{"id":660,"date":"2016-09-23T15:29:57","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T15:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=660"},"modified":"2017-07-24T14:30:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T14:30:42","slug":"thursday-september-15-on-to-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/09\/23\/thursday-september-15-on-to-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Thursday, September 15 On to Canada!"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY: <\/strong>We had a great all-U-can-eat breakfast at the Glacier Park Lodge and shared a table with Hotshot and Freebird, who are both superkind and wonderful young people.\u00a0 We told them of our plan to just roadwalk to the Canada end of the CDT.\u00a0 It will save us a lot of time, and bad weather is due in a couple of days.\u00a0 Also, no hassles with getting campsite permits.\u00a0 They thought we were being very sensible!<\/p>\n

Then it was off to the post office to send home our trail food box, since now we don’t need it.\u00a0 Turned out the PO\u00a0had already sent it home–they only hold a box for 15 days.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0\u00a0 What could have been a serious problem (no box) ended up being “no problema.”<\/p>\n

By 11:15, we were walking out of East Glacier, and did 19 miles by 7 pm.\u00a0 There were gorgeous views all along the way–the road had lots of pullouts for cars to stop and look, too.\u00a0 The Glacier Park mountains are just magnificent–huge and steep, with deep valleys, and snow still clinging to them from the last storm.\u00a0 The fall foliage is more beautiful every day.<\/p>\n

We camped tonight in a meadow off the highway.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 It was cold last night, but not as cold as up in the Bobs.\u00a0 Our campsite behind the motel was fine–far enough away from the road that cars going by didn’t bother us at all.\u00a0 We “slept in” till 6:30ish, then brave Fixit went across the street to where there are showers, and even though his only “towel” is a bandana, he took a shower anyway.\u00a0 Brrrrr!\u00a0\u00a0 If it’s this cold, I need a real towel!\u00a0 So I didn’t join him.<\/p>\n

Then we walked over to the Glacier Park Lodge–we had heard glowing tales of their great AYCE buffet breakfast, and we were not disappointed!\u00a0 We ended up sharing a table with Hotshot and Freebird, who are supernice.\u00a0 They met on the CDT, and I think they rather like each other!\u00a0 They are both hardworking, kind young people, and we wish them well.\u00a0 All of us ate several platefuls of food.\u00a0 I’m not sure the buffet people make any money off of thruhikers.<\/p>\n

Then we went over to the post office to tell them to send our resupply box home, only to discover that they already did!\u00a0 They are one of those post offices that goes “by the book”: they will only hold a box for 14 days, and on Day 15, they send it home.\u00a0 Other P.O.’s on the trail are much more understanding, and will hold a box for a long time.\u00a0 Another CDT hiker, who is planning to hike the trail through Glacier, also came in to get his box, and was told the same thing.\u00a0 So now he is faced with finding a town source of food for 5 days of hiking.\u00a0 Bummer for him, but no problema for us.\u00a0 We are so glad we had decided to finish by roadwalking, or right now it would be really stressful.\u00a0 Not only would we need to organize permits, but find 5 days worth of food.\u00a0 Argh.<\/p>\n

All I had to do was get enough food for our “first leg”, which is 32 miles to the village of St. Mary’s.\u00a0 And we stopped by the Amtrak station to find out about getting tickets for the train ride home.\u00a0 Looks like that will be “no problema” either.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 Thank you, Lord!<\/p>\n

Then we went back to our “camp” and went through our packs, eliminating everything we don’t need anymore, reloaded, and were on our way by 11:15 am.\u00a0 Hotshot and Freebird spotted us as we set out, and cheered for us!\u00a0 That was very heartening!\u00a0 According to the latest weather reports, looks like we will have 2 days of clear weather, then it’s rain & snow. \u00a0 So even though we are roadwalking, we will still be racing the storm.<\/p>\n

As we explained to Hotshot and Freebird, we have 3 reasons for choosing a roadwalk instead of the trail.\u00a0 1) To save TIME–we really need to be home, so we can get the Awana Club up ‘n running.\u00a0 2) The weather report is not good\u00a0\u00a0 3) The hassle of getting permits.<\/p>\n

So we headed UP Highway 49, out of East Glacier.\u00a0 It’s 12 miles of\u00a0 narrow and windy road, and we had to jump over to the shoulder when cars came by.\u00a0 Then it was Highway 89, which was broader and had a better shoulder to walk on.<\/p>\n

Both highways had spectacular views, and plenty of pullouts where cars could stop, too, and admire the scenery.\u00a0 To the west, the view was Glacier NP, with its dramatic steep mountains and valleys, still decorated with snow from the last storm.\u00a0 There were lakes, too.\u00a0 To the east, were rolling, brown, relatively flat high prairies. What a contrast!\u00a0 And everywhere, we saw golden aspen trees and the red autumn leaves of huckleberries.\u00a0 It was beautiful.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as we walked along, there were clouds building up into a “thunderstorm configuration” and starting to rumble.\u00a0 We could see rain falling, off to the east, and best of all, a RAINBOW.\u00a0 I looked at that rainbow and remembered the rainbow we saw in Phoenix AZ back in April, on the day we started walking to the bus station to go to Lordsburg and the start of the CDT.\u00a0 And I remembered God’s promise to me when I was in such despair in the snow before Pagosa Springs.\u00a0 He said, “You WILL make it to Canada, and I will be with you.”\u00a0 In the Bible, the rainbow is God’s sign that He would keep His promise that there would never be another Flood, but when I see a rainbow, I remember a song our daughter made up when she was only 3 years old:\u00a0 “Rainbow, rainbow in the sky, shining, shining way up high–Rainbow, rainbow, I see you–you say God’s promise is true.”\u00a0 So I was hiking along the highway, singing that to myself and rejoicing that we were almost to Canada, and God had taken care of us every step of the way.<\/p>\n

I also learned something else in that long roadwalk–how to pass hikers when you are driving in a car.\u00a0 If you see hikers on the road shoulder, and you have a clear view of the road up ahead, and can safely do it, move over to the other lane as you go by the hikers, and DON’T SLOW DOWN!\u00a0 When cars slow way down to pass us, it just prolongs the agony of the moment.\u00a0 It’s far better to move way over (if you can do so safely) and whiz past quickly.<\/p>\n

We managed 7 miles more before 7:00 pm.\u00a0 At that point, we found a dirt road off to the side that did NOT have a “No Trespassing” sign and walked up it till we were away from the highway and camped in a meadow on nice, soft grass.\u00a0 That’s going to be very nice to sleep on, but the downside of meadows is the dew\/frost at night.\u00a0 We’ll see.\u00a0 And we only have only a bit over 40 more miles to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY: We had a great all-U-can-eat breakfast at the Glacier Park Lodge and shared a table with Hotshot and Freebird, who are both superkind and wonderful young people.\u00a0 We told them of our plan to just roadwalk to the Canada end of the CDT.\u00a0 It will save us a lot of time, and bad weather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}