We started out the day expecting to see the big Native American Indian Days in Browning, MT which is out the east side of the park. We arrived in Browning pretty early and hit the Plains Indian Museum (sorry, no pics) which was well worth the trip to Browning. The pow wow, however, had been the week before so we decided to go head into the park at Many Glacier since we had reservations at the Many Glacier Lodge for the night. This is definately the prettiest spot in the park that we had seen so far and there seemed to be no bugs either, what a bonus.
We got to the lodge early and still had time to hike so we hit the Grinnell Glacier trail before checking in. This trail normally takes you right to the glacier but was closed at about 4 miles since they were still blasting avalanche prone snow from the slopes. We decided to go as far as we could and come back to check into the lodge. Besides, we could make a nice loop of it going the north shore on the way out and the south shore coming back.
The hike started out along Swiftcurrent Lake. As we rounded the top end of the lake we got a good view back to the lodge which sits right at the shore of the lake.
The hike continued
up the north shore of Josephine Lake and we finally got up high enough to see
Grinnell Lake down below us...
Here we were up on the switchbacks to the Glacier itself...
We met a group of singing hikers coming down the switchbacks who told the tale of a big grizzly that they ran into just above us. Evidently it crossed the trail a few times and was in the area. We opted to bail on the last 1/4 mile and head down since the bear was probably a bit disturbed by the blasting and this party.
On the way
down we crossed Grinnell Creek at the top of Lake Josephine and headed to the
south shore. We soaked our feet in the creek a bit and Catherine got
this shot of me from the little gravel island in the middle of the creek where
we were sitting.
Further down
we crossed the creek again on its way into Swiftcurrent Lake...
We arrived back at the lodge, checked in and headed to our room for a shower (two days in a row!) The lodge was just incredible, built in 1913 and had the best view in the world. Here's the view from our room to prove it...
We ate dinner in the dining room and had a table right by the window overlooking the lake too, hard to beat. We felt like everywhere we went they kept giving us the best room, best table, etc... That night we went to a ranger slide show on the wildflowers of park and learned a lot about the things we'd seen over the past few days of hiking. We hung out on our balcony to watch the above view and saw swallows in the air and a hawk who joined to chase the swallows.