Day 6 - Thursday, August 13

Day 6 started much like Day 5: lunch at Taco John's, this time in Cut Bank, Montana, home of the smallest JCPenney we've ever seen. Looked like it was in an old Dairy Queen building (we should have taken a picture, but we were busy hunting for Taco John's - the last we'd see before crossing into Canada).

After lunch we continued west toward Glacier National Park. Our tripometer hit 2000 miles just east of the park, while we were driving through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation:


The entrance offers a glimpse of how awesome the park is:


Unfortunately, that was one of the best views we got, as the weather was not cooperating. We didn't even see any glaciers (which can be explained in part by the fact that the number of glaciers in the park has decreased from over 100 in the 1900s to under 30 today - with two more being declassified in the near future). We did get a few cool pictures:

We didn't let the weather stop us from taking a walk in the mountains. Here's Lindsay in her full rain gear:

Our hike gave me a reason to carry bear spray for the first time. You can see it tucked into the right pocket of my non-water resistant Levis:

Soaked and freezing, I took a shower at our campground while Lindsay put up our tent by herself (no joke). Here I am posing for a picture that we should probably submit to the REI catalogue:

The next morning, Lindsay told me that she slept great, but I wasn't so lucky. Lindsay thought it rained that night, but I'm pretty sure the drops that were falling on our tent were slobber from the towering grizzly waiting outside to devour us. The bear wasn't there when we unzipped the tent in the morning, so it must have been spooked by the sound of my weeping and the smell of my tears.

Great Falls to Glacier National Park - 175 miles

P.S. We're off to Denali National Park for the weekend, so we'll be back with another post early next week.