Thursday September 22 – Glacier to National Bison Range to Bozeman

A long, amazing day!!  Got up early and left the cabins by 8:15 and headed to the Bison National Range. Wow!  What a place was that!! Animal heaven!  We saw lots of mule deer including a bachelor herd of mule deer.  They were in the final phases of losing their felt.  So fun to watch them. And then there was a bear family (Mom and 3 cubs) that we became enchanted with.  Cheri spotted the mother from afar as a black dot on a mountain, near an evergreen tree.  We stopped and zeroed in on her with Cheri's zoom lens. We drove around a few loops of the road to get closer, and began seeing her cubs tagging along behind. We finally got to a turn out in the road where we could park the car. We grabbed our cameras and caught the family as they were coming toward us.  They were behind the fence- in area, so we were able to get out of our car and start capturing them in our cameras.  The fun was in watching the cubs playing with each other for a little bit, and then running to catch up with mom. Dottie got some of their antics on a short video-- so precious!  We also saw a prong horn sheep and his harem, a big Horn sheep so close to the road we could see the whites of his eyes., osprey, a kestrel, bison ( little black dots) who were already rounded up and corralled safely but too  far away from the road to be photographed as anything but dots or Black blobs. The landscape within the park was stunning. In the course of the 3 hour trip, we ascended 2000 feet from where we drove in by the welcome center.  No shortage of animals to view and photograph.   As we were driving on toward our destination in Bozeman, the rain began. Perfect timing.

We arrived in Bozeman around 7 pm, and celebrated the long day with margaritas and the last beer.  We had traveled over 2,700 miles on this trip with John driving about 2,500 of those miles!  One wonderful, fun, amazing trip of a lifetime.

 

Wednesday September 21 – Glacier National Park, MT

We got a slow start this morning, allowing us all to regenerate and sleep as long as we wanted to.  Rain was in the forecast and we poked along.  We packed a lunch of turkey, cheese and pickles for a trail hike.  This time we were headed to Polebridge; another off the beaten track location.  We travelled over dirt roads, deeper and deeper into the wilderness.  After many miles we suddenly came to a tiny piece of civilization at Polebridge. There as a general store with an incredible bakery!  We got coffee, huckleberry bear claws and huckleberry fritters!  Yum!  We also got 2 gallons of $6/gal gas.  Yikes!  But we didn't want to risk being stranded. 

We had picked out a few possible hikes, but adjusted our plans once we saw how bad the road was.  We drove down to Hidden Meadow Trail.  Along the way we talked with some other cars and one car had hiked the trail.  They told us of wolf prints and mountain lion scat.  

 

 

So, hearing all these scary things we geared up and again put the little scout out in front. Dottie enabled the "Kilnger-Klanger" ( metal  waterbottle with stones inside) and off we went making quite a racket!  Everyone wanted to see the animals, but only from the car.  We saw the wolf prints and were ever vigilant.  We didn't see the mountain lion scat on the way in, but did see it on the way back!  Yep...pics to prove it.  We hiked unscathed!

 

We got back to the car around 3:30 and had our lunch.  Headed back to the cabins and cooked dinner of cumin chicken, Mollie's roasted potatoes, and stir fried veggies. 

We played cards ( snatch the bundle)  and had fun!