless you hike an extra 10 miles to get there and back. This instantly
narrowed our choice of trails down to one.
A large pond along the trail which was probably the result
of a beaver dam we couldn’t see. We did find a beaver dam and lodge but
its pond wasn’t as picturesque. On our way back from Aster Falls we met a
couple who had just seen a moose at this pond but we were too far past it to go
back. We’ve been looking for moose for over a year in five states and
three Canadian provinces and haven’t seen one yet.
We did, however, see a grizzly bear today. Just as we
were driving out of West Glacier this morning a grizzly ran across the road,
shot under the guardrail (no mean feat for a large bear), and
disappeared. A few seconds later he popped up like a jack-in-the-box,
looked at us and disappeared again. That’s a great way to see a
grizzly…..from inside a 10,000 lb vehicle.
We spotted this great blue heron across the pond but didn’t
know until looking at the picture that he had just captured his lunch.
The camera has much better eyes than we do.
Aster Falls, the destination of our hike. (Blue sky
would have greatly improved the picture.) When we arrived there was a
family with four children, three of whom, along with their very pregnant
mother, had made it across the water by going over the rocks. The fourth
child, a very small boy, obviously couldn’t do it himself. He was eating
something (looked like part of a sandwich) and really taking his time over
it. The father was trying to be patient but was about to lose the
battle. He called the oldest boy over to catch the little one on the
other side, pried the remains of the food away and grabbed a sticky hand.
As the father started to swing him across, yelling at him to wait before
stepping forward, the little one stepped into the water over his ankle.
He then got flung across the water and rocks, being caught by his brother with
only that one small mishap. We stayed to watch until all were safely
across just to be sure no one ended up in the water and in need of assistance,
but left it to someone else to cover their return trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment