B & D's USA Hideout: Waterton-Glacier National Park, Montana

Welcome to Waterton-Glacier National Park, the world's first International Peace Park. In 1932 Canada's Waterton National Park and America's Glacier National Park joined in peace and goodwill, combining forces to protect water, plants and animals that are found in the parks. John Muir once called the area "the best care-killing scenery on the continent."

A night in a border town and breakfast in Whitefish kicked off our visit to Montana. Continuing through to Columbia Falls, we approached the park through the West Glacier gate. Much of area was closed down for the season but we were able to find an accommodating RV park outside the entrance to post up for a few days. The North American RV Park also had a super comfortable lounge in which Brian and I took full advantage of using. Especially Sunday afternoon when the Patriots were playing. Hot showers, laundry and full hook-ups were also much enjoyed. The truck and trailer finally got a well deserved wash of sand and salt and we were finally able to unpack for more than a day.

Though we wanted to just head right into the park and explore, we had a couple weeks worth of errands, chores and phone calls to catch up on first. We were able to accomplish a lot in one day and still made it into the park for an evening stroll to see the park's largest lake, Lake McDonald, at dusk. Lake McDonald is 10 miles long, 472 feet deep and was created by a 2,000 foot thick glacier gouging out this land many moons ago. We had the entire place to ourselves. Brian and I took lots of time to set up the tripod and take pictures of the crystal clear lake and the rest of the world around reflecting upon it. All the tamarack has turned yellow and painted a beautiful contrast against the forest green Pacific cedar-hemlock. It was a photographer's dream.

We took more time the next day to drive the Going to the Sun Road, though, beyond the 14 mile mark was closed for the season. We drove to the gated section and then hiked the trail to see Avalanche Lake. It began with a boardwalk through the bog and then led us onto a gushy wet, well used footpath. We spied a family of mountain goats roaming about on the rock faces across from the river. What amazing beings; powerful, well balanced and just plain beautiful. We watched through the binoculars as they scampered up and over loose rock effortlessly. The day was overcast and the low hanging clouds decorated the landscape like trimmings on a Christmas tree. It was quiet and peaceful and this was very much acknowledged and appreciated by us.

On our way out of Montana we spent a night by Flathead Lake in Bigfork at a state park called Wayfarer's. We, of course, sampled the beer from the local Flathead Lake Brewing Co. and had one fancy cocktail at the Whistling Andy Distillery. Our stay was brief but pleasant and after a night, we continued south to visit the National Bison Range. Again, most of the roads were closed but we ventured on the Prairie drive to see several deer and a handful of burly bison. From this point we discussed our options of continuing on to see Yellowstone and Grand Teton or heading west. We decided that we wouldn't be able to give these parks enough time with the couple short weeks we have left so we opted to start heading west to cover the Washington National Parks. We're bummed but know that we will absolutely be back this way to explore these lands!