More Mountains: Rainier and Glacier National Parks

Putting our backs to Fort Clatsop, we turned south then east to find ourselves, for the second time in three weeks, in Silver Creek, Washington. The only attraction there is a Thousand Trails RV Park we've used before. But this time, with no real deadline ahead, we set aside three days to visit Mount Rainier which we had missed on the way north.

Secretly, we're trying to see how many active volcanoes we can walk on before one decides to kill us.

This one just sat there, generating some clouds. Rainier gets a large amount of snow and, as a result, still has several active glaciers growing and flowing from the summit. 

← Here's one, the Nisqually Glacier, which births the Nisqually River, cutting a huge rocky ravine in the mountain's flank in other months than August. This month, the river is well more than a trickle but was not moving any boulders downstream. The white “11” in this picture actually are three large waterfalls issuing from this one slow-moving ice pack.

Their waters joined and noisily ran under the bridge on which we'd stood for this second picture:  →

We spent an entire day traveling around the south side of Mount Rainier and then decided the east side would be more of the same. So we went back to Paradise –some of these RV parks offset the “trailer camp” image with great names– for drinks and dinner. We sat and talked with neighbor, Don, who is a “fulltimer”. He told us he's been living this lifestyle for 7 years. That's just an unimaginable span of time to us, who are away from family and friends going on four months now. He's traveled extensively around the Pacific Northwest and gave us suggestions for future visits.

But not this year. We sat down to look at the calendar and at where we are, which is embarrassing, considering our lofty sort-of goals last spring. We had wanted to travel from this area north to Canada, visiting Jasper and Banff National Parks at the north end of the Rockies before dropping into America's Glacier- and Yellowstone National Parks. Instead, we cut off Canada entirely just as we had cut off Colorado last April and decided to focus on the two American Parks. They are big enough that we thought several days ought to be devoted to each. We'd been at Yellowstone before, back in the last century when our three sons were less tall than we. Of all our National Park visits, this will be the only one we will have duplicated. We were super impressed then and hope to be again.

We did laundry the next day since life is not entirely idyllic, even at Thousand Trails Paradise. Then we moved on to Quincy, Washington, where the Thousand Trails Crescent Bar RV camp is on the shores of a dam lake in a steep-walled canyon. Apparently the developers had been allowed in just a couple years previously so everything looked new and fresh. We liked this well laid-out park.    

 Then we pushed on through Post Falls, Idaho, where we greatly welcomed this greeting:

Nearly $2 less than in The 
Thief State, California

After spending a night encamped in a Walmart parking lot with a dozen and a half other travelers, and volunteering about $100 in trade for groceries, we arrived at Glacier National Park.

Almost, that is. We wanted to camp inside the park itself, because of its size and because Debbie didn't want to pay in-season tourist rates at close-by RV parks. We ended up in a grocery store parking lot in Columbia Falls, while we unhooked our towed Honda to spend that afternoon and evening reconnoitering the 100% No Vacancy Apgar Campground in Glacier, noting which sites would accommodate a 40 foot long RV coach, and which would be vacant before the next noon. We found this a very effective way to get what we wanted

in a typical first-come/first-served federal campground and would recommend the process to any other RVers –especially since we could spend a free night in a parking lot just half an hour away! The next day we moved into Loop C at the Apgar camp after dumping our holding tanks and taking on fresh water. The sites were wooded and well separated. Even our big RV did not look incongruous there next to tents and pop-up campers.  

We decided to stay five days, where Debbie wandered down to the beach with her coffee every morning and John joined her for evening wine.

Debbie also was excited to go kayaking on Lake McDonald amid the mountains on the west side of Glacier NP.

We enjoyed the Ranger-guided walks because these guys know so much that we would otherwise just wonder about. Like these acres of sticks in a thick forest of small, new pine trees.
There'd been a fire.  Lodge Pole Pines, in particular, release the seeds from their cones only in forest fires! The burned out poles will fall and add their nutrients to the soil and Life goes on. The federal government had just come to realize this less than 30 years ago. Interestingly, a Park shuttle bus driver with whom we talked insisted that the technology exists to clear-cut a forest, plant new seedlings and add every bit of nutrition the soil needs –while utilizing and maintaining the timber resource. He said he was a retired Forestry Technician and was more than a little upset with tree huggers whose mental abilities petrify when thinking about those damned loggers.  Do they live in sustainable grass huts?  Have they stopped burgeoning this planet with new babies?

The mountains were carved by repeated epochs of glaciers in this area, leaving these broad U-shaped valleys, distinctly unlike the sharply narrow V's of river-cut valleys. 

 ←

 Here's another → example –a hanging valley– with that narrow waterfall descending into the deeper main valley.  

Wildlife here are Mountain Goats, and bighorn sheep, bears and such.

On the more domesticated side, nearby residents include the Blackfeet tribe of American Indians who, to this day, insist they were cheated out of the use of much of the National Park land by treaty provisions they didn't understand –but signed anyway. The east entrance to the park (Saint Mary Entrance) borders on the Blackfeet Reservation, and features several displays telling their side of this emotionally bitter continuing argument. Interestingly, that entrance is the only one we saw that features the Canadian Flag flying at full staff next to the American flag, also at full staff in this border-crossing Park, with a third flag also at full staff, on equal footing with the other countries: that of the Blackfeet Nation. Until this moment, Debbie and John had no idea that any tribe had it's own “national flag”. Very reminiscent of a scene in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. John says, if you haven't experienced this book, you really should get past the paranormal and sci-fi aspects to see what Heinlein had to say in the 1940's about the Human Experience that is so very relevant to today.

It's near the end of August, so one more Park –Yellowstone– and then we book it for home. See you soon.