Day trip becomes two

©2013 Lydia Hinshaw

There's a fantastic view out there, honest!

Josephine Lake, and a view you can see

Merganser mom with 10 youngsters, Swiftcurrent Lake

 MANY GLACIER VALLEY, MT -- We left our home base in West Glacier Saturday for a morning at Logan Pass, where we hoped to photograph the local bighorn sheep and mountain goats.  We see them nearly every work-day, but we never have time to focus, as it were.
 Alas, the pass was socked in.  Any wildlife, along with the familiar fantastic snow-trimmed scenery, were hidden in the fog.  We had skipped breakfast to get an early start, so we set up our backpacker stove on a rock wall and made ourselves coffee to go with our Safeway baked goods.  After breakfast, we hung around for another hour, hoping the fog would burn off.  No luck.
 There are many advantages to having your home with you whenever you head down the driveway.  Instead of returning to West Glacier as we'd planned, we continued east to St. Mary, which was fog-free but gloomy with overcast.
 So we headed north and then west, to the Many Glacier Valley, one of my favorite places on earth.  I spent the first heady summer of my retirement working in this area and it's still my favorite part of Glacier National Park.  And the weather in Many Glacier was perfect.
 On a whim, we drove into the Many Glacier Campground, where it's nearly impossible to find a spot unless you're there at daybreak to stalk folks who are thinking about leaving.
 It was 10:45 a.m., and the third site we drove past was unclaimed.  The chance to spend the night here was too tempting to pass up.  We had left our firewood at our campsite in West Glacier, but the Magic Bus contained  everything we absolutely needed for an overnight.
 We spent the afternoon wandering on foot, enjoying the reflection of Mount Gould in Josephine Lake, and later watching a common merganser with her brood of 10 in Swiftcurrent Lake.
 We also checked out Fishercap Lake, a popular moose hangout, where we found great scenery but no moose.  It appears that people who want to see moose have discovered Fishercap, and often bring along noisy children who drive the moose away.
 Sunday morning our campsite got early sun, so we didn't miss our firebuliding supplies.  We made another fruitless search for moose, hit a favorite St. Mary restaurant for a late breakfast and meandered back across the mountains to West Glacier.