Background Music: "Montana" by Frank Zappa, live in 1973 and 1984 combined as only Frank could.
We know, this music doesn't exactly provide a fitting soundscape for the sweeping views and wildlife of Glacier National Park, but if you know Travis, you know this song was a must.

We’re only a few days away from home now. It’s been an amazing trip, but we’re looking forward to getting back. It’s hard to keep our mind in the present with the upcoming excitement of family, home and work (the real world, we call it) coming up so quickly. What has helped to snap our minds out of the future, and back to the here and now is visiting a place like this- Glacier National Park.

I feel like I’m running out of words to describe all the beautiful places we’ve seen on our trip around the country. There have been several, but Glacier is absolutely in the top 10. Besides the stunning mountain views, the forests, the many varieties of wildflowers, and the glacier fed rivers and streams, we were surprised to see so many animals.

In one day, we saw deer, ground squirrels (read on- it gets more exciting than that), marmot, mountain goats, big horn sheep, an osprey family, and even a grizzly bear! I’ve been hoping to see a bear ever since we started this trip, and just a few days before we got home I got my wish. What a country!

Of course, we didn’t know we’d be seeing all these animals. We had kept our expectations of Glacier National Park pretty low. People talk about Yosemite, wax poetic about Yellowstone- but you don’t hear that much about Glacier. “Must not be that exciting,” we’d told each other. Well, it is that exciting- it’s beautiful! And the animals, like we said, were probably the best part.

Most of the animals seem unafraid of people, much to the chagrin of the rangers. We stood still while they all (except the bear) came within a few feet of us, most within an arms reach. The marmot, which seemed scared at first, ended up coming just a foot or so from Travis and posed for him. Maybe we shouldn’t admit this, but we didn’t even know what the marmot was at first. An elderly couple was standing near us, also taking photos, and I asked them if they knew what it was. The lady, with a friendly smile, said something in a heavy German accent that sounded like, “varmint”. I was sure that couldn’t be it, so I leaned in a little closer and said, “I’m sorry, a what?” Then she leaned in to me- her face only two inches from mine- not unfriendly, but hugely uncomfortable. “MAAAARRRRRRRMMOOOOOOTTTTTEEE,” she said- loudly, and slowly, rolling her “r” wildly. She stared at me and I stared back at her, a little surprised. I finally said, “Oh- okay”. “What, you can’t say it back,” she asked? There was a moment’s panic when I realized I still wasn’t quite sure what she’d said, what with all those crazy rolling “r’s” and the drawn out “ooooo” sound, but I managed it. “Oh- um- a marmot?” She smiled, patted me on the head and walked away.

We drove on through the park, looking for other signs of wildlife. The best way to spot wildlife at Glacier is to look for the huge crowds of people gathered around a very small area, taking pictures like mad. That’s how we found the mountain goats and the big horn sheep. The grizzly was a slightly different story.

There’s an area of the park called “Many Glaciers” that’s not quite as popular as the famous, “Going to the Sun Road”, which is the main route. After driving that main route, we weren’t quite ready to call it a day so decided to take the road less traveled, and were glad we did. On our way to Many Glaciers we were driving a section of the road that advised, “no stopping or parking at any time”. Being a hard core rule follower, (see Mammoth Caves, Park City, KY, 4/23/08), I had no intention of allowing a stop to occur, but when we saw a bear up on the side of a hill- that just went out the window. “Stop,” I said to Travis, “I think I see a bear up there.” We stopped and rolled down the window. Sure enough, a grizzly was moving among the bushes, happily munching on huckleberries. We took a few pictures, though we knew none of them would be great because he was so far away. When another car came up behind us, we decided we’d better move on.

A short drive down the road, where parking was allowed, we found the crowd. A mass of people gathered with binoculars, all trying to see the bear, which was only a speck on the hillside from this spot. We parked the truck and stood with the others, trying to make him out. Finally, we got tired of trying to spot him and did the obvious thing- we walked back up the road to where he was.

Now, we’ve heard a lot of stories about people making bad decisions when it comes to animals, and we’ve seen “When Animals Attack”. We’re smart, though, and we stayed at a safe distance. In fact, we almost couldn’t say for sure that we saw a bear if we didn’t have a zoom on our camera- he was that far away. We tell you this to put to rest any ideas that we could have been candidates for a Darwin Award. It was still pretty exciting, though. And when the bear started making his way down the hill towards us, I was no longer in the mood to look at the neat grizzly bear. My hubby, though, the picture taker guy- is just not that easily scared off. What ultimately saved us from “one last shot” was the ranger, who drove down the road to shoo away the few of us who had gathered on the road. She was very nice and told us that they like to keep people off this portion of the road so the bears can feel free to roam back and forth across it. Believe me, I wasn’t about to stop them. She went on to tell us about a hill just a little ways back where people are allowed and “I’m sure you’ll be able to see the bear even better from there,” she said.

We expected that the ranger was telling a little white lie to get us to leave, and that turned out to be correct. From the hill you could get a good view of pretty much nothing. But, it’s for the good of the animals, so we understand.

After about 10 hours, we headed home. We were tired. It had been a full day. “We sure did see a lot today,” Travis said. “Yep,” I replied, “and, I learned what a marmot is.” For the moment, thoughts of tomorrow had been replaced by pictures of happy, pudgy little squirrel faces and mountain goats drinking from a stream. There are only five more days until we get back to the real world now. We’re excited about it, of course, but it’s still nice to know that a place like this is only a couple days drive away.