A piece of heaven !

This July 4th weekend, I finally fulfilled my dream of visiting Glacier National Park (GNP) in northern Montana. Having visited Yellowstone, Grand Teton & Olympic National Parks over last summer, I arrived at GNP to determine the best national park in lower 48 states. Although I still maintain that Yellowstone & Grand Teton combined constitute the best park in the country, and Olympic is probably the second best, GNP is definitely the most scenic park. At most times the sheer size of the mountains and their proximity leave people overwhelmed and humbled.

Flying into the closest big airport Spokane, WA, I was probably the only brown guy in the entire aircraft. The same trend continued over next 5 days as I literally ran across less than 20 non-white people! Countryside Montana is as conservative as it is pretty, and at
almost every moment I could feel like a stranger lost in a land he shouldn't never have travelled. But once in the park, you come across the friendliest of the campers from all over the country (still white though!). Through my many camping trips at various national
parks I have found out that the visitors are most often old white folks. If the park is easily accessible, one might see a decent influx of asians or indians, but in such an inaccessible park, I wasn't expecting anything different.

Coming back to the park, I went in expecting most of the glaciers and snowpack to have melted away thanks to record heat all over country. But I was pleasantly surprised that the high elevations still locked in cold temperature and enough snowpack. Most sites in GNP are situated along the fabled "Going to the Sun Road", and it is definitely the best drive I have ever encountered in my life. The west side of the road starts at lower elevation skirting lake McDonald, but is soon gains elevation through Logan Pass and offer stunning
unparelled vistas of the continental divide.

The continental divide is like a wall of thin but super steep snow/glacier packed mountains which dissect the park. Numerous waterfalls wash the road and make driving on the narrow roads tricky. The east side of the park is more windy and dry and is dotted with
some beautiful lakes and creeks. The fresh glacial melts give the water a clean green tinge, and give the lake a very refreshing and unique look.

Although the park doesn't boast a wide variety of wildlife, I had the good fortune of having 3 bear sightings. One of them a mere 5 ft away (from inside the car obviously!), but I also had another sighting with the bear about 40 ft away while we were on our foot. Black
bears are normally calm and unperturbed by tourists. I was however, stunned by ability of mountain goats to walk on steep precipes at extremely high elevations. Other forms of wildlife included Moose, Deer & Big Horn Sheeps all adept at walking on snow covered steep
terrains.

Its definitely hard to get back to a normal life post GNP. The concrete jungle of Houston, alongside the ever growing construction dust on the freeway is a far cry from the pristine wilderness of Montana. But ordinary people have ordinary lives.....and so I live on with dreams of travel to my next destination !