Leaving Glacier National Park Area for Washington

It has become a habit to journal when we leave an area. It puts a wrap on what we have experienced. Today we leave the Glacier National Park area. The temperatures her have been ideal. Temps have been about 75 to 85 in the day and 50 at night. This is great sleeping weather. As I write, it is 44 degrees at 6 AM. Our MH has two rooftop air conditioners that also work as heat pumps. The heat pumps are efficient down to 40 degrees and then the electronics automatically switch to the LP gas furnaces. We have two of those also. Because it is 44 degrees the heat pumps are running constantly now. The heat pumps are efficient in that they operate off the electricity that the campground (or our generator) provides. There is no additional charge for the campground electricity so we get to heat for free. Other than cooking with the stove top and using our gas grill (which I plumbed into the coach tank) we use very little LP gas. We left home June third and a few weeks ago I filled the LP tank and had only used 8 gallons. I believe it is about a 30 – 35 gallon tank. I probably won’t have to fill it again till we get home in the spring.

Here are a few more things about the area that interested us. There is a town named “Hungry Horse” down the road a few miles. In the winter of 1900 – 1901 there were two freight horses named Tex and Jerry that wandered away from their sleigh and when they were finally found, they were so weak they had to be fed and nurtured before they could be led back to civilization. Hence the name of a mountain, creek, lake, town and area are named Hungry Horse.

The Hungry Horse clearing ball (see picture above) weighs 4.5 tons and was pulled with two tractors using cables to clear land. The reason for the ball is that it allowed the cables to maintain a height above the stumps and still kept the cables low enough that they pulled down trees. This was much faster and more efficient than cutting all the small trees. It was used in 1950 to clear 6,207 acres for the Hungry Horse reservoir.

We went hiking again yesterday but as usual we came to some fresh bear droppings. This makes Kim want to turn back. The local people caution us travelers about the dangers of bears. The two big dangers are startling the bear or finding a mother with cubs. They have a newspaper article on the counter of our campground that tells about a father and 19 year old daughter that got attacked. They walked around a turn on a trail and walked between a mother bear and her two cubs. The mother bear was only protecting her cubs but I guess that doesn’t make the people any less injured. We did purchase a can of pepper spray at the information station at Glacier National Park.

This is an area we would highly recommend to visit and we know we will come back to see again. We would recommend coming earlier in the year as many of the streams and waterfalls are either running low or have stopped altogether. Probably the highlight of the area was the helicopter ride. Well, we’re off to Washington.