Sunday, October 19, 2008

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!

8 comments:

  1. They just look like red berries to me Rena! (But then I am a 'city folk.' Before I 'met' you I didn't even know that all these berries had names! I learn something new every day! (But since we don't know if these are poisonous or not, I will stay away from them I think!) lol

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  2. Beautiful berry picture, Rena! What a wonderful family day with the animals!
    That road sounds stressful, I rode down one like that (in the passenger seat, I'd be too chicken to drive it) in Colorado. It was named Oh My God road!

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  3. LOL Tracy! I'm still trying to learn all the names of the berries here. I've got huckleberries and serviceberries down so far. This picture is a bit deceiving because the berries are shown with a branch of a pine tree. They don't grow on pines, but I wanted to get the branch in the background. Almost looks like a Christmas picture.

    Kelly -- I think I know what road you're talking about. Was it through Rocky Mountain National Park? I've been on that road and you're up over 10,000 feet at the summit. If Nancy comes on here, I'm sure she can tell us the name of the road. I always forget what it's called. It's a white-knuckler road, that's for sure!

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  4. Rena, I believe those are mountain ash berries.

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  5. Wow! that sounds amazing! I'd love to be able to see all those animals is their natural setting (but still far away!) Your berry picture is gorgeous!

    Christy

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  6. Mountain Ash Berries? Cool! I'll have to look into it because now I'm really curious. I have a book called "Rocky Mountain Berry Book" and it has quite a few listed, but not Mountain Ash. The red ones shown looked like these berries, but each one had differences in the leaves. So, you're probably right. Thanks for letting me know!

    Thanks Christy -- I guess I'm really spoiled because we get bears right up in our yard so we can see them close sometimes. It's still fun seeing them way up on a hill though. :)

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  7. My mom and dad worked at Glacier years ago, so I grew up hearing stories about the park (although I've never been). They never talked about that road though ... Great picture, no matter what type of berries they are.

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  8. They never talked about the road? I wonder why. The darn thing gets over 30 feet of snow each year and most years parts of it get washed out completely. They just build it up again. I always tell Rick that God doesn't want the road there because he keeps taking it down. Like dummies, we wait until it's fixed again so we can drive on it. Doh!

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