The next day we had made plans to head up to the Many Glacier campsites, one of the best areas in the park for seeing wildlife. We had to leave early because this is also one of the first campsites to fill, often already full by 9am. We get there a bit before 9 and quickly choose a site. Coming out of the car we hear a familiar voice and are surprised to see Ni who we had met at the Rising Sun campground, who just happened to be in the site right next door! So Elisabeth immediately runs off to go play with Anda while we set up camp. This is one of the nicest areas of the park since it is a bit off the beaten path making it quite peaceful and there are a lot of the hikes that leave directly from the campsite. We take one of the trails known as the Swiftcurrent pass trail which we planned to take up to the Red Rock Falls. We set out on the trail which had thick forests on either side.
We get about a mile into the trail and Antoine turns his head and sees a grizzly cub about 15 feet from us in the forest. Well this is probably the most dangerous scenario in the national parks because we had no idea where the mother bear was, but she is never very far. So we didn’t hesitate or even take a moment to snap a picture, we quietly and quickly u-turned and headed back in the other direction. We let everyone else on the trail know that there was a baby cub not too far off the trail and to be careful. If the mother bear feels like you are too close then she can attack in a matter of seconds. At the campground we let the ranger know before returning to our campsite. We took the time to eat lunch wait awhile before heading back on the trail, hoping that by then the cub would no longer be so close. Our second try we made it out to Red Rock Falls, meeting a French family from Alsace along the way. They were crossing the whole country, from New York to Los Angeles over 10 weeks. We chatted the whole way down the trail and exchanged blog sites (On espere que vos vacances se passent toujours bien!) We headed back to camp when we started to see storm clouds coming in the distance. On the way back we saw a whole group of people coming towards us. It turns out they had come across a mumma bear with her three cubs. We all bunched together on the trail and watched as all four bears crossed the trail in front of us. It was very cool!
On getting back to our campsite we chatted with our neighbors before heading off to a ranger program that lets you look through telescopes to see animals on the hillside. We hung out there until it started raining and decided to go to the pizzeria next door since the rain was not letting up. We heard this enormously loud clap of thunder that we later found out was that lighting had struck a tree dangerously close to our tent. Shards from the tree had punctured holes in the other tent … this is why lightning freaks me out!!!
The next day we got up early to do a 10 mile hike out to iceberg lake with Martin in the site next to us. Since the kids played so well together than Ni had graciously volunteered to let Elisabeth stay and play with her and the kids that morning while we did the hike. The hike out was amazing, with awesome views. We saw a moose out in the fields and lots of beautiful wild flowers. But nothing beats the view when we got to iceberg lake. The water was an amazing blue color with giant blocks of ice and snow floating in the clear waters, surrounded by colossal mountain sides. It really gave the impression that we had hiked straight to the north pole!! It was incredible. So we sat down for awhile and had some lunch. I put my foot in but you can imagine how cold the water was. Well of course there is always a daredevil in the crowd…. A guy decided that he wanted to jump in the water. Well I can tell you that just having my foot in there fore a few seconds it was completely numb after… I can’t imagine plunging into this freezing water!! But this is exactly what he did. He walked out onto one of the icebergs and plunged, head and all, into the deep blue waters. I was seriously scared that he was going to go into shock but he came out gasping for breath! Then there were the copycat kids that followed him and a group of 12 year olds, egged on by their father, jumped in the water next. This was just CRAZY!! So anywho, we headed back on the path and it started to be very warm out since it was almost 2:00. A cold beer was a welcome site on arriving at our campsite!
We said our goodbyes to our friends who were headed back up to Canada. The rest of the day we spent bumming around the campsite and went to go see the Many Glacier Lodge which was set on a big beautiful lake, it was awesome!
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