Best of the Rockies Trek: Glacier National Park

We drove from Sun Canyon to Glacier today. First stop was of course the VC, then as the weather wasn't too brilliant, we went to our campsite, and built up the kitchen tarp, to have lunch under. At the campsite entrance was a sign saying "People have been maimed and killed by bears in this campsite". Kind of scary, but who cares! The site was beautiful.

After lunch we all went hiking in the rain up to Redrock Falls. Stopping first at the campsite store to get something waterproof for Audrey. In the end most got Ponchos like mine (Euro Disney thank you!) We met a guy called Josh, who joined us on our hike. The falls were beautiful even though we were hiking in a shower.

This is the bear In the evening we all sat under the kitchen tarp waiting for dinner, when I spotted a bear, just a mere 20m from us, with a river separating us from him. Wow, that was something else! I told everyone, when I left Germany, that I wanted to see a bear, but I didn't expect to, not for really real. I am glad that water was between us though. (I have since found out, that if that bear had been hungry that water would not have stopped him!) This brown smudge is honestly the bear!
That was the beginning of another drinking/party night. We certainly had a lot of cans to clear away when it came to packing everything in the van!

The weather today was terrible. When we got up, it was chucking it down, UGH!! Well, we eventually crawled out of the tents and then went over to the coffee shop. Where they wouldn't serve us, cause of a power cut. So we just hang around there for a couple of hours, until the power came back, by which time breakfast was no longer necessary, so we had lunch (Pizza)!

After lunch we started a hike in the pouring rain and I mean pouring, the kind you don't normally venture out into unless absolutely necessary! Well, I hiked with Mike and we were joined by Linda and Gillian, who were left behind by the speedy hikers! We had to cross quite a few rivers, on the way up (they are not normally rivers, most of them!) Once the trail itself started to become a river and the wind started getting up, I wanted to go back, but luckily I wasn't the only one. Although we were originally undecided, Gillian swung us, when she said that they'd rescued people off of mountains in this kind of weather and told them they were stupid!

So we turned and headed back down. The rivers were by now much higher with all the rain, and our shoes were slowly but surely being saturated.

By the time we were back down, we were all soaked from the waist down. We spotted the laundry place and went there to dry our soaking clothes. But unfortunately the shoes wouldn't go in. So after sitting around in the lobby for a couple of hours, drying the shoes with newspaper. I went to the "restrooms" and held mine under the hand dryer, which helped quite a bit. So much so, that I even put them on again.

The weather did actually clear up a bit for the evening, so we were able to sit around the campfire, where Christian dried his shoes. Most of us had quite an early night, after all the partying the night before. Frank and Mike were the last to go as they were joined by Josh, who wanted a chat! According to Frank and Mike he is quite a chatter!