We left Waterton Lakes
Tuesday morning, stopping at Pearl’s Café for my cup of coffee (and Liam and
Kai’s hot chocolate without and with whipped cream and the pastries looked good
so we had one too and so it went with the cinnamon buns). We entered the United States at the point
where Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park meets Glacier National Park in
Montana.
Glacier is one of the
places to which we will return. There
were some obstacles to getting there. We
received our most thorough interrogation by a border patrol officer in all the
multiple times we’ve crossed. He wanted
to know all of the places we’d been since entering Canada, who was in the car
and how we were related to each other. I
immediately forgot. Fortunately Eric
didn’t. (I know what you're thinking: why not just give him a link to this
blog? If only I had thought of that).
We thought we were
home free once we entered Montana, until we encountered the next obstacle:
I decided to take the
bull by the horns. I rolled down my
window and yelled “Excuse me!” Heads
turned, but the road remained cowful. I
thought to myself, “when in Rome…” and shouted “Moo!” Nothing.
Eric rolled down his window and politely but firmly said “Mooooove!” and
they ambled into the other lane. Glacier
here we come.
People told us Glacier
is stunning but they didn’t mention that it has a personality. We entered the park on a beautiful sunny day
and drove up and up and up to a lookout point over the lake. Here’s the lake just after we got out of the
car. Serene, no?
We turned to look the
other way toward the tops of the mountains.
Something had really pissed them off.
Then a wind blew down like a door slamming. Liam hightailed it
into the car before it whisked him over the edge of the lookout. The wind threw parking lot gravel into my hair and
against the car and tried to tear the bikes off the roof rack. It picked up the lake water and scattered it
across the surface like a giant Jackson Pollack. I was afraid to open the car door because of
the sand and debris beating sideways against the car.
It took less than five minutes
for the lake to go from serene and sleepy to wild and angry, its back up and
hair standing on end.
We turned the car
into the wind and drove up the road into the shelter of the trees just as the
rain hit. As we rounded a corner, a bear
galloping down the mountain flashed across the road just in front of us and
disappeared into the trees. It turned
its head to look at our oncoming car.
Fortunately, I had the camera in my hands. It was on and pointing
right toward the front window.
It never occurred to me to use it.
That’s all I have to
say about Glacier, because it was so beautiful that we are going to come back
and stay for a week. We stopped once
more to see one of the waterfalls, and Liam took this shot:
Then we drove and
drove to Sandpoint, Idaho where Eric’s cousin Fred and his wife Tracy live,
the lucky dogs.
-Juliet
