Fall Beauty Means Glacier is Still Packing ‘Em In
©Bert Gildart: Amazingly, Glacier National Park’s Two Medicine campground was almost full, leaving us with the challenge of parking our 30 foot Airstream in one of the less desirable sites.
But the challenge of parking was worth the effort. Fall is already exhibiting its first sign and it is gorgeous, particularly in the Two Medicine Valley.
Two Medicine campground and Airstream, squeezed into one of few remaining campsites. Orange from mountain ash berries means it is fall.
Over the years I’ve spent much time in this northwestern extreme of the park, and posted on it often, particularly as a Many Storied Valley.”
Most notably I worked here for a month following the devastating flood of 1964. At the time I was working on a park labor crew, and our assignment was to clean up all the debris created by the exceptionally high waters of Upper Two Med Lake. The flood cost many people their lives.
Mountain ash, fall harbinger
Our crew lived in a tiny “Trail Crew Cabin”, and we stayed here from mid September through the end of October, when snows shut us down. During that time we saw moose, goats, bears and all the various species of vegetation, such as mountain ash, which is one of the most conspicuous and one of the first harbingers of autumn.
But now, many years later, Two Med for Janie and me is simply a stop over, as we are now back on track after many interruptions. We’re working on a book about Montana and on several magazine assignments, all of which will take us into the eastern part of this diverse and fascinating state.
Interestingly for the technocrats, the addition of two extra batteries (total of four) has enabled us to operate well out of a campground that has no hookups. Last night the temperature dropped to 39, so we kept warm running our furnace, which gobbles up the power.
But we still had plenty of umph to run the water pump, and yet plenty more to operate my computer and an external hard drive, all needed to create this blog.
However, there is no internet connectivity, so this post has actually been made from Havre, Montana, which boasts an underground Chinese section and a buffalo jump, which we are anxious to see.
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