highline trail and lake macdonald, glacier national park

On our second day in Glacier, we skipped Mark’s endearing bear lecture and got up early to secure a parking place at the trailhead for the highline trail past the so-called garden wall. The views were gorgeous, and we saw lots of wildlife of the safe-ish variety like bighorn sheep, mountain goats, hoary marmites (to which Dan ascribed the hoary motto “hello, sailor…”). Twice in the hike we encountered big animals actually on the trail and both times scrambled up the rock embankment on the side of the trail to let them pass – once was a family of bighorn sheep and the second time was a mountain goat and its kid.

You can see in some of these pictures how hazy it was – there were serious wildfires in east Glacier, so bad that they had to evacuate the lodge in the eastern corner of the park and the highway along the south border was closed. We had originally wanted to do a few hikes on the eastern side, but the fires coupled with a bunch of trail closures due to bear activity meant that we stayed mostly on the west and center of the park. So in lieu of hiking on the east side, we drove the Going to the Sun road toward the east entrance of the park to see St. Mary’s Lake and have a late lunch at a quaint pie diner.

The third day in Glacier we decided to take it easy, so we went for a short hike through a wooded area to a cascading river, and then found ourselves a quiet spot along Lake MacDonald to read and swim in perfectly clear water. I think this marks the point in the trip at which we officially lost Mariah to the seventh Harry Potter book. Later in the trip, when we were in Yellowstone, I literally had to rip the book from her hands to get her to stop reading and look at the scenery. Apparently, I underestimated her passion for Harry though when she stole it back less than a minute later…