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| Lake McDonald from Sperry. |
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| Yumi checking out the scenery. |
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I was up a few minutes before 7:00,
awakened from my sleep by the bright sunlight creeping over
Lincoln Pass. There wouldn't be a thing to see today so
I really wanted to get going by 9 AM, figuring with luck
we could make it down to the lodge by 1 PM. I knew this
day would totally suck for Yumi and just wanted to get it
over with.
The going was slooooooooooow. At
one point I'd managed to piss off Yumi to the point that
she started hiking at a rate comparable to my top speed
for nearly an hour which saved us some trail time. But we
kissed, made up and began hiking at a snails pace once again,
stopping for lunch near the Snyder Lakes trail junction
and feeding small trout bits of potato chips in the stream.
Finally, at 1:25, we came to the
horse stable near the Sun Road, and just like that our back
country experience was over. We decided to stop at Jammer
Joes for some pizza, pasta, salad and lots of cold Pepsi.
Joe's is not my favorite eatery in the park by a long shot
but the pizza buffet did its job. I even snuck into the
mens room for a quick wash up between plates.
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| Yumi's ready to hit the trail. |
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After we paid our bill it was time
to get cleaned up for real and started back over to the
west side of the park. We figured to camp at Apgar again
tonight and had no troubles finding a site there. I was
able to check my voice mail and discovered a message from
cyber pal Pasqualli (Randy) who was originally going to
shuttle us from Kintla to Bowman Lakes before we decided
on a new backpacking route. He was camped at Apgar at the
time of the message, but I figured he'd moved on in the
three or four days that had passed and deleted the message.
Once we got our spacious 3-person
tent erected we were off once again for the north fork and
a shower at the Home Ranch Bottoms. I was looking forward
to seeing my old buddy Greg and maybe pounding down a few
Moose Drools and some chicken wings.
Turns out Greg wasn't going to be
coming in until Thursday, but that didn't stop us from enjoying
the shower lemonade and some more lively conversation with
Dan. Dan turned us onto what would be our activity for tomorrow
when he suggested we hike up to the Cyclone Fire Tower just
down the road. He said it was only about 3 miles up to the
tower and that if a smoker like him could make it up, then
we certainly could. In exchange for that tip and the freezing
of our water bottles in the ranches freezer, we promised
to stop at the merc in Polebridge and pick up whatever cherry
turnovers we could get our hands on and bring 'em back for
him.
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| A clean and refreshed Yumi
at the Home Ranch Store. |
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We decided to eat dinner at the
West Glacier restaurant and made our way down the outside
north fork road which seemed to be deteriorating with each
traverse. Once at Eddies we were accosted by a 30-something
gentleman wearing a Yellowstone shirt who asked if I was
Craig. Well, yeah, I am. He then introduced himself as Dave
Restivo, Glacier's visual guy/photographer. We'd exchanged
a few e-mails over the past few years mostly regarding his
work on the park's e-tours and such.
Dave,his wife and two young sons
were just finishing up their dinner but we still had a little
time to visit while the rest of his family browsed the gift
shop. Dave's a very nice guy and recently won the National
Freeman Tilden Award for excellence in Interpretation
for creating a series of innovative interpretive exhibits
for Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road.
After visiting with Dave I joined
Yumi, stunned that yet another person knew who I was, and
still not realizing it was HER that people noticed first,
at our table. We each decided on the Pork, stuffing, mashed
potatoes and lemonade, topped off with a few scoops of huckleberry
ice cream.
After dinner we decided to do a
little souvenir shopping in Apgar before going back to the
tent. We fired the money cannon once more and outfitted
the family with more Glacier T-shirts and the like. I got
Yumi another Glacier coffee mug bringing her up to 4 total
and a pair of moose earrings.
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| Dorf and Dave. That is not
my sippy cup. |
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We got back to the camp site with
just enough light left for me to clean and organize our
gear for tomorrow day hike while Yumi spent time in the
tent stretching her aching muscles.
Looking back, the day had been very
good but for the little dust up Yumi and I had coming down
from Sperry. Still, my wife did a great job of sucking it
up and completing the 20 miles on a very sore leg.
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