After playing with firewood for a bit this morning, Karl and I jumped in the Jeep and took off for Glacier National Park. When I first moved to Montana, I did a lot of hiking in the park – and one memorable ski run at Logan Pass on the 4th of July. In the last several years I have not been in the park. There are beautiful things to see – even just from the roads. And I love the far west edge – Polebridge which is not IN the park, Kintla Lake and another remote lake north of Polebridge whose name escapes me at the moment. St. Mary’s and Many Glacier on the east side are also favorite areas as well as Waterton – the Canadian part of the park. But bottom line is, as much beauty is contained within the Parks, I am a lover of the beauty or interesting (to me) or unusual found in the “normal” or “by the side of the road” or “off the beaten track”. All of this to say that it was not typical to feel the urge to go IN to the park…but I always love walking a bit by Lake MacDonald and it was a gorgeous day so off we went.

The drive was full of the colors of fall, although muted compared to past weeks as the aspen and birch have lost their leaves leaving those tree trunks and branches bare and whiteish-gray where there had been gold. The larch are at their peak and in those places where the sun hit their tops, they glowed amongst their dark green neighbors.

We arrived at the park gate. Typically, the ranger person hands the driver a packet of park material, asks if directions to anything are needed, dispenses some park information and collects the fee. Today’s ranger person almost apologetically told me the road was only open 16 miles – I did know that, but 16 miles was plenty for what I wanted to do. She then asked if I had a pass and when I said no, asked if I knew that the day fee was $25.00. I gasped as I hadn’t checked. It isn’t that I don’t understand the need to maintain things but $25 was more than I wanted to pay for a Sunday walk so we went on past the park.

I headed toward Essex which is not too much further, has a train station/hotel/restaurant and places to walk, which in winter are cross country and snowshoe trails, but as we drove on, the road enters a canyon, which even in the early afternoon was dusky and I decided I just wanted to go home. I found a place to turn around and there was the view. The river, the mountain sides spotted with color and the snowcovered mountain peak that looked like a pyramid

…a beautiful spot – by the side of the road.

Flathead Lake from the edge of Bigfork Village and from Wayfarer’s State Park – yesterday afternoon.