Glacier

One of the great pulls to moving to Montana was its natural beauty and opportunities for hiking, fishing, exploring, canoing, etc. One of the saddest results of moving to Montana is never having the free time off of work or money to do these things. But once in awhile, we manage it, even if we have to cheat a little.

Beau did something that neither of almost ever do, he called in sick...when he really wasn't. Stupid Wally World doesn't seem to offer personal days, and only allow him 3 sick days every 6 months (yeesh). Like me, Beau doesn't normally miss work either, unless he's bleeding from a lung, but he's been subbing during the day and dealing with Wally Bullshit at night, so he just needed ONE day off.

We decided to finally make it to Glacier National Park, something we've both been itching to do, especially me, who has to suffer somewhat as co-workers often come in on a Monday morning regaling me of tales from their adventures there. Unfortunately, the main road was closed at one point, but we knew there were other things to do, and since we had one whole day, we went for it.

Takes awhile to get there, but as usual, I read aloud as Beau drove. This is a rather symbiotic relationship since I love to read and he would much rather drive. I always bring two books: one a "fun" book usually a fiction novel from a current series we're on, and one is usually our most recent self-help, make-your-marriage-strong book, which is guaranteed to make Beau grimace when I pull it from my sack, but with which he still participates faithfully. Currently we are on our third book from a Sci-Fi series I read many many moons ago and from where I pulled one of my internet handles from. It's not the most sophisticated prose, but it's fun and fast-going. Plus who doesn't like a book with colored unicorns in it?

The "marriage" book is called "Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert," written by this renowned research psychologist who, if you can get past his inflated arrogance about how HE is the lone man in the universe to have figured out why marriages actually succeed or fail through his decades of staring at couples in his marriage lab, is actually rather eye-opening and revealing. He claims a 94% prediction rate whether a couple will divorce within one meeting of them. The book was highly recommended to us by someone in the know in this area, and I think it's very valuable, though even with my enthusiasm, it can take us quite awhile to trudge through a non-fiction book. On the positive note, during our hours in the car yesterday, we have discovered that we both have fantastic "love maps." This basically means if we were on the Newlywed Show, we'd win a bazillion dollars by easily naming each other's favorite foods, biggest stresses (duh), and favorite place for making whoopee.

After several hours in the park, where unfortunately we did NOT spot any bears -- a long-standing joke between Beau and I regarding how you can't see any bears in NZ, but you can easily (ha ha) in Montana -- or wolves, which I was hoping for, or even a frickin moose which would have been awesome, we did spot several deer (Beau stifling his yawns), a couple of bald eagles (cool), and a few colorful rodents (eh). At one point, both of our eyes scanning the fields for wildlife, I shouted out, "Stop stop! Back up!" Whizzing the Honda backwards, we stopped some distance away from a large, brown object I was hoping was pay dirt. I got out my camera while Beau oriented our cheapo binoculars. After a moment, he said, "Ahhhh."

"What is it?" I demanded excitedly.

"Yuuup," Beau said, slowly in one of his 'country boy voices,' "That there is the very rarely-seen, rusted out John Deere tractor."

"What?" I said, taking the binoculars from him and focusing on it myself. "Oh, damn."

We strolled along an easy and pleasant trail through a forest which let in little sunlight, and another through a giant open meadow where the ground felt like walking on a sponge, apparently since once upon a time the whole field had been one big lake. And I swear, every time we passed a small creek or river, Beau would look down at it and say, "I've fished in that."

My heart hurt a little knowing just how much he yearned to actually be fishing in it again, but the cost to outfit him with fly fishing supplies (since he'd sold/given away all of them pre-New Zealand) and the free time to actually come here, are not available. It is so frustrating to him to make it to Montana where he has spent many a happy week camping or fishing, only to now spend most of his days in the windowless, fluorescent hell that is Wally World.

We ended the day with a stop at the in-laws, who live in the town where the entrance to the park lies. There was some irony in that when we came into their apartment, they were watching a special on the enormous amount of grizzly bears that roamed around the park. Well, they were actually talking about Yellowstone, not Glacier, but still. Close by! We ended the day at KFC where the in-laws watched as Beau and I, completely and utterly famished, tore into our chicken like Hannibal Lecter.

Anyway, to end on a nice note, the following are my gorgeous, and sometimes humorous photos of the day:

Lovely little creek at the entranceway.

This reminds me of "Mirror Lake" in New Zealand, for obvious reasons.

Bald Eagle

Shadowed us. And unusually soft-looking me.

It was a bummer all the burnt-out trees (of which, sadly, there were many many many throughout the park), blocked the shot of this amazing, meandering river.

I loved how it named drowning as its #1 cause of death, therefore implying that there were several other ways of kissing your ass goodbye in the park....


Ahhh, here's another way: serving as a bear snack. Drowning or bear candy? Hmm, I'm going to go with drowning. No wonder it's the #1 choice, err, cause.

And for Loafkeeper's pleasure, here is the photo of that rare John Deere species:
Keep in mind we were going by in a car!