View from the back door of the Lodge
Ben looks at me and he says, “This could be a disaster.” And he wasn’t kidding. So we went hiking. We knew we couldn’t do a long hike since Disaster #1 was a train wreck named AMTRAK. As one co-boarder hurried his distraught wife into their 6 X 6 cubicle noted: "It’s not the Taj Mahal." We decided to be good trainers and go to sleep, lulled by the champagne our steward gave us and the motion of the train. The champagne might have worked if the train didn’t stop every 20 minutes or so. That was a disappointing harbinger of the rest of the trip, where the train slowed down and stopped, sometimes for half an hour or forty-five minutes with a series of excuses and explanations: the track is hot, there’s a freight train coming, and (finally) the truth. We had a “little problem” with the engine. We scurried at speeds alternating between 45 and 0 to East Glacier Park, arriving only seven hours late.
We were too tired when we arrived at Many Glacier to ask about our 41 pound box of hiking equipment. It was a good thing we waited until the next morning because we couldn’t have slept. There was no box. No one knew where the box was. Maybe they could find it by Wednesday or Thursday. So we went hiking.
This was fun. Waiting on our train at a roof top bar in downtown Minneapolis.
As Star mentioned above, we were not going to be detered by our 2:15 Monday morning arrival. Without any gear except bear spray, we headed off into the Glacier wilderness early the next afternoon for a little 5 mile warm up hike to Grinnell Lake. It's a competely different experience to walk straight into the teeth of these great mountains on an almost dead flat trail. The snow above the waterfalls in this picture is actually Grinnell Glacier.
By the way, we had to drive 20 miles from the park in order to find some decent internet service to send this blog. I certainly hope it's worth it, lol.
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