Day 58- Glacier

 August 8

Since I was not sure what I wanted to do today, plus the thought of thousands of people and cars to deal with I was not in a rush to get moving this morning so we slept in.  

I finally decided I was going to skip going to the west side and just go in the east.  Mainly because there was a boat ride that I thought would be cool and that was on the east side.  

After lunch we set out.  I wanted to find a place with a printer.  The National Park Service has a program for 4th graders that get them and their family free entry into any National Park.  I had printed one off for Denali in Alaska but didn't even think I would need it for Glacier and Yellowstone so I had to print off a new one.  The office at the campground was closed, luckily the gas station did it for me.

Once in the park we stopped at the visitors center.  We bought an ornament, magnet and sticker.  Also, tomorrow night they have a special astronomy event in the evening.  Tickets were $5.  I bought one.  Hopefully everyone is agreeable to go.  They like playing with my star app when we camp.  

Our next stop was at St. Mary Lake.  I wanted to go on a boat ride from Glacier Park Boat Company.  I was unable to reserve a spot so close but when I called around noon they said they had 20 open spots for the 3 pm which is what I wanted anyways.  We got there about 2:40 and they were sold out.  They told us to hang out and if there were no shows we could go.  Ended up there were exactly 4 no shows so we got on.  The trip was about an hour and a half and included a 20 minute stop to get off to look at a waterfall.  It was pretty fun.  The lady that was our boat driver had recently graduated college in geology so she told us a lot of interesting things of how the park was formed.  We have had some of the best guides on this trip.  

After the boat ride we headed up to Logan's Pass.  I worried about nothing about the length of the truck.  No one checked. Although in the visitors center the Ranger did say the shuttle would be the way to go because the lot would be full when we get there.  The problem is that the shuttle does it's final stop at 7:30 and if we did the boat and the hike, we most likely would not be back in time for the shuttle to get back.  

I decided to risk it.  I read reports of people circling for 20 minutes to get a spot.  However, since it was around 5pm, a lot of people were leaving.  I just followed some people that were walking back to their car and we got a spot right away.  

We were told the best chance to see a mountain goat would be on the Hidden Lake trail.  It's about 1.5 miles to the observation deck or 5 miles to the lake itself.  The entire hike to the observation deck was uphill.  The Parks Service has done a great job making a wooden boardwalk nearly the entire distance.  

Once at the deck I was taking some photo's when Davan comes to me and says she thinks she found a goat but was not sure.  I asked if it was white. She said yes, so I told her that was a goat.  It was beyond the deck a few hundred feet.  It was off the path and up the hill about 50 feet.  I got a few photo's but then it  walked up and sat down in the grass so all we could see is its head and back.  I waited it out a few minutes and it got up and walked behind some bushes and down the other side of the hill.  I walked along the path and as I got past the bushes there it was right in front of.  It stopped right on the edge of the trail and started munching on the grass.  It didn't take long for a crowd to form.  Several people either didn't want to stop to look or got tired of looking and walked past it.  Maybe a foot away.  The only time it flinched and jumped was when one clumsy person nearly tripped on a rock.  The grass it was eating must have been really good because it went back to it immediately.  After 10 minutes or so it decided to it was done and walked directly on the trail.  The girls had had enough and wondered off and I had plenty of photo's anyways so I went to find them.

The return trip downhill was a lot quicker.  We got to the truck about 7:30.  We were all hiked out for the day.  Since we are traveling the same road on the bus ride we didn't feel it was necessary to drive into the park any further so we headed back to the camper.