2021 Glacier National Park with Karen and Wayne: Day Three
Day Three: Thursday, July 29
Karen, Wayne, and I packed our belongings, on the morning of the third day, as we would not be returning to Browning after this day’s excursion to Glacier National Park. Our first stop was, once again, Two Medicine Lake, this time with better results. We even stopped at the Two Medicine General Store where my friends bought me one of their pastries and a cup of coffee.
The view of 8,271-foot-tall Sinopah Mountain about two miles away, which rises high over the western end of Two Medicine Lake, is one of the great scenes in Glacier National Park. I never tire of standing on the shore of this lake while gaping at that iconic image. Behind Sinopah you should be able to see Mt. Rockwell, 9,272 feet, Lone Walker Mountain, 8,501 feet, and Mt. Helen, 8,537 feet, with the peak named after Sinopah’s father being in the center. To the right stand Flinsch Peak 9,226 feet, and Rising Wolf Mountain, 9,513 feet, the last being the tallest peak in this area and named for Sinopah’s husband.
As we left the Two Medicine area, my friends and I stopped at Running Eagle, or Pitamakan Falls on our way back to Montana State Highway 49. This small but pretty waterfall in the back woods of Glacier National Park is a must-see as it is so easy and accessible for the weary traveler. At only six tenths of a mile, roundtrip, over basically flat land, this trail is, without a doubt, the easiest one in the park. It is even handicap accessible.
The parking area for this diamond in a ruff is about halfway between the Two Medicine Entrance and the lake. Though not large, this lot provides parking, on most days, for visitors. I have never visited Running Eagle when I could not find a place to park. The trail to the falls is well maintained and as mentioned above, is handicap accessible.
Standing tall behind the waterfalls is Rising Wolf Mountain, which at 9,513 feet is the highest peak in the Two Medicine area. This prominence was named after Hugh Monroe, or Rising Wolf, the first white man to live with the Blackfeet tribe. Although young, probably no more than twenty-one years of age, Monroe married Sinopah, the daughter of Lone Walker, chief of the Pikuni, or Piegan tribe. The Pikuni were one of three tribes within the confederation known as the Blackfeet, an Algonquian group of native-Americans. It may have been an “arranged marriage” or it may have been true love, nevertheless the native of the Trois-Rivières, or Three Rivers, area of modern-day Quebec and his native-American wife would spend over half a century in the far off wilds of North America, first in what is now the state of Montana and later in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada.
At an early age, Monroe joined the Hudson Bay Company and traveled west. He would never return east to see his family. After living with a band of the Piegan Blackfeet for several years, Monroe married Sinopah. The star-crossed lovers would grow old together and have many children. With the influx of eastern immigrants flooding into Montana after the Civil war, the two finally decided to head north into the Saskatchewan country of Canada.
Another name for the falls named after Pitamakan, or Running Eagle, a 19th century female warrior leader of the Blackfeet Nation, is “Trick Falls.” The falls flows from Two Medicine Creek, an outlet that connects Two Medicine Lake with Lower Two Medicine Lake. Pitamakan experienced a vision quest in the mountains high above the falls and was the only woman in the Blackfeet tribe to ever lead war parties on successful raids.
Running Eagle Falls receives its nickname, “Trick Falls” because, during the spring, you can actually view not one, but two waterfalls. Due to snow-melt Two Medicine Creek’s volume of water is such that, not only does it flow through the rock, but another force of water comes out over the top. When we were there, in late July, this phenomenon did not occur due to the loss of water volume as summer heated up. I have included some photographs, however, from a previous trip in June 2019 as a comparison to what we saw while we were there this time.
After we left Two Medicine, a return via MT-49 S saw us reaching US Highway 2 at East Glacier Park in about fifteen minutes. US-2, which begins at the small town of St. Ignace, Michigan just north of the juncture of Lakes Michigan and Huron, is a 2,100+ mile-long highway that ends in Everett, Washington just a couple of short miles east of Possession Sound, a part of Washington’s famed Puget Sound, Seattle’s port entrance to the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, this most northern US highway passes through seven states in its journey to the western coast of the United States of America. Crossing through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this western segment, not to be confused with the eastern part connecting upstate New York with Maine, passes through Wisconsin and Minnesota before crossing the northern tiers of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and finally Washington. The route roughly parallels the Great Northern Railway including the southern border of Glacier National Park.
From East Glacier, the drive to West Glacier by this scenic route is just shy of fifty-five miles. Marias Pass, at an elevation of 5,213 feet, is the highest point on US-2 between the east and west sides of Glacier National Park. It is eleven-and-a-half miles west of East Glacier Park Village. At an elevation of just under one mile high, Marias is the lowest crossing of the continental divide between the Canadian border and central New Mexico.
There were several plaques in Memorial Square at Marias Pass on US Highway 2. One of them was for the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Monument, while another, which said, “Welcome To Memorial Square At Marias Pass,” was an introduction to the park itself. One tablet, erected on a transplanted rock, was a remembrance to William Morrison the old trapper who donated the land for this park site. Another was for the John F. Stevens Memorial Statue in tribute to the man who founded Marias Pass as a location for the Great Northern Railway to cross the Continental Divide. In addition to the these monuments, there was a very large paved parking area with restroom facilities.
We followed US-2 west for another twelve miles, traveling generally in a southwest direction, following Bear Creek until reaching its mouth at the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. At this point, the highway took a rather sharp turn to the northwest and followed the winding, twisting river to West Glacier, the western entrance to the famed place known as Glacier National Park. There were plenty of aspen along this route but also a lot of pine trees.
Some fourteen miles after leaving Marias Pass, we came to Goat Lick Overlook. There was one of those unique national park signs, “Welcome to Glacier National Park” at this stop, as for a short distance, US-2 actually travels within the park boundary. There was a parking area to the left, just off the highway, and a short, paved path takes the viewer to an observation stand that overlooks the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. From here, especially during the spring and early weeks of summer, lucky viewers may see mountain goats as they come to this place to lick the salt and other minerals from the nearby cliffs. On our 2020 Fall Larch Trip, my brother and I drove by this spot, but it was late in the day and not knowing how icy the short road might be, we decided not to stop.
Five minutes later, or a little over three miles, saw us drive by the unincorporated town of Essex, a small community of less than 200 citizens at about the half-way point between the east and west sides of Glacier National Park. Originally built, as the town of Walton, in 1890, this waypoint provided a rest area on the Great Northern Railway’s main rail line. The nearby Izaak Walton Inn derived its name, as did the town and a local ranger station from Sir Izaak Walton, a seventeenth-century English author.
The inn, initially built as the Izaak Walton Hotel in 1939 to house railroad workers, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. It is still in use today, with the exception of a few weeks during the off season and has thirty-three rooms plus some refurbished cabooses for additional rental. Amtrak’s Empire Builder makes a twice daily stop at Essex on its long journey from Chicago, Illinois to the west coast.
From Essex, it was just over thirty miles to West Glacier. With time to kill, since the Going-to-the-Sun Highway would not be open to us until after five pm, we decided to drive up the road, through Hungry Horse, Columbia Falls, and Evergreen before finally arriving in Kalispell. After eating a nice leisurely “early” dinner at Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que we headed back to the park.
It is just shy of a mile from West Glacier to the west entrance of Glacier National Park. This census-designated place, or CDC, in eastern Flathead County is the gateway to Glacier National Park from the west side. As of the 2020 census, there were 166 hardy souls guarding this entryway into the park.
It is 31.2 miles from the west entrance of Glacier National Park to the Logan Pass Visitor Center. According to Google Maps it should take fifty-six minutes to drive this distance. Of course, that is if you make no stops along the way. And who is going to be able to resist all of the jaw-dropping beauty, that God has made, and not stop. During the first two days of our journey, I sat in the seat behind the driver on the left side of the vehicle. On this day, however, we moved everything over so that I could sit on the right, behind Karen’s seat. I had noticed on the previous day, that she was able to snap many photographs as we drove up the west side of the park, just by rolling down her window. By moving to the right side, I was able to catch many beautiful scenes through the lens of my camera just as she had and without getting out of the vehicle. It made a big difference that I never considered before.
It is just over one mile from the West Entrance of Glacier National Park and the juncture of the Camas Road with Glacier Route 1 Road, the famous Going-to-the-Sun Highway. In S. A. Snyder’s Scenic Driving MONTANA, this is Scenic Drive #2 Glacier National Park: West Glacier to Saint Mary. From there it was a little over ten-and-a-half miles to McDonald Falls, which is just past the east end of McDonald Lake. The GTTS Highway skirts the southern edge of this lake, the largest in the park, at ten miles long and one mile wide. We didn’t stop at the falls, but from photographs I’ve seen online, I would like to someday.
Avalanche Creek Picnic Area is 3.7 miles or six minutes further east along the highway. When Doug and I were here last fall, this was as far as we could travel along the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. The rest of the park was already closed.
The Trail of the Cedars Nature Trail is just a tenth-of-a-mile from Avalanche. Although it is a nice, and fairly easy trail, we did not hike it. This trip, with the exception of the short jaunt to Running Eagle Falls, was about the driving tours through Glacier National Park.
From this spot it was just a little over seven-and-a-half miles to “the Loop,” the only place where the magnificent Going-to-the-Sun Highway has a switchback. It is a convenient place for the traveler as there is a good size parking area and even restrooms. In 2005, when my brother and I met Nora, a friend from work, in Glacier, we took the Highline trail to Granite Park Chalet and then the Granite Park Trail down to the Loop.
By doing so, and we could only do it by having separate vehicles, we shaved three-and-a-half miles from our walk as Doug and I parked one vehicle at “the Loop” and drove to Logan Pass in order to start hiking the Highline Trail.
The drive from “the Loop” looking up the valley to Logan Pass is, simply, spectacular. I had never crossed over the Going-to-the-Sun Highway from west to east. We have a trip planned for the last week in September this year, and from what my brother has been reading, the aspen should be in that “just about perfect stage of fall color.” We are really looking forward to it. Along the way, we passed “the Weeping Wall.” Plus, Big Bend, Triple Arches and Bird Woman Falls all had nice pull-outs for scenic viewing. And there were many others.
From Logan Pass, the Going-to-the-Sun Highway took us to Jackson Glacier Overlook, a journey of about five miles. Another six miles brought us to my favorite place in the park, the “Wild Goose Island Overlook.” In the evening, with a setting sun, however, is not the best viewing time for this iconic image. I have included one of my photos from a sunrise, during the spring of 2019, at this place to show the contrast. Still, just being at this overlook with my good friends, from back home in Tennessee, was gratifying. Our journey continued to Rising Sun and took just a few minutes to cover the mile. Just as Avalanche is the early closing point on the west side, Rising Sun is usually the point of no return, on the east side, once the snows start falling. Sometimes they will plow the road beyond Rising Sun, but eventually the frozen precipitation just keeps piling up until they shut down the highway for the year. It is a little over six (6.3) miles from Rising Sun to St. Mary, the eastern terminus of the Going to the Sun Highway. The total length of this amazing road is 49.1 miles.
As we made our way south to the Dancing Bears Inn in East Glacier Park Village, one final treat was in store for us. We were blessed to see three grizzly bears. The first was a male grizzly eating, probably berries, along the side of the road. And not even a minute down the road, we spotted a sow with her cub doing the same thing. Many people can spend an entire vacation and not see even one bear, so viewing three in such close proximity was a real treat for my friends and myself
And after a long day of sight-seeing in one of God’s finest creations, we settled in for a long-summer’s nap at the Dancing Bears Inn. This small motel, in East Glacier Park Village, was a nice place. Nothing special about it, but we did get a very nice Continental Breakfast thrown in, and considering we had no reservations, until just before we left Billings, late in July, it was a great deal.
