GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Montana: A Place to Renew Your Spirit by Caroline Arnold at The Intrepid Tourist

52 Places to Go: Week 19

Hidden Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana

Recently, I came upon an article about Glacier National Park promoting it as a place to go to renew your spirit. It brought back thoughts of a memorable family trip to the park in 1961. To get there we drove from our home in Minneapolis across North Dakota and most of Montana, then spent a week camping in the park, sleeping in our umbrella tent and cooking on our camp stove and over the fire. As I still do when I travel, I kept a diary of the trip. My parents saved the diary, and I found it when I was going through some old family photo albums. My entries note both our activities of the day and more mundane issues such as the weather and what we ate for dinner. (In one entry I describe making peach cobbler over the campfire. In another, I tell how I burned all the lamb chops for dinner!)  I have put some excerpts of our daily activities below. Bear in mind that I was seventeen when I wrote them! For information about visiting the park today go to the National Parks website for Glacier at http://www.nps.gov/glac/index.htm. 

 

Glacier National Park 

Excerpts from Caroline’s 1961 Vacation Log
August 5
We entered Glacier at 1:00.  Our campsite is nice, near St. Mary (Rising Sun Campground) and after it was set up we swam at Lost Lake, a beautiful, cool, but refreshing lake at the bottom of a mountain.

August 6
We first went to Sun Point and then walked to Baring Falls.  The walk was so pretty we used up all the film in the cameras! 

Hike to Virginia Falls with Ranger

 August 7
We got up early for a 9:00 hike to Virginia Falls.  Since no one else was there, we got a specially guided tour by the ranger.  The hike didn’t really seem like six miles because he knew so much and made it sound so interesting.  We ate our lunch on a beautiful grassy ledge about half way up the falls, where we were continually sprayed with mist.

August 8
Most of today was spent in the car recuperating from yesterday’s hike. ... We stopped at Avalanche campground and went on a self-guided nature trail and saw a bear.

August 9
The clouds descended and the rain poured forth as I stayed in my tent all morning reading,  ignoring the deluge in hopes that it would desist. [I was reading the Scarlet Letter, which today sounds like rather ambitious summer reading.  Perhaps it inspired my rather ambitious prose.]

August 10
We took a somewhat leisurely hike back to Hidden Lake for lunch, photographing wildflowers along the way.  We saw three ptarmigan, who were so tame that I got within eight feet to take a picture.  By the same rock on the way back Steve and I saw a hoary marmot, but he, not being so friendly, ducked into his hole before we could photograph him. 

August 11
This morning we arose bright and early for our hike along the Garden Wall.  For the first hour and a half it was rather chilly because of being in the shade of the mountain.  Later the valley dropped below us, revealing a spectacular view, at one point all the way to the end of Lake McDonald.  After four and a half hours of easy walking, with the exception of one switchback, we stopped for a picnic lunch within view of the Granite Park chalet. The last three and half miles went surprisingly fast.  After recuperating for an hour at the chalet with a 35 cent piece of pie, we descended to the end of the trail.

August 12
After lunch we decided to go to Waterton Lakes National Park [the Canadian side of Glacier National Park.] After four miles, however, we got a flat tire, out in the middle of nowhere. [As I remember, the only road connecting the parks was rough gravel.]  The trip, when we finally arrived was worth it, for the scenery was beautiful and the Prince of Wales Hotel was just like a castle out of an old English storybook.

I have fond memories of the Glacier trip and remember the park for its spectacular scenery and as a place not overcrowded with tourists.  Several years ago, my brother Tom Scheaffer returned to Glacier and went back to many of the same places we visited in 1961.  One difference now is that the glaciers for which the park is named are rapidly melting due to global warming.  Nevertheless, it is still one of our most beautiful national parks and a perfect place for renewing your spirit at any time of year.

This article first posted at The Intrepid Tourist October 22, 2012.

You can also visit Glacier in Caroline Hatton's report at TIT 9/4/17: A Bad Day at Logan Pass (not really).

All text and photos copyright Caroline Arnold
www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com

MOUNT RUSHMORE: A LASTING LEGACY, Guest Post by Cathy Mayone

52 Places to Go: Week 19

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Ever since my childhood babysitter returned with tales of working at Mount Rushmore one summer, I’ve had a fascination with this iconic National Memorial.  Chances are you won’t have a business trip to the area or have it be “on the way” to another destination given its western-central South Dakota location so it takes some proactive planning to make a visit happen.  We had to go out of our way to make the visit during our recent pandemic, cross country road trip as we drove from Connecticut to Utah, where we spent our 2021 winter months.

We arrived on a cold, late December day, which was favorable for avoiding crowds.  But it also meant there was off season construction and the Presidential Trail that goes part way up the mountain for a closer view was closed due to ice and snow.  Nevertheless, the granite sculpture did not disappoint, and the Visitor Center provided a fascinating overview of the history and process that produced the remarkable feat, completed on October 31, 1941.

The narrative leading up to its debut goes back seventy-four years, when John Gutzon del la Mothe Borglum is born and then goes on to study art in Paris and New York.  In 1885, a New York attorney, Charles Rushmore, goes to the Black Hills (South Dakota won’t be a state until 1889) to inspect mining claims.  According to Travel South Dakota, the story goes that when Charles asks his guide what the mountain is called, he replies, “It’s never had one…till now…we’ll call the damn thing Rushmore.”

 Flash forward 34 years and now South Dakota is old enough to have an historian, Doane Robinson. He approaches Gutzon Borglum, now a well-known sculptor who has been working on Stone Mountain in Georgia, about carving Old West heroes in the Needles, which are granite formations not far from Rushmore.  Borglum, however, has a different vision.  He chooses Mount Rushmore for its size, morning and midday light, and fine-grained granite.  And he proposes the subjects be U.S. presidents to gain federal funding and support.  Borglum abandons his work on Stone Mountain to focus on Mount Rushmore, leaving Sculptor Henry Augustus Lukeman to finish Stone Mountain.

The presidents are chosen for the Memorial based on their significant contribution to the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the country.  George Washington, of course, because he was the nation’s founding father.  Thomas Jefferson not only authored the Declaration of Independence, but he also signed the Louisiana purchase that doubled the size the country, ultimately creating South Dakota and 14 other current states.  Borglum greatly admired Theodore Roosevelt, who helped to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with his negotiations of the Panama Canal and who championed conservation legislation that set aside millions of acres of public land.  Borglum admired Lincoln so much for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery and his dedication to end the Civil War and restore the Union, that he named his son and after him.

While Gutzon Borglum lives to see most of his ultimate life’s accomplishment finished, he sadly dies about 8 months before its completion.  His son James Lincoln, also a sculptor as well as an engineer involved in the project, oversees its completion and dedication.  Granite erodes at roughly 1 inch every 10,000 years which means the Presidents’ noses should last another 2.5 million years and the basic shape of their heads for up to 7 million years.  That is quite a legacy for these sculptors, their workers and the funders and supporters for this inspirational project.

Sources:  National Park Service, Travel South Dakota: 75 Surprising Facts About Mount Rushmore

All text and photos copyright Caroline Arnold at The Intrepid Tourist