Montana is a classic work hard – play hard state. The residents are rightly proud of their landscape and get out and enjoy it with gusto. The amount of public land (to an adopted New Englander) is astounding. We were ultimately fortunate that our Where? There! approach means the main campsites near Glacier National Park had long since filled up. We ended up camping 20 miles along a dirt road, tucked in a cove on Hungry Horse reservoir. The sort of National Forest campsite that only local Montanans use; a secret little hide away spot.
Glacier itself treated us to one of the singular moments of the journey thus far. Our first day there was cloudy and peppered with rain showers, but the visibility teased with glimpses of the peaks, waterfalls and of course glaciers. Lake side hikes resulted. Day two promised clear skies but we set off and slowly climbed realizing we actually had worse conditions that the previous day. The cloud sat thick, enveloping, making even a short forest hike eerie with misty specters. We pushed on. There’s always that tantalizing hope that these clouds are valley fog, but how much to hope? Suddenly the fog thinned a little – was the sky just slightly bluer? Then we burst out into crisp blue skies and a magical scene of creeping cloud below and pinnacle peaks above.
