Montana

---

We made it to Whitefish, Montana by late afternoon and found the August weather we had been looking for…it was wicked hot! Wildfire hot, it turned out, as there were several fires ablaze all around Glacier National Park. It made for some haze and a little bit of a burned smell, but nothing to dampen the spirits. After enjoying some delicious food and hotel in the quaint little tourist town that is Whitefish, we headed into the Park. We camped for 3 nights at a campground in the center of the Park and mostly lounged. We hiked a sweet loop hike (11 miles) up to the historic chalet on the continental divide and met lots of photogenic mtn goats and big horn sheep along the way. The haze was really bad from the neighboring fires, so we didn’t get the classic views we’ve seen in pictures, but somehow the haze worked too. We then stayed at Two Medicine Lake for 3 days and looked (fruitlessly) for some moose, although every other person we met on the trails had just seen some. We put the kayaks in the water for a wonderful day of paddling…it’s a great lake and the wind even shifted during the day so we paddled with the wind in both directions….very accommodating. However, we could tell we’d been on the road for a long time when we were passing a turnoff for a waterfall, and when asked if we should stop, Lauren answered that she’d seen the postcard, good enough. Perhaps our sense of appreciation is waning a bit… We spent a night in Missoula and a couple nights camping in southern MT near Yellowstone, before heading down to Jackson Hole to meet up with Lauren’s brother.

---