Day 3 route map -- 53 miles

Many Glacier Lodge

Many Glacier Lodge is another of the classic park lodges in Glacier -- beautiful chalet-like building, great-looking lobby, spectacularly situated with equally spectacular views. The rooms were the pits, and the "service" was not much better. The food in the restaurant the evening before was barely edible; it was the only evening on the trip that we ate in the lodge, and that was because there were no alternatives within a reasonable distance. Well, this trip was not meant to be a culinary delight.
Here's another view of Many Glacier Lodge

But did I mention the views? They were just amazing.

Chief Mountain Overlook

At the crack of dawn we could see our leaders packing up the van and preparing for today's picnic lunch. No one could say they didn't work hard. We left early for our day's ride which would take us all the way across the border to Canada's Waterton Park. We rode through Babb and onto the turn-off to Chief Mountain Overlook, a climb of four miles. From the top we had a great view of Chief Mountain, a spectacular 9000 ft monolith that towered over the surrounding plains. The mountain is a sacred place to the native Indians. Here is the standard snapshot of the two of us in our cycling gear in front of the view. It had been a long climb, so we spent some time hanging around the van -- here's a typical scene (that's one of our leaders, Carrie, on the right, who was driving the van that day, and next to her in the red jacket (back to us) is Jenn, our other leader).

On the Road to Canada

After Chief Mountain, there was a great long swooping downhill followed by miles and miles of rolling terrain. As mentioned earlier, one of the leaders was never far from us most of the time -- they weren't going to lose us again! And here's proof! (That's Jenn behind Rona.) The scenery continued to be awe-inspiring the entire day. Finally we passed through US Customs and entered Canada. Shortly after this we stopped for our classic Backroads picnic lunch at the Belly River Campground. More rolling terrain, after which we were rewarded with this incredible panorama of Waterton Lakes Park from an overlook off the road:

Waterton Park Panorama

Following this was one of the world's best downhills -- four miles of arrow-straight steep road with barely any traffic. Let go of the brakes and fly -- I think we went almost 50 mph down that hill. Of course the joy was tarnished by the realization that we would have to climb back UP that hill in two days time when we left Waterton Park and returned to Montana.

Bears!

On the final leg of the day's journey we noticed a large number of cars pulled over to both sides of the road, which could only mean one thing -- BEARS. When a bear is spotted, everyone tries to get a photo of these elusive creatures (not so elusive if you're camping and leave any food out). The week before there had been a freak snowstorm (yes, it was August) so the bears thought that winter was coming and were all trying to stuff themselves with as many berries and other bits as possible to prepare for that season. As a result they got alot closer to the road more often than they normally would in search of food. This is the juvenile Black Bear that we spotted that day. We never saw a Grizzly on the trip, the other more famous (and dangerous) species of bear that Glacier/ Waterton is home to. Here's another view of the little fellow.

Prince of Wales Hotel

Around the next bend came our first view of the Prince of Wales Hotel, which was to be our home for the next two nights as we had a "rest" day in Waterton Park. Another of the "Grand" park lodges, this was clearly the most spectacularly situated on the very windy end of Waterton Lake (it has the distinction of being the "most photographed hotel in the world") as well as actually not that bad a hotel (as Glacier Park logdges go). Here's a closer view of the hotel.We had a particularly nice corner room with a spectacular view of the two lakes surrounding the hotel. It was another spectacular lobby, with its best feature actually being the view.

View from the lobby down the lake.

You could never get tired of that sight! However, the panoramic view from our room was without compare:

Panoramic view from our room.

As beautiful as the hotel was, the food was still not up to snuff and Backroads took us into Waterton Township, a 10 minute walk away, for a lovely dinner. The next day was to be our day off to do other things, and there were several options discussed for a variety of hikes in the area, the most popular appeared to be a boat trip back into the US, followed by a short hike from there into the wilderness. There were other more challenging hiking options that Mark seemed to favor, like the walk to Crypt Lake, supposedly beautiful but with lots of "exposure." We would see...

Day 4 -- Waterton Park -- a Boatride to Montana and 15 Minutes of Fame

Day 4 map

Goat Haunt

Mark's injuring his big toe in a fall off the bed (don't ask) saved me from having to do the Crypt Lake walk, so we decided to go with most of the group on the boat ride back to Goat Haunt, Montana for an easy walk to Kootenai Falls. Unfortunately the weather clouded in a bit, but the scenery was still beautiful. We passed the US-Canada border, a line in the trees that you could actually see! Memorably, people from the Travel Channel were also on the boat filming for a special that would appear on TV the next spring called "The Secrets of Glacier Park." We all had to sign releases in case we appeared in the film.

Click here for a slide show of the boat trip to Goat Haunt.

Kootenai Lake

When we arrived there was a short talk by one of the guides and then we headed off to Kootenai Lake, supposedly to see some moose. It was about an hour's easy walk (once Mark dodged the US Customs person who was asking to see US Passports) through a mosquito-infested forest to get to the lake, which, while very nice, was also infested with mosquitos. We DID see some moose however, and some other interesting wildlife. We ate our lunches while attempting to dodge the hungry insects. Mark became very popular because he had some DEET with him. Still, it was a nice change of pace for the day.

Click here for a slide show of the walk to Kootenai Lake.

15 Minutes of Fame

Late in the afternoon when we all returned the group met in the hotel bar for a drink to exchange stories of our adventures of the day. The Travel Channel people who had been on the boat trip showed up in the bar, looking for two people to "act out" having High Tea, one of the specialities of the hotel, in the lobby for their film. Mark and I were picked out of the group to do this (and they didn't even know we were a couple), and so we were whisked off for what we thought would be a 10 minute exercise. NINETY minutes later, after seemingly a thousand takes and a thousand cups of tea, we were done. Instead of the normal ordinary mugs used for High Tea, the hotel had decided to use some fancy Spode china cups out of the gift shop for the video; problem was, there was only one set, so the cups had to be washed and dried every time they had to do another take. It was a tremendously enlightening experience in how films were made, and was really alot of fun. The program aired on the Travel Channel in March 2003, and THERE WE WERE -- but out of the 90 minutes of film, we were on the screen for a total of 10 seconds (if that). So much for 15 minutes of fame. The photo on the left is of us during the filming, and you can see the film crew around us. Click here for another more "official" photo of us during the shoot.

This was all followed by an excellent dinner at a great restaurant in Waterton Townsite, complements of Backroads (as payback for leaving us up at Logan Pass for five hours); the film crew from the Travel Channel also was at the same restaurant,and they sent over a bottle of wine for our efforts. And so ended our "day off" in Waterton.