A day in the park ...

Rick, myself and our 2 boys went to Glacier National Park yesterday. We live less than an hour away from the west entrance, so we go there a lot. Our family is big on national parks and being this close so cool for us. There is just something about national parks I love. I have a 30+ mile long lake that's less than 2 miles from my house, but I'd much rather drive an hour to be in the park. I am most comfortable in a national park than anywhere, for some strange reason. Glacier is famous for the Going-To-The-Sun Road that goes through the middle of the park. It's one of those doozies where you either love it or hate it. I'm in the middle here because I love being up there, but I hate that road. Going down is okay because I'm on the side of the road next to the hill. Going up stresses me out because it's sheer cliffs to the right of me. Let's just say the treetops of these enormous pines look like ants. It's one of those type of roads. But once I'm at the summit, I love it. That's where we see the mountain goats. Anyway, today (Sunday) is the last day you can get up to the summit before they close the road. Over the next few weeks they'll make the roadblock go further and further down due to snow.

We decided to head to the park one last time this year so we could see the summit and look at the fall foliage. It was rainy and cloudy most of the time, but it was still fun to see. I loved seeing the fall colors. But what really surprised me were all the animals we saw. We saw a mule deer, a lone bighorn sheep, a herd of mountain goats, a golden eagle, a black bear and a grizzly bear. Everything but the deer were all far away, but it's still cool when you see them. The bears were funny because the black bear was on one mountainside. Directly across the road on the other mountain was the grizzly. That doesn't happen too often, trust me. A lot of times we go to the park and don't see any wildlife, so we got lucky. We took lots of pictures, but with little sun, they weren't anything spectacular. I did get some berry pictures. I'm not sure what type of berries these are. They could be Buffaloberries, which are edible, or they could be Baneberries, which are poisonous. I'm not sure if they're Baneberries because the leaves look different. And we think the bears were eating these. They also go with the description of Nightshade Fruit, which is also poisonous. I guess I'll have to look at another berry book the next time I'm at the bookstore. The summit part of the Sun Road will have 30+ feet of snow on it soon, which is why we won't be going on it again until spring. It was a fun day in the park for us -- I really love it up there, except for that scary, scary road!