Day 11: Going to the Sun Road Take Two and St. Mary's Falls

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Curtis and I were planning to hike to Grinnell Glacier and Lake but the trailhead is in Many Glacier which is two hours drive away.  I know Curtis was really disappointed that we weren't doing an 11 mile hike into the glacier area.  We decided we would just drive Going to the Sun Road again and maybe do one of the hikes along the way.



I took videos of the drive to catch the majestic views that we were enjoying.  There was so much to photograph.  I just kept clicking while I was videotaping.  You can see the U-Shapes of the valleys in some of the pictures where the glaciers had carved them out.  You can also see the road we were driving on. 






The red buses were really cool.  I think you can buy tickets to ride them all day on Going to the Sun Road if you don't want to mess with trying to park.  Parking can be a huge problem. 


We decided to hike down to St. Mary's Falls which isn't that long.  Unfortunately, it is straight down hill.  We also had to park uphill a little ways from the trailhead.  So we had to walk along the side of Going to the Sun Road and hope that the drivers were paying attention. 



This sign (above) doesn't give you a warm fuzzy when you see it as soon as you hit the trail.  Curtis saw what he thinks was a grizzly bear down the road a little way in the treeline.  We had our bear spray and figured there were enough people on the trail that the bear would hopefully not notice us!








We continued on to Virginia Falls which was another 1.2 miles up hill on the other side of the valley that we had just hiked down into.  The trail was very clear.  If the fires had not occurred, the trail would have been pretty shaded.


The Jeep is way on the other side of the valley about in the middle of the center mountain.  That's where the trailhead is.  You can see the burn marks on the trees.  This would be a shaded hike otherwise.  






You could tell that you were getting close to Virginia Falls because God suddenly turned on the air conditioning.  It was very cool temperature-wise around the base of the falls. And the water is really, really cold!




This is probably our last major hike of this vacation.  I'm glad that I went on all of the hikes we've done.  It's a great way to really get to know a National Park and all that it has to offer.  I really wanted to hike to Grinnell Glacier.  Maybe next time. 

We ended our day by driving to Kalispell to meet up with our friends, Trish and John, who had come to help us celebrate our 20th anniversary.  We had a nice dinner at a mexican restaurant and Curtis enjoyed a Montana margarita with huckleberries in it.  If I haven't mentioned it before, huckleberries are the berry of Montana.  We've enjoyed huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry honey.  








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