Getting
started this morning was a little more of an involved process. The rental car was due back today and it
comes from East Glacier which, because of road construction, is a good 30 miles
away. So we took both the RV and the car
this morning, parked the RV near the rental agency and continued into Two
Medicine with the car.
Two
medicine is a small area of the park just north of East Glacier. It offers several hiking options and some
boating activities on Two Medicine Lake.
Our
first stop is at Running Eagle Falls. I
tried to capture the colorful stones in the river without a lot of success.
The
water here is like everywhere else, gin clear.
We
arrive at the falls after a short quarter mile level trek along the river.
This
site is actually handicap accessible.
That’s not the norm anywhere around here outside of the visitor centers.
During
the spring runoff, the water falls over the top of the rock that is above these
falls.
I
wanted to see how that water was flowing behind that rock ledge but there was
no way up there. I had to settle for the
view from below.
I'm sure you're tired of that one, so let's move on.
Our
next stop took us to the Two Medicine camp store site where we could find the
trail to the Aster Falls.
The
trail head begins at the Two Medicine boat livery. We head down the trail and wonder what kind
of event spun this tree to the ground.
The
trail to the falls was relatively flat most of the way and went through large
meadow areas.
After
a little more than a mile of that, we arrived at the falls.
Notice
the clarity of the water. It’s almost as
if there is no water below the falls.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to all these falls during the spring runoff. It would be hard to get that timing
right. When we were here July 1st
last year, many areas were still snowed in.
Here’s
Kathy showing perfect cell phone photo form.
Legs together, toes pointed,…
I
snapped a final photo and it was back to the car.
The
vista across Two Medicine Lake shows that we have the smoke haze in the air
again today.
The
sales guy at the gift shop said a week ago you couldn’t even see across the
lake, much less anything beyond it.
The
final hike today was at a place called Appistoki Falls. It was a short, half mile 200 foot climb to
get to the falls site. Once we got near
the falls, the trail looked way too dangerous to me. The path was steep loose stone along a
ledge. There was lots of goat crap on
the trail. This old goat isn’t nearly as
sure footed as they are, so we turned back.
I
snapped a photo near the point we stopped. The falls is behind the top of the pine tree in the middle of the picture.
The
trail follows the ledge of the rock wall to the left. It just wasn’t all that important that I
viewed another waterfall. I’ll Google it
and see what I missed…good enough!
So
that’s a wrap on Glacier National Park.
The fires definitely affected the scenic vistas to some extent every day
but the hikes into the falls were just fine.
We enjoyed our visit.
Tomorrow
we head back into Canada. East of
Calgary, Alberta to Banff National Park.
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