Days 120 to 121: Glacier National Park

The weather to the east of Hidden Lake overlook

We didn't have time to do any long hikes in Glacier National Park so instead we had time to do lots of short hikes with plenty of time to lie around observing the scenery.  We went to St Mary and Virginia falls and spent more time lying around looking at rainbows, spray, and dragonflies swooping overhead like swallows than we did walking.  We met a couple who were making their way slowly over to Alaska and they recommended a hike to Hidden Lake from Logan Pass.  So Mike made us get up at about 6:30 in the morning to drive to Logan Pass and walk a mile and a half over snow to see this Hidden Lake.  It turned out to be a really good thing we went so early, because we had the place almost to ourselves.  There were just a couple of mountain goats occupying the path in such a way that Antonia found it hard to be a good Junior Ranger and stay away from them.  From Hidden Lake overlook, there is a really beautiful view over both sides of the mountain range, which isn't really the case at Logan Pass itself.  This morning was particularly interesting because lots of little fluffy clouds were scudding over from the west and seemed to be piling up in a big traffic jam on the east side where things were looking pretty grim.

The weather to the west of Hidden Lake overlook

When we started the slow drive down to the western side of glacier, we lost sight of all this threatening weather, and high-tailed it across Montana and some of Idaho to our friends' house near Sandpoint.  We didn't even manage to keep track of when we passed the state line or the time change to Pacific time.

Day 119: Roadtrip from Great Falls to Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park, now almost devoid of glaciers

I'm having some problems with my camera battery, so instead of roadtrip photos, it's just more socio-political observations about Montana today. 

The O'Haire Motor Inn gave us a free newspaper every morning in which we can see Montana bragging that it has plenty of money in the bank, no shortfalls and is well placed to withstand the chaos that may ensue next week.  That's very laudable, but today it's sharing the front page with a possible explanation for why Montana has so much money.  A prisoner has taken the state to court protesting the demand that he write all his correspondence in English.  Since he is of Guatemalan origin, he has reasonably good cause to want to use another language.  The reason he can't is that the prison has run out of money and can't afford a translator to check that he is not plotting and scheming. They used to rely on voluntary translations from a guard who since retired. Hmmm....

We stopped for breakfast in a little village with the very English sounding name of Dutton.  We were surprised to discover: a playground with picnic tables and what look like reservable barbecue facilities, a sports field and a pool.  I've been complaining for weeks about the lack of public facilities in the US and I was very surprised to see all ths in such a small place.  Then, at the entrance to the playground I noticed the sign saying it was built using funds from the government's recovery scheme.  Look everyone!  Your tax dollars do work!  Here is a very nice thing that everyone can use.  Too bad there isn't more stuff like that.

All the same, as we were driving to Glacier National Park, Montana looked quite well off.  It's mostly empty, but the farms are pristine and orderly in a way that reminds me of the Dutch and Scandinavian countries.  Then, all of a sudden we passed through what seemed to be a shanty town with a pretty American flag flying over it.  And then another one, then fields with ramshackle cabins.  I was changing my mind about Montana, and I suppose the fact that I later realised the 'poverty line' coincides exactly with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation does not alter matters one jot.  It's a beautiful bit of landscape though.

We arrived at Glacier to find all the A campsites filled with Canadians on some bank holiday weekend we didn't know about.  We just managed to get in at Cut Bank campground.  There are no facilities or water here, but we like it anyway. Antonia is feeling homesick, maybe because it looks just like home.

Days 117 & 118: Great Falls, Montana

Mermaid at the Sip 'n Dip bar

 There is something strange about driving down the Interstate for seven hours trying to work on a laptop in the back of a campervan.  Time passed quickly, though trying to line up the mouse with the pixels was a headache.  There is also something peculiar about pulling in to a motor inn in the middle of an unknown town for two nights, intent on getting as much work done as possible.  The rooms in the O'Haire Motor Inn are so neutral, I can hardly think of a thing to say about them, except perhaps that they tend towards the old-fashioned kind of neutral.  O'Haire Motor Inn does have its touch of wild eccentricity though.  On one side of a wall is a small swimming pool room with views over a pawn shop and a motor repair shop.  It has a very industrial feel, as if it had been installed in an abandoned factory or warehouse.  Since that's the kind of environment of lots of postmodern art exhibits, that's what it reminded me of - a postmodern art installation.  It's a similarity that's exacerbated by the echoing acoustics.  The four or five large, hairy (or made-up, according to gender) and tatooed people sharing the pool with Antonia are either speaking a dialect of English I can't understand or playing at talking nonsense, and I can't tell which.

On the other side of the wall is the Sip 'n Dip bar filled with kitsch trinkets of various kinds, roofed over with bamboo like a Hawaiian beach bar, carpeted with something featuring multi-coloured bubbles and furnished like a Hopper painting.  It sells cheap martinis and very good desserts and is obviously popular with tourists and locals alike.  To get in, you have to show your identity to a heavily-built doorman even if you are clearly in your 40s like us, and get a paper bracelet just like in a hospital.  There are windows in the wall between the bar and the swimming pool, beneath water level, and every Tuesday to Saturday night a girl dressed as a mermaid comes and performs acrobatic swimming in front of the bar windows for an hour.  At 9pm a lady arrives to play the piano and sing racy songs.  She's been playng here since 196?.

Our second evening in Great Falls was more mundane.  I spent an hour in Barnes and Noble, enjoying looking at books and then we had dinner at Pizza Hut.  It is sort of impressive to think that no matter where you go in the US, you can have an experience like that.  I like hanging around Barnes and Noble and I was quite impressed with the range of viewpoints in the books on offer, even though there is something about this whole region of the country that I can't quite put my finger on.  It's like the feeling I get when I'm visiting my parent's village  It's perfectly nice and I don't mind spending time there, but...  I think monocultural is the term I'm looking for.  And I can't live with that.

OK, so we did make a little cultural discovery this evening, while reading the news on Mike's cell phone in Pizza Hut.  It's not often a newspaper article makes me reach for the dictionary but apparently when the House of Commons 'tables' a motion in London, it means they'll keep on hurling insults at each other until a solution appears.  When the Senate 'tables' a motion in Washington it means they are going to refrain from talking about it and go and have a drink in the hope it will have gone away by Tuesday.