2001 West -- September 4 through September 15, Part 1

The objective of this trip was to go to Glacier National Park, and touch the last three states I hadn't been to in the continental US. 12 days, 5400 miles.

My 2001 West trip was a bittersweet affair. Glacier National Park was spectacular, even with the snow that prevented us from getting to Logans Pass our first full day. I drove my friend nuts by going to The Whitman Mission, which had some significance back on the Oregon Trail a couple of hundred years ago. Three more states, and I'd have been in all 48 mainland States. I completed my quest in Jackpot, Nevada, where I lost $40 to the slots and poker machines. That was September 10, 2001.

From then on, the trip took on a surreal quality to it. We had no choice but continue on our trip. We were 1600 miles from home, and had reservations in West Yellowstone that night. There was no one on the road. That could have been because we were in the middle of nowhere, but when we got to Jackson, Wyoming, the visitors center was closed, and the restaurant we grabbed a burger at had the news on the radio instead of music.

On 9/11/2001, I was on Gooddales Cutoff, almost 100 years after Horatio Nelson Jackson took this route on his trip across the country. I stood on a black plain, a colorless landscape as far as the eye can see. I stood in front of EBR-1, a technological acheivement that would see the first peaceful use of nuclear power. I saw my first moose in the wild that didn't have a squirrel attached to it. And the park rangers wrote down license plate numbers as we left Yellowstone...

Minnesota

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North Dakota

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1996 2006

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

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Makoshika State Park, Montana

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Montana

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Blackfeet Reservation / US-2

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I've always described Glacier National Park as one of those parks you really have to want to visit, since it's so far from any major city. Kalispell is the closest, a city of 20,000 that caters to the tourist crowd and farming communities.

This park is also known as the Waterton-Glacier Internation Peace Park World Heritage Site, but personally, I think Canada cheaped out on their portion of the park... :-)

Despite common belief that Glacier is named for the glaciers within the park, it is not. Glacier is named for the work that the last ice age did to the mountains 20 thousand years ago. It's a million acres of ice carved valleys, knife edged mountain peaks, and deep blue, clear lakes.

It was the railroad that primarily made this park, when the Great Northern Railway arrived in 1892, bringing homesteaders, miners and tourists. The creation of the National Park in 1910 is generally credited to George Bird Grinnel, an early explorer of this part of Montana.

We would spend two full days in the park. In 2006, I would spend four and a half hours here. But I was on a different mission then.

Our first full day in Glacier started at the Rangers office, with an ominous warning. It had snowed overnight, and the road to Logans Pass was closed. But that wasn't going to stop us. Well, not until we got to the closed and locked gate across the road.

Nevertheless, it's a magical moment watching it snow over the mountains and glacial valley...

Glacier National Park

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End 2001 West Vacation Part 1
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