Montana: The Woods + Katie

We picked up our friend Katie Shubin in Williston, ND, at the smallest airport I've ever seen that actually shows up on travel search engines, and immediately headed west!  After 2 hours of driving we stopped for the night. The next morning it was time for a 12 hr drive across Montana and then a week in Glacier National Park...the park we were most excited to explore because we had heard so many incredible things and yet knew so few people who had actually visited it.

Our first night we camped at Two Medicine, an incredible place that is one of the less visited in the park, but has no less beauty than the rest!

The next morning we did a little nature walk where we quickly saw some fresh bear poop...eek! We turned around after we saw this: Hidden Falls (if you look close there are actually TWO falls!). Late in the season when the water level drops, only the lower ones flows and the top one disappears...how cool is that??

 After our nature walk we took off on Katie's first backpacking trip! Four miles in and four miles out, just one night. It was foggy and damp out and the forecast called for rain, but we decided we had too much to see to wait around for the weather to maybe clear up in a couple days.

 After we set up camp we hiked a mile and a half further to a beautiful lake. Even though we saw fish jumping in the lake, Josh was unable to catch any for dinner :(  The rangers told us that these flowers are only seen for about a week after snow uncovers the ground, so it was fun to walk around and know that if we had come a week earlier we probably wouldn't have been able to do this trail because everything would've been fully covered with snow!

 I told Josh before we left for this trip that all I wanted to see was a big 'ole moose with a rack while we were hiking...no bears...just a moose. We are hiking back from the lake, talking on the trail, and Josh stops and calmly says, "Look at that." Katie and I look at where he's pointing and see trees and grass and what looked like a big dead log. Josh tells us it's a moose...we hike closer...LOOK AT THIS THING!!! Grandpa Moose chillin' 20 yards from the trail with hair growing out his nose...my trip was complete. Period.

But since we saw and did other things after seeing this moose, I'll go ahead a tell you about them...but know that all the planning, driving, money, back seat entertaining, and everything else was immediately worth it for me when ole Grandpa and I made eye contact :)

It rained on us that night, but the mighty orange tent kept us all dry. However, as we hiked out we got soaking wet from our thighs down as all the greenery was covered in rain and the path wasn't super wide. So by the time we got back to the car we had decided to try to find a room for that night so we could take warm showers and dry everything out. We got warm and dry, relaxed, took naps, snacked and explored the Many Glacier gift shop.

Then it was time for dinner, and being the cheap people that we are we wanted to prepare our food we had brought instead of eating out, but there were signs everywhere that said you couldn't cook on the porch or in the parking lot. Josh volunteered to drive down the road to a picnic area, cook dinner, and bring it back. Now let me preface this story by telling you that our first night camping Josh had run back into town after dinner to fill up the gas tank and came back gushing with news that he had seen a female moose and a bear cross the road in front of the car on his trip. Then, he spotted Grandpa Moose on the trail. And on this particular afternoon while I was putting Naomi down for a nap I heard him come running in the room, telling me and Katie there was a bear. Katie ran out, I was stuck in the bathroom trying to get Naomi to fall asleep in her pack-n-play (it was the only area we could make dark enough for nap time...don't judge). They came back telling stories of the THREE bears they had seen meandering through the parking lot. So...Josh leaves to make dinner and comes back with the biggest grin on his face and says, "I got charged by a female moose." Of course he did. We started calling him 'Wildlife Josh.'

While he was cooking our food a group of tourists gathered looking at some wildlife he couldn't see and then the moose walked into the picnic area clearing. A ranger joined Josh at his picnic table just to chat and make sure no one in the crowd messed with the moose. Josh was stirring our soup and chatting it up with the ranger when the moose snorted and started running for him. He looked back and forth between the moose and the ranger, unsure what to do. The ranger looked confused, and then stood up and started yelling and clapping. Thankfully this startled the moose and she took off in another direction, but not before giving Josh the adrenaline rush he loves and leaving him with an epic story... :)

Josh's first glimpse of Mrs. Moody Moose.

 The next morning it was still rainy and foggy at Many Glacier and we decided the weather could be no worse on the other side of the mountains so we decided to head to the west side of the park. As soon as we went through the pass at the top of the ridge, the clouds parted and this is what we saw:

No people, Glacier National Park does not disappoint.