MONTANA AND MORE

While Dick was backpacking for three days in Glacier NP, I enjoyed some alone time. I took a short hike through the campground and watched a mother black bear with her three cubs eating berries. Believe me, I wasn’t too close, they were specks on a mountainside. I went to a couple campfire programs. It was wonderful sitting outdoors in the evening, overlooking Lake McDonald with the mountains as a backdrop, listening to the stories and songs by Jack Gladstone, a Blackfoot Indian www.jackgladstone.com  We heard him for the first time when we were here in 1997. His music is magical.

Another evening a ranger (Pat Hagan) stripped down (he did an actual strip show) to a goat costume and gave a talk on what a mountain goat’s life is like - a very humorous and entertaining evening I must say. We were parked at Medicine Lake CG when Dick left on the hike but he planned to hike down to the Southwest corner of the park so I moved down to West Glacier. Driving the motorhome with the Saturn in tow was a piece of cake. After driving it for five months when he hiked the CDT in 1999, it was like second nature. The weather was damp and cold and windy part of the time and I wondered what it must be like for Dick up in the higher elevations. I kept reassuring myself that if he hiked 3,800 miles from Mexico to Canada he could handle any kind of weather. I was also concerned because he was going to search for the body of the young man who never returned after backpacking last summer. GREAT! My parents planned to camp nearby until he returned and then head south for warmer weather. I cooked one of Dick’s favorite meals and the four of us celebrated his return. The next morning we headed west stopping in Whitehorse to find our nephew, Kevin Mallery.

He is living and working out here and it was great taking a couple hours to catch up. We crossed into Idaho and found a great campground along the Priest River. We were so excited to see several owls perched on telephone poles along Hwy. 2. We weren’t sure what kind they were and asked our campground host, who was from Texas, if he knew what they were. He says, “Oh, those are Hoot owls.” It was tough keeping straight faces as we thanked him and walked away. So the next morning we drove a little slower and get a better look at them. With the daylight we could see they were fakes. Dick’s comment was, “Them ain’t hoot owls, them’s pole-out-the-butt owls.”

We took the scenic Hwy. 20 across Washington. Several mountain passes and scenic overlooks and it cuts through the beautiful North Cascades National Park which was a first for us. We were full-time RV’ers, working our way around the country, from 1978 to 1986, visiting 49 states, and there are still so many places we haven’t seen. 

We made a rule never to drive after dark but as we got closer to Anacortes and Maggie we broke the rule AGAIN. We arrived at the campground around 8:30PM (as Dick says, “Dark:30”). There were no lights and it was so dark as we drove up the entrance road. It was a narrow, first gear, climb and we were wondering what we were getting into. It’s not always easy finding a spot to camp for our size motorhome with a car, especially in the dark. We didn’t want to have to unhook the car. All of a sudden out of nowhere a man with white hair and a flashlight was directing us into a pull through camping space. I thanked him for his help and we never saw him again. When I mentioned this to the campground ranger he wondered who that could have been. It must have been an angel helping us. When daylight came we saw how beautiful the place was. Lush, green and surrounded by huge Douglas Fur and Ponderosa Pines. This would be our home for the six days we visited Maggie.

Dick’s Glacier Hike Link  

Dick’s How Not to Fill Your Propane Tank Lesson  

Dick’s Washington State Hwy 20 Route Link  

Dick’s Refrigeration 101 Link