life after travelling: Fun in Glacier

Because we didn't want to be questioned about staying in the parking lot at Many Glacier we decided it would be best to move on to the next lodge lot. Little did we know the next one was a little less crowded so we had trouble blending in (there's something about a bright orange van with kayaks on top that makes you stick out a little bit) but we thought we would be ok. The next morning we woke to a firm rapping first on the front window then every window including the one inches from our face. We froze in terror. We know we didn't ask for a wake up call/knock, it must be included in that park pass. So we stayed still and waited for it to go away. We packed up a little quicker that morning than most. We were gone in minutes. Thank you VW for including those curtains. We wanted to get an early start anyway. Thank you mystery person for the kind wake up knock it was very thorough. So our plan was to hopefully find a way to run Swift Current Creek. The creek was right outside the park to the east on the Blackfeet Reservation. We nervously scouted it and thought the only place that we could take-out was still moving pretty swiftly. We weren't sure we would be able to pull off.

The put-in 3 miles upstream from were we parked the car was relatively calm. We decided to try out what kayakers call a seal dive (get into kayak on land and push off small drop or cliff into water.) So I sent Emilie off the 1-2ft drop and like a pro she landed it perfectly thanks to the perfect push.

This is the take out of the river

Not to mention along the way we saw a cow, an egret, and 2 black bears. A mom and her cub watched us pass from the river side, kinda keeping an eye on us as we went- they ended up following us for a while, and eventually the cub scurried about 30 feet up into a tree- it was incredible.

It was time to do the drive through Glacier. We followed the going to the sun road up up up, and finally got to the crest where it said 6% grade next 12 miles. Well this of course sounded like the perfect opportunity to get the bikes down for a bit.

It was a lot of fun, and we didn't have any problem keeping up with the cars- I have to say, it was a neat way to see the park

When we got stopped by construction, I handed off the bike to Mike and I got to drive, almost as exciting as riding the bike down the mountain side.

As we continued through the park, we just had to stop at this pull off.

We were marveling at the crystal clear water

and the pretty waterfalls

when an idea struck, that water is pretty darn deep...hmmm

I'll admit it took an awful lot of convincing once I got up there. I even had onlookers at the pull-off along the road. When I finally did jumped, Mike said they cheered- For some reason I didn't hear it between my scream as I went down and the water rushing up to greet me.