Many Glacier

We took our time getting up… showered, dressed and packed… then down 6 floors to check out… we went into the Village of Waterton for coffee and a muffin… then headed out of the park slowly… detouring north a bit to visit the park’s bison paddock… 

Then south back towards the US and Many Glaciers… We had to clear imigration again... this time a US officer asking the 20 silly questions... and into the park again, thought a different entrance station, showing the magic card again... It’s a short distance from the park entrance to Many Glacier Hotel, and just a bit further to the end of the road.   Many Glacier Hotel is a huge grand park hotel… Said to be the largest park hotel… this one has a Swiss theme… for this is the “American Alps”… At East Glacier, the bell hops were in argyle and knickers… at the Prince of Wales the staff was in kilts… or at least with a sash in the “Royal Stewart” tartan… Here they are in Lederhosen… Tina asks, as a joke, what the theme at Lake McDonald might be… we are told they don’t have a theme…

Coming into Many Glacier we spotted a big horn sheep running along the cliff wall… Later I saw a bear (either a bear or a brown rock rolling uphill)…  The animals are mostly far away, and hard to spot.

We hiked around the lake… it was about 2.6 miles… very flat... T decided hiking wasn’t her preferred activity…  I might have known that… Back to the hotel for lunch, followed by sitting in the lobby… it’s a spectacular lobby and tried the internet with little success… I took the ranger led tour of the building… I am not sure I would agree with all the information provided on the tour (in reality I am sure I don’t agree with some of the information provided, but we walked around and he passed our laminated photographs of the building through the years)  Tina read…  The internet continued to not work (this is not exactly unexpected… it’s a satellite connection, and lots of people were trying to get on, upload large photos and download Netflix… I expect better luck very early in the am…)  I note that at the Prince of Wales Hotel they don’t even try to offer internet… here they do it, but very badly…

A large Mennonite group explored the hotel… one asked the bell man what he did… the bell man said “I help people get their bags to their rooms” the Mennonite man said “we are not rooming, we are just looking around…” It was a meeting of two cultures in a wonderful way.

T and I went out again… in the Jeep to explore and look for animals… We would stop and search the cliffs for animals… We could see a sheep high on one cliff wall… there were likely three sheep higher on the other (alternately there were three white rocks for rocks and animals look very much alike from a mile away.)

Then the storm came… we heard what seemed to be thunder… to the south west the clouds were dark… a flash confirmed that the noises were thunder, then we watch the wall of rain work its way across the valley…  40 minutes later it started to clear… and hour later there were few clouds to be seen… We drove through the camp site to see how people were dealing with the rain… most camp sites were empty (of people)… a few had awnings up and were making a go of it… others were hiding in their RV’s… 

Meanwhile all the hotel guests, most of the campers, a number of day visitors and some of the off duty staff gathered in the lobby of the hotel, around the fire, downstairs in the great room, and once the rain ended out on the balcony as well.

We are back in the lobby… the internet has improved to intermittent and erratic, the light is fading…  smoke is rising from the camp ground as people rebuild drown fires, the sun is behind the high peaks so we are now in shadow… the light will linger for a couple more hours.  The view out the lobby windows is spectacular…