Northwest Montana Fair

Even though Kalispell is as close to Glacier as it gets, we got a little tired of driving for hours every day, and were delighted when Dale discovered that the Northwest Montana Fair & Rodeo would be in town while we were there. The parade passed just a couple blocks from our house.

Much candy was tossed by the paraders, and Jordan and Aaron racked up quite a haul (pictured here back at the house, after they had sorted and counted it all).

We were pleased to cheer for Flathead County's democrats. 

At the fair, we saw a domestic yak, which is raised for its fur.

Jordan, Aaron, and Deena all tried archery. It's harder than it looks. The instructors were kids who took it all very seriously. 

Deena and Jordan and I bought wristbands for the carnival, but we could only stomach three rides (and frankly that was one too many). I'll remember that for next time. No pictures, just vivid memories of my queasy stomach and aching neck.

The grand finale of the fair (and indeed the trip) was the rodeo. I've seen rodeos before, but I never pictured myself attending one with my very urban aunts. We all had a blast. The rodeo clown did his schtick, supposedly claiming to be able to inflate a chicken to preposterous size, but instead turning it into a dog.

The bucking broncos are fairly frightening, especially when they almost stomp on the cowboy. Dale had fun getting action shots.

This rodeo featured an event I've never seen before, the Indian Relay Race, which was incredibly exhilarating/impressive/chaotic. The first set of riders gallops pell-mell once around the track; then each rider jumps off the first horse and onto a fresh one (that's the relay), while their team's handlers catch the first horse. This is totally nuts because you have something like fifteen horses in the same area, with riders jumping off one and climbing off another and handlers trying to control the other horses. And it's all bareback. One team failed to catch a horse after the rider jumped off it, and the horse just kept running like hell the whole way around the track again with no rider on it. Sheesh.

This is a barrel-racer. I wonder why barrel-racers are all women. Tradition, I suppose.

And finally the bulls. They are just scary to me. They attack people. But in the end the rodeo clown triumphs.

Glacier: Lodging

We enjoyed excellent accommodations on our Glacier trip. We stayed in a vacation rental home in Kalispell, a nicely updated place in Old Town, about half an hour from the park entrance. 

For a family like ours, a house is so much better than a hotel. Okay, you have to hang up your own towels, but in return you get a living room and a kitchen and a deck with a barbecue. In the evenings we plunked down on the long comfy couches and watched the Olympics together. In the mornings we enjoyed breakfast in pajamas. 

One night we camped over on the east side of the park for better access to the Many Glacier area. We stayed at a commercial campground outside the park that had great campsites, very comfortable cabins, resident horses, and intruding cows. It also had a terrific restaurant, Johnson's Cafe, where delicious country food is served family-style. We wish we could have eaten about four more meals there.

We did not stay at any of the beautiful historic lodges, but we enjoyed visiting them. This is Lake McDonald Lodge. I missed Dad here more than almost anywhere else; he loved these old places.

Glacier: Family

We go to Glacier because Glacier is cool, but of course a lot of the fun is just spending time together. This vacation was the four of us, Jes and Deena, and Sue. 

We travel well together on the whole. We rented a minivan for the week; the Seattleites drove it from Washington to Montana full of too much luggage, stopping on the way for picnics. 

Picnics are the best. The food is good, it's much healthier, you don't have to find a restaurant or wait for a table, and you save a ton of money. We reloaded the cooler every day and ate at neat scenic locations. Here we are at the Izak Walton Inn, a train station where you can sleep in a luxury caboose car that's been outfitted as a cabin. We did not sleep, just picnicked.

And here are a few more sweet family photos. Dale is usually not seen because he's usually taking the picture, but it's him we're smiling at!

Glacier: Wildlife

We did pretty darn well with the wildlife in Glacier. The one thing we did not see is bears. But we saw really everything else a hiker could hope for. First, near Avalanche Creek, the noble deer. (Okay, bit of a skinny deer.)

Maybe a bumblebee should not count as wildlife? but on this pretty flower, we could not resist.

Up in the alpine areas near Logan Pass, there were some terrific marmots. Aaron thought he saw a pika as well, but that is unconfirmed.

We had a whole thing about ground squirrels vs. chipmunks: Sue thought we were seeing a lot of chipmunks, and Dale felt they were ground squirrels. We learned that ground squirrel is a broad category that includes chipmunks, and a chipmunk is only a chipmunk if it has stripes that go all the way to its nose. How about that? This, then, is a ground squirrel.

But this is a chipmunk.

The most satisfying sightings were mountain goats, icons of the park and wonderfully plentiful on our hikes.

This hillside had a whole herd, over a dozen goats of various ages and stages, full of behaviors. One guy was scraping at the rocks with his horns and making little mini-avalanches for no apparent reason.

We were graced with a more distant sighting of a bighorn sheep.

And last but not least, a roadside moose, awfully close. Now that I know the rules I would say that we should not have parked so close. It's easy to think of the animals as if the space beyond the road is their cage, like they're at a zoo, but of course that's not the case, and close human encounters are bad for them and for us.

As always, credit to Dale for the wonderful photography. Aaron, meanwhile, kept a list of all the animals that he or we saw... the question marks are for ones that he is not sure he saw.

Deer
Eagles
Skunk (dead)
Tiny snake
Fish (dead)
Sculpin
2 shrimp (dead)
21 mountain goats
6 marmots
1,000,000 ground squirrels
3 chipmunks
2 pika?
Beaver?
Magpies
2 rabbits
Camp robber
Merganser duck
(infinity) cows/cattle
1 bull
1 grouse
1 mini marmot
1 moose
6 crows
(infinity)^200 human things

Glacier: Hiking and scenery

The First Memorial Stephen J. Scherr Family Vacation was held at Glacier National Park, in Montana. Dad planned this vacation but didn't get to go on it. Sort of like Moses. We missed him being there, and we still were glad to go.

One of the primary activities in Glacier is hiking amidst awesome scenery. Along each of these hikes there was wildlife, and family photos; those will follow in other posts because I have to break it up somehow. Here are the boys splashing in the water behind Lake MacDonald Lodge.

Our first-day hike started on the Trail of Cedars and continued along the beautiful Avalanche Creek.

The second-day hike, at Logan Pass, was more extremely alpine: we got up really early to get there before it got hot, and had a great day.

Alpine wildflowers lined our route.

It was up a long, long way, mostly on boardwalk to protect the meadows.

Aaron was full of zip, running up and down the trail because the rest of us were rather slow. But we all got there.

The end of the line for us was the beautiful Hidden Lake.

On another day, we got a view of the mountains that clearly shows the seam where one tectonic plate went under another, pushing up the Rockies, and rearranging the normal order of things so that older fossils are actually on top of younger ones.

Another day, we again hiked up and up and up (apparently that's what you do in Glacier), to a waterfall visible in the left of this photo.

The boys missed no opportunity to dab.

On the very last day, we took a tour in one of the red and black Jammer buses that are historically significant for the park. It was a lot of fun and very informative and restful after all that uphill hiking the rest of the week.