Hike # 1- Grinnel Glacier

For this hike I’m going to use the words I wrote after we completed our hike for the day. It captures the beginning of our Montana adventure:

20 Aug 08—Montana

We are sitting in a lounge at the Many Glacier Hotel, sitting in a comfortable chair for 2, looking out a rain storm rolls across the lake in front of us. The rain has been getting heavier as we watch. Penny has a cup of tea and I a cup of coffee. We are relaxing after a morning hike that fortunately did not go as planned. More on that later. First I will recount our trip out here.

19 Aug—Awakened at 3:20 AM by Brie. I’m beginning to believe Brie can sense when we have an alarm set and wake us 10 minutes before. Our bags were packed and already in Karen’s car (oh, we were in Jacksonville) so all we had to do was dress and go. Carrying nothing out to the car at the beginning of a trip was disconcerting for me—what was I forgetting? Karen drove us to the airport—such a nice daughter we have!

We already had our boarding passes so we went right to security and on to the gate. There is nothing eventful about the flight out. We had a 3-hour layover in Atlanta and since we would not be feed on the flight we took advantage of the airport to eat. Penny got a hot dog and I used the opportunity to have frozen yogurt (Hey, this IS vacation mode!).

We carried on all our bags and it worked well. Upon deplaning at Kalispell we found a woman holding a white board with our name on it. Dollar Rent-a-Car didn’t have a booth at the airport so they used this method. It reminded us of our trip to Italy. Unlike Italy where they misspelled Feagins, Dollar got the spelling correct.

A van took us to the little Dollar lot a couple of miles up the road. There check-in was relaxed and personal. The woman who handled our paperwork had only us to deal with. She was very forthcoming with local information pulling out maps and markers and outlining things we might want to see and do. She even offered to dig up some insect repellent “leftovers” for us to save us some money. I had to decide whether I wanted to add a window damage protection option on the car. She said 1 in 3 cars end up with some damage due to stones and pebbles. I declined.

We ate our real first meal of the day at a Pizza Hut in Columbia Falls, MT before entering the park. When we reached the entrance to the park there were about half-a-dozen tourist enterprises just outside the park feeding on the tourists and hikers. Each had the word glacier somewhere in their name.

Once inside the park we stopped at the first visitor center on the Going-to-the-Sun Road at Lake Mcdonald. There we got maps and talked with a ranger about the hiking trails. The visitor center provided our first good view of the mountains—a nice preview of things to come.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is full of wonderful scenic views. One area has a switchback with a steep drop-off. Penny was OK when the drop-off was on my side but not when it was on her side. She kept reminding me of the speed limit.

As I wrote in my last Montana blog the power was out when we arrived at the hotel. That meant the restaurants weren’t serving food. We were glad we ate before we got there.

We both had experienced a long day and went to bed at 8:30 Mountain Time—we both slept well.

Back to Aug 20th—so how did we end up here watching the rain sweep over the mountain and across the lake? The day looked promising at sunrise. It was mostly cloudy with the sun tinting the cloud bottoms pink.

We had cereal in the room for breakfast—breakfast in bed. We decided we felt good enough to try a longer hike today. We chose a ranger-lead hike up to Grinnel Glacier—2 miles of boat ride followed by 4 or so miles up to the glacier. At the end of the boat ride we saw our first wildlife—2 moose grazing in shallow water across the lake.


The hike began with relatively easy level trail around the end of Lake Josephine. Then came a killer switch back—steep and long. About ¾ of the way up Penny said “I can’t do this”, and sat down. I was quite winded myself. We hadn’t adjusted to the thinner air and since it had begun to rain we were in our rain gear and getting overheated. The rest of the group reached the point where the trail leveled out and they rested while the ranger gave a talk about the lakes we had crossed. Penny and I joined the group for the talk and the rest was good.

We continued about a ¼ mile more—going up at a lesser incline but it was just too much for us city slickers. We stopped—let the group go on and decided to turn around and make the mostly level 2-mile hike back to the hotel.

Just the 2 of us hiking at our own pace was much more enjoyable. We set our own pace, took pictures between rain showers, and made plenty of noise to prevent us from surprising any grizzlies. We were in prime grizzly country.

We found a nice rock just off the trail with a wonderful view of the lake to sit on, rest and have water and a snack.

Just up ahead on the trail we saw some hikers gathering and pointing up on the mountain. There was a grizzly slowly climbing over the mountain. It was quite distant and was basically a moving brown spot on the mountain.

The trail continued around the shores of the 2 lakes. It rained on and off. We even saw a little sunlight.

About ½ mile from the hotel the main storm caught up with us and we had a patch of heavy rain. We sheltered in a small building we happened upon just at the right time. We made it back to the hotel in pretty good shape. Our rain gear worked

Once back in the hotel we got some info on the red bus and went down to the lounge and grabbed the open sofa. That’s how we got here.

Now we’ve been sitting here for almost 3 hours watching the weather deteriorate. We can see the glacier we were supposed to be hiking too from here—well we could—the rain is so heavy now it has obliterated the view. It looks as if there are no mountains out there.

We made it back here just before the real heavy rain began. We are hunkered down for the day, enjoying watching the nasty weather and knowing that if we had continued with the glacier hike we might now have been 6 miles away in the wind-driven torrent of rain still having to make our way back. In other words instead of being dry and warm we would have been miserable.

Montana Waits,

We have returned home to a very busy time; Unpack, laundry, repack in case we get Gustav; Hurricane prep for the yard and house; 3 meetings with marriage preparation folks this week; fantasy football draft.

So the blogs about Montana will have to wait.

We got some rain from Gustav already this evening. The storm is supposed to go to the west of us but we are keeping a wary eye on it. If we leave I’m going to pick up my brother, Lou, who is currently in the area.

Depending on how much we accomplish tomorrow and Gustav maybe my 2nd installment of Montana will happen.

The Hotel

I decided to cover our trip to Montana by topic instead of a day-by-day rundown. The logical first step is to cover our lodging. The location and lack of amenities determined to a high degree what we did and how little we knew of the outside world.

I made our reservations for Montana months ago, February-I think, after a good amount of internet research. Many Glacier Hotel (MGH),

http://www.nationalparkreservations.com/glacier_many.htm?gclid=COHr1fLFiJUCFQlqsgodbEeCqQ,

is located on the East side of Glacier National Park (GNP). It is set in a beautiful location on Swiftcurrent Lake, surrounded by tall mountains. We have many pictures of Many Glacier. Here are a couple to give you an idea:

Our room was on the fourth floor all the way at one end of the building. The room had a full size and twin size bed, a small desk and bedside table, a luggage bench and a chair. The sink is outside the bathroom in the room itself and the bathroom boasts a huge old-fashioned porcelain bathtub. There was a phone but no TV, radio, internet or cell phone coverage. We did have the correct cell phone service, Verizon, , to make call when we got off GNP. It was the only service that worked there.

To get to MGH from Kalispell Airport required driving through GNP across the Going-to-the-Sun Road, exit the park, drive north about 8 miles and then re-enter the park on Many Glacier Road and drive in another 8 miles to the hotel. We got a good preview of the park on that drive in and it was exciting. Penny didn’t like sitting on the drop-off side of the road as we climbed the 6,800 feet to Logan’s Pass. We both did, however, marvel at the views.

The hotel had the usual assortment of restaurant and lounges but we planned to hike each day. We hit Wal-Mart and a supermarket in Kalispell to stock up on provisions for breakfasts and high-energy snacks to take on our hikes. We didn’t buy a meal at the hotel all week. We ended up getting into a regular routine of cereal in the room for breakfast. Snacks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during the hikes (we hiked 5-7 miles each day) and Linner somewhere between 2 and 4 PM before going back to the hotel. We did have coffee or in my case soft serve huckleberry ice cream some evenings.

The day we arrived at MGH the power had failed. That meant no elevator. We had to haul our luggage and supplies all the way to the end of the hallway and up the 4 flights to the room. It was a good workout to prepare us for the hiking. (When power was restored we found the elevator to work fine. It was tempermental, however, and you had to be very patient when you used it.)

No power also meant registering the old-fashioned way—making an imprint of my credit card.

Since our room was on the end of the building we had 2 windows, one in the room and one in the bathroom. This provided much-needed cross ventilation that most of the hotel rooms lacked.

The worst feature of the room was thin-walled-construction. We could clearly hear everything said in the next room. Since our beds were up against the common wall it meant we had other people’s heads 1-2 ft away and if they were chatty we could enjoy their conversations. If our schedules were similar it was no problem. I only had a problem one night.

The best feature was the big tub. We found after a long day of hiking we could both fit in the tub and provide each other soothing foot massages to ease our aching feet.

The hotel also had nice picture window views of the lake and mountains with comfy seats for sitting and watching. Outside was a good sized deck full of Adirondack chairs. We made good use of both in the evenings.

Overall I liked the hotel and its location. It was the most scenic location for any of the lodging we saw and the rooms were not outrageously expensive.

Back From Montana

We are back home after a glorious week in Montana. I’m not ambitious enough to write a real blog today but I will gradually cover our trip either in a day-by-day format as I did with Vegas or topically. I don’t know which way I will go. For now I will leave it with one word—razzleberry .

We had to spend Tuesday night in the Atlanta Airport so between the multi time zone changes and poor sleep our bodies are all messed up. Tomorrow may see a longer blog if it is not overtaken by hurricane preparations. We are in the zone of uncertainty for Gustav.

Kitty Update—Only 2 cats showed up tonight, Marmalade and Buzz (both orange cats). The feeder once again did its job and they had plenty of food. Maybe tomorrow we will see Meredith and Velcro.

26 Corroded Cents

That’s what I found on my beach walk today, a quarter and a penny—but that’s what happened at the end of the day. I should start at the beginning. Since I didn’t write yesterday I’ll include some of that, too.

It was raining again this morning when we woke up. It’s been raining since we’ve been back so it has been a good time to do inside things. Yesterday the most important accomplishment was making reservations for our trip to Vermont this fall. We didn’t go last year because we went to see Penny’s sister in Texas and we found that we missed it. We are going up there for 2 weeks to relax and enjoy the area. I may even use some time up there to work on my book.

A good portion of the day was taken by shopping. We are preparing for our upcoming trip to Montana and Penny needed a decent backpack. We actually found a good one on sale at Eddie Bauer in the outlet mall. We also bought some high-quality hiking socks. I surprised Penny by turning into Harbordocks for lunch. I figured we could have our anniversary lunch 1 day late. Harbordocks didn’t let us down—we had a great meal and a good time.

I spent the evening researching hiking trails at Glacier National Park. The more I read and see the more excited I get. Except for a scenic bus ride, all we plan to do is to hike around and enjoy the Rocky Mountains. There are plenty of hiking trails for us to take and the most scenic ones are around the hotel we are staying at in the park. We enjoyed the mountain scenery in Alaska and Montana appears to rival what we saw up there.

Now, back to our rainy Wednesday morning. We had very little milk in the house so cereal was out for breakfast. Instead Penny “conned” me into making egg in a basket. I made it with nice crusty Italian bread that we got at Fresh Market on Tuesday. The bread had some Rosemary baked into the crust and made for a wonderful breakfast.

I did some laundry while I continued my research on Montana. This trip is challenging to pack for. We are not going to check any bags on this trip. The weather in the mountains is changeable with temperatures reaching the mid-80s in the day and dropping to the mid-40s overnight. We can expect lots of wind (bad for Penny’s ears) and sudden rain. So we are packing as light as we can but hoping to stay comfortable.

The hotel we stay at, Many Glacier Hotel, was built in 1915. It has no air conditioning and no Internet. It is, however, in a stunningly beautiful lakeside location surrounded by mountains.

I’ve done sufficient research now to know that we have many options available for each day we are there.

I saw on the early evening news that the rain was over and because of the stormy weather the surf was huge. The Sun was out so I decided to take a beach walk.

The surf was kicking up a mist like it does all the time on the East coast. I had to keep wiping the salt spray off my glasses. I had over a mile of beach all to myself. There must have been a good strong wind most of the day because there were little shell all over standing on pedestals of sand—the surrounding sand being blown away with the weight of the shell holding the sand under it in place.

I saw lots of birds and what I thought was a good-sized shell. When I drew near to it, however, it moved. It turned out to be a big sand crab (as big as my hand) and when he decided I was getting too close he stood up to face me and defend himself if he must.

I took some pictures and finished up my walk just before sunset. On the way home I picked up some milk. Breakfast tomorrow will likely be cereal.

KITTY UPDATE—When it rains the cats don’t always show up. Yesterday only Buzz was there. The last time I had seen Meredith she was limping and her rear leg was swollen to twice its normal size. She also wouldn’t let me touch her and barely ate. So her not being there yesterday worried me.

Tonight, before my beach walk, I went out to see if any cats were around. As soon as Buzz heard me he jumped down from the roof and came to see me. As I was petting him I heard Meredith’s high-pitched meow. I looked up and there she was, coming down off the roof, favoring the rear leg. The leg was almost normal size but she didn’t put weight on it. Tonight she came and let me pet her. She wanted to stand on me with her wet little feet the way she used to but couldn’t do it.

4 Days, 678 Miles

The weekend in Jacksonville was a good one. I think everyone who reads my blog reads Karen’s blog and some read Penny’s so I will only skim over most of what we did. I will provide a special “Sophie Update”.

The Times Grill in Jacksonville is becoming our choice for dinner when we are visiting K&T. Friday night was no exception. Their burgers are great but the special treat is their sweet potato fries. They are a favorite Sophie finger food, too.

We were in town to watch Sophie on Saturday evening while K&T went to a party. We use any excuse to go see K&T&S. It works out well for everyone. We get to see Sophie grow at about monthly intervals and we see K&T and C&C on most visits.

K&T planned some recreation for us on this visit. Saturday we got Publix subs and had a picnic in Memorial Park in the Riverside area of J’ville. Sunday we went to Ft Caroline and Jacksonville Beach. We had 3 cameras with us and we all were taking pictures of Sophie. Do you think her life is being well documented? The picnic was fun, Ft Caroline was nice, except it was hot and muggy. The beach is always good. I haven’t been to the beach in my town in over a month so getting to the beach in Jacksonville broke my absent streak. The beach in J’ville reminded me a lot of the beach in Cocoa Beach where I spent a lot of time in the summer of ’69 and ’70. I’m going to have to get back into beach walking!

Sophie was having on and off diarrhea, something that keeps her from going to day-care. We stayed over through Monday eve to watch Sophie so K&T could go to work. We left J’ville about 5:30 PM and got back home around 9:30.

No kitties were around Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Sophie Update—Karen provides excellent reports on Sophie as she develops into Sophie-the-person. But I had some quality one-on-one time with little Miss S and here is my report.

I was wearing my sandals that have Velcro straps on them. I went to take them off and when the Velcro made the tearing sound Sophie noticed. She came over with a very serious look on her face and started to investigate. She had me show her how the Velcro works by moving my hands to close and open the strap. Then she tried it herself several times until she completely understood it. Later, on Sunday when I went to take my sandals off at the beach it also attracted her.

After the initial Velcro incident Sophie reached out and lifted the end of my tee shirt exposing my tummy and my belly button. Tim saw this and said that she loves belly buttons. She does. She takes her index finger and slowly approaches the navel with it as she smiles and watches your face. Then she slowly sticks her finger in as far as she can—her little finger nail poking the deepest tender belly button area—which makes me laugh hysterically—which makes her want to do it again and again giving me a toothy grin each time.

Sophie likes to drink from the end of a straw that you dunk in your drink and hold the liquid in place with your finger. When you empty the straw in her mouth she thinks it is hilarious to clamp down on the end of the straw with her little teeth while you try to pull the straw out of her mouth.

As with most babies Sophie shows no fear of the water. At the beach she fearlessly crawled out into the mighty Atlantic. Tim played the catcher on the shore and kept her safe.

Another Hurt Kitty

I haven’t been doing much that is blogworthy for the past couple of days. I’ve spent my time supporting Penny in her projects and today I finished pressure washing the driveway.

Last night Meredith didn’t show up at feeding time. Tonight she showed up but it appears she’s broken her right rear leg. She can limp around with the leg—its not dragging but she is obviously in pain. She won’t let me get near her and she’s not interested in eating. There is no real recognition in her eyes that I’m an OK people. At least she did come back here to sleep in her spot—as much as she can sleep. If I go outside she runs away.

All we can do is hope she starts eating and heals up as best she can. I’m sure that catching her and trying to bring her to the vet would be far too traumatic for her on top of the injury. We will see if she shows up tomorrow.

Olive Garden Monday

It was a typical Monday. Not a rainy day. This is the 2nd day in a row with no rain. That’s a long dry spell for us lately. It’s Monday so it is laundry and catch-up day—Also lawn mowing day. Have I bored you to tears yet?

We did make a trip into town centered on our Olive Garden Monday. I had forgotten our usual Monday visit there but Penny remembered. I bought a replacement garbage disposal on-line at Sears last Saturday. Ours is still working but vibrates and is as loud as a jackhammer. It has served us for over a decade. I opted for in store pickup so that was one stop on the schedule for today. Penny is getting rid of clothes that are too big for her so another stop was the Goodwill place. Finally our library books are due tomorrow but we have plans for the day. Penny is going to lunch with Kitty and we are helping Pam move her bed in the afternoon. So we hit the library today.

While at Sears Penny wandered off to get some stuff. Somehow (can you imagine?) she found herself in the infants clothing area. They were having a 50% off plus an additional 40% sale. I don’t know how she does it but she manages to find great bargains. We bought a bunch of clothes for Sophie.

I finished making the leg for C&C’s chair. It needs to have finish put on but penny says C&C did that to the other leg I made. I’m waiting to talk to them tonight to find out if I send it to them unfinished.

While mowing I noticed that the Dogwood tree we planted in honor of Penny’s mother was growing a second trunk. That tree has struggled ever since I planted it. Each time I think it’s dead it surprises me. All its leaves have brown spots and brown edges. I’m going to have to do some research and see if I can help it out. It deserves it.

A Meaty Weekend

When we were in High Springs with C&C we bought a bunch of meat, added some marinates, sealed the stuff up in portions and put it in the freezer. This weekend we did it again on a smaller scale for ourselves. Winn Dixie has skinless boneless chicken breasts on sale BOGO so we bought 2 packages. That turned out to be 9 large breasts. We also got some jerk marinate and some Cuban/lime marinate. Yesterday I put everything in marinate. Today I cooked them on the grill.

We also treated ourselves to T-bone steak also on sale. We don’t do steak often so we were due. Penny has developed the technique to make perfect baked potatoes as one side dish and she made garlic spinach for the second side. We sat out in the sunroom and had a leisurely lunch. We even had a glass of wine with the meal—an unusual drink for our lunchtime meal.

Speaking of leisurely, that’s the way we started our Sunday. Brie has been waking me up all week between 5:30 and 6:00 AM. In fact, she hit the 6 o’clock mark exactly twice and made 5:58 another morning. I don’t know how she does it. This morning she tried again. We went to church last night so we could sleep in if we wanted to. Brie tried to get us up around 5:30. She woke us but instead of getting up we curled up together and drifted back off—until 7 o’clock.

We had breakfast in bed—cereal—and read the newspaper and watched Sunday Morning.

I finally got busy around 9 starting out in the shed. The leg I made out of poplar for C&C’s living room chair was not strong enough for the job. We found the chair upside down with the leg split when we arrived last week. Today in between a run to Jo-Ann’s and cooking I cut out another leg. This time I’m using oak. I’ve got the basic shape cut out. I had to glue 2 pieces together to make the piece thick enough. That’s as far as I could go today. Tomorrow after the glue finishes curing I will make the piece the proper thickness. When it’s done we will mail it to C&C.

Brother Lou called today from Nebraska. He says he’s hotter and more uncomfortable there than when he was here. They are having a heat wave. Considering how weary he got here he must be exhausted. After Nebraska he is going back to Missouri again until he comes back down to our neighborhood, Niceville, FL, in September. I told him to keep an eye on the weather because Sep is when our hurricane season peaks.

The day ended on a sad note. I’ve been calling my Aunt Margaret periodically. When I called this weekend I found that her number was not in service any more. I called her son John to see what was up. I figured (correctly) that they finally put her in a home, but got their answering machine. He called back tonight and explained that his wife Ginny had just died of cancer. They discovered it in May and she died about a week ago. We met Ginny on our last trip up to CT 2 years ago. She made us very comfortable. She was a warm welcoming person and John was obviously crushed by her loss. I asked him how he was and he said not well. They put Margaret in the home when Ginny got sick—John just couldn’t handle both of them. Keep him in your prayers.

..............John, Ginny and Aunt Margaret ..............Ginny