Wednesday the 13th of September was scheduled to be our first of two full days at Glacier National Park in Montana. When Tom’s alarm went off at 5:30am, the rotund hike-hater sprung out of bed like his colon had just been examined by Sasquatch. Not only did my photographer want to see a sunrise at 7:06am, but he also wanted to get onto the famous Going-To-The-Sun Road before it became clogged with traffic.
The three of us were in the van and on the road to Glacier National Park by 7:10am – just four minutes after the sun poked its bright face over the eastern horizon. It was a cool morning, and the sky was partly cloudy over Browning. As we headed west during the 30-mile drive to the park’s St. Mary Entrance, my companions and I noticed a heavier-than-usual layer of clouds hovering over and around the mountains. I heard my photographer tell his wife he hoped the morning sun would burn off the clouds, which was likely as rain wasn’t in the morning weather forecast.
At a few minutes before eight o’clock, we were on the Going-to-the-Sun Road after passing the St. Mary Visitor Center – and as luck would have it, there weren’t many other vehicles on the road. During prime sightseeing season, which began on May 26th, visitors must obtain vehicle reservations to enter the park from 6am to 3pm. But the registration requirements ended on September 10th, just three days prior to our visit, and the only thing my companions needed for access to Glacier National Park was Tom’s NPS Senior Lifetime Pass.
The Going-to the Sun Road took us along the north shore of St. Mary Lake until we made it to a vehicle parking area where we had a decent view of Wild Good Island. But just as Tom snapped a few images of the island, the weather system arrived. Strong wind and rain sprinkles made it difficult to enjoy the scenery, and much to our chagrin, the weather grew worse as we headed further west. By the time we made it to the western end of St. Mary Lake, we could barely see the mountain tops and it became obvious the wind and rain wasn’t going to let up any time soon. I thought to myself, “This can’t be Going-to-the Sun Road, we must be on Driving-in-the-Wind-and-Rain Road.”
The moment of truth for our adventure came when Tom attempted to get out of the van to photograph a distant rainbow. I watched as my photographer struggled to open the passenger-side door against the strong wind, and at one point, the door nearly slammed shut on his leg. Once he was finally able to get out and capture the image of the rainbow above the trees and mountains, he returned to the safety of the van with one thing on his mind – “We need to look at Plan B for today, because Plan A really sucks!”
I was stunned – Tom had been planning this trip for the past nine months and this was the day he had penciled-in to drive through the heart of Glacier National Park. Now, because of the wind and rain, my two companions were ready to bale after only an hour stay. They used their phones to check the current weather situation in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, and even though that park was only 50 miles north of our position, their weather app indicated no precipitation whatsoever. At nine o’clock, Plan B was set in motion, and we were headed for the Canadian border.
During my ten-plus years of travel, I’ve visited 43 of the 50 United States, as well as two of the 10 Canadian provinces and its three territories. My first visit to Ontario was on June 20, 2014, while my only visit to New Brunswick came on July 12, 2017. At precisely 9:37am on September 13, 2023, I made it into the province of Alberta with Tom and his wife.
From the border, where we had no issues getting into Canada, Vicki drove the Truckster north into Cardston, Alberta before we headed west towards the national park. It turned out the southwestern corner of Alberta was mostly farmland with grazing cattle everywhere. One thing became very evident during our 30-mile drive from Cardston to the park – the Canadian cattle had an amazing view of the mountains, had they chosen to look up from the grass.
The three of us didn’t know for sure what to expect at Waterton Lakes National Park, except for the fact there were no glaciers in the park. After my companions paid their entry fee because Tom’s NPS pass didn’t cover Canadian National Parks, Vicki drove towards the mountains along the western shore of Lower Waterton Lake. Less than ten minutes later, we arrived at our first stop – the Prince of Wales Hotel. While the sun shone brightly above us in the partly cloudy sky, a 30 mph (or 48.3 kph) constant wind presented problems during our entire visit.
The historic Prince of Wales Hotel opened in July 1927 and was named in honor of, you guessed it, the Prince of Wales – who later became King Edward VIII, until he vacated the British throne after only eleven months because he intended to marry a divorcee.
The Rustic-style seven-story tall, majestically beautiful Prince of Wales Hotel overlooked Upper Waterton Lake and was cozily snuggled in the shadow of Mt. Crandell. The hotel held zero historical significance to me or my photographer, because the Prince of Wales, or Kind Edward VIII, or Duke of Windsor as he was known as after he vacated the throne, never set foot in the building. However, as Tom carried me around the grounds where we had a spectacular view of the building, the water, and the surrounding mountains, it was easy to see why the Prince of Wales Hotel is considered by many to be the crown jewel of Waterton Lakes National Park. Several times during our thirty-minute visit at the hotel, I thought for certain the strong wind would send me flying from my photographer’s hand. At one point, when Tom attempted to place me on the ground with the Upper Waterton Lake behind me, the wind nearly blew me down the rocky hill and into the water below.
When our visit at the Prince of Wales Hotel was finished, Tom wanted to pay a visit to the tiny hamlet of Waterton Park, which was located across Emerald Bay from the hotel. As Vicki pulled the van into a parking area along Waterton Avenue, my photographer mentioned only 158 people resided in the beautiful, lakeside hamlet located within the National Park. But there was another surprise in store for us – Waterton Park featured the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which had an unexpected “shirttail” Presidential connection.
On July 4, 1931, Rotarians from Alberta and Montana met at the Prince of Wales Hotel where they conceived the idea of the Peace Park as a way to celebrate peace and friendship between Canada and the United States. The following year, members of the Canadian Parliament and the U.S. Congress created legislation that established the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which joined the two national parks. President Herbert Hoover, who did not visit the park, said in a statement from the White House: “Dedication of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is a further gesture of the goodwill that has so long blessed our relations with our Canadian neighbors, and I am gratified by the hope and faith that it will forever be an appropriate symbol of permanent peace and friendship.”
Tom gave me the honor, or honour, since we were in Canada, to pose at the entrance to the Peace Park. At first, I wondered why President Hoover never made an appearance to help dedicate the park he had verbally embraced, but he likely was too embroiled in the Great Depression to make many cross-country trips. But that never stopped Franklin Roosevelt. On August 5, 1934, while our nation was still in the middle of the Great Depression, FDR visited Glacier National Park where he traversed the entire Going-to-the-Sun Road before he visited the Two Medicine Chalet along Two Medicine Lake. But for some reason, likely due to time constraints, Roosevelt never made it to Waterton Lakes National Park.
My photographer and I met up with Vicki, who had gone ahead of us because she wanted to stand along the rocky shore of Upper Waterton Lake. The northern two-thirds of the lake was located within the boundary of Alberta, while the southern third was across the border in Montana. When Tom set me down along the edge of the lake, I wondered if any mysterious sea creatures, like Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster, reside in the 260-foot body of water.
We had spent roughly 15 minutes by the lake, and unfortunately, we didn’t see any “monsters” come from the water’s depths nor a Squatch as it walked the rocky shore. While that was disappointing, it paled in comparison to my companions’ meal at Trapper’s Mountain Grill where Tom and Vic spent a lot of money for mediocre food. While my photographer said his bison burger tasted good, he said it was the size of a hockey puck. In my mind, isn’t everything in Canada measured by the size of a hockey puck?
By the time the three of us made the short walk back to the van, the clock read 12:40pm – which meant it was time to head back to Montana for an afternoon tour of the Many Glacier section of Glacier National Park. To help save time, Tom asked his wife to take a more direct route into the States, which we did when we crossed the border at the Chief Mountain Summer Station.
From my position on the back seat of the van, I looked through the passenger-side window and noticed a huge rock formation off in the distance – which turned out to be Chief Mountain. Vicki was making great time on our southernly drive along Chief Mountain Highway when out of nowhere, I heard Tom ask his wife to pull off the road at a scenic lookout. Not only did we have a great view of Chief Mountain, but there was also an artist sitting in his chair with a paint-filled palette and his small, half-finished canvas. The artist, along with his wife, sat near their vehicle at the quiet roadside viewing area while he painted his visual depiction of the nearby rock formation.
It turned out the talented man was Gregory Kintz, who was not only in the process of capturing Chief Mountain on canvas, but he’s also a dyslexia-afflicted scientist who owns 30 patents. During our five-minute visit with Kintz, he stopped painting and proceeded to tell us some local history of Chief Mountain – and let me tell you, Greg brought the sacred site to life for us.
Kintz said the 9,085-foot formation along the Eastern border of Glacier National Park has been a sacred mountain to Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, he said the Blackfoot tribe called it Nínaiistáko and Native Americans from all over North America used the prominence and visibility of the landmark for directional guidance and shelter. He went on to say the mountain has been used for rituals and tribal ceremonies and is considered one of the most sacred spots in all of Montana.
Roughly twenty minutes after we bid farewell to Gregory Kintz, the three of us were headed along the north side of Lake Sherburne, which was technically a reservoir that was created in the early 1900s when the Swiftcurrent Creek was dammed. When we passed through the NPS Many Glacier Entrance Station, I got my first good look at a distant glacier – and it looked awesome, even though the overcast sky made the view less than ideal.
Once we were in the Many Glacier section of the park, we stopped at a couple of scenic vantage points along the way. Even though my photographer has claimed in the past his “hiking days were over”, he ended up making a couple of short, but treacherous, hikes that afternoon. Thankfully for me, the clumsy lummox finally used his hiking sticks, which saved his bacon and my ham more than once. One aspect of Glacier National Park became very evident during our visit to Many Glacier – visitors can see a few decent sites from the comforts of their vehicles at overlooks, but if you want to enjoy the full beauty of the park, people must be willing to hike. Since the hike to get a great view of the Grinnell Glacier was a twelve-mile roundtrip with a steep elevation grade, my photographer and his wife opted to see the glacier from a distance. Not only was it too late in the day to attempt a long hike, but Tom knew the hike to Grinnell Glacier was nearly three times longer than the ‘Hike from Hell’ that nearly killed him a little over a year earlier. Like Clint Eastwood said in his movie ‘Magnum Force’ – “A man’s got to know his limitations.” I looked at my photographer and thought, “Go ahead, make my day!”
We had put in a full day – one that started out with horrible weather. but was salvaged by altering our plans just a bit. After my companions completed the 55-mile drive back to our hotel in Browning, it was nearly five o’clock and time for dinner. But since Tom and Vic had eaten a big meal at Waterton Park in Alberta and weren’t very hungry, they opted to visit the Jackpot Restaurant inside the casino where I watched them polish-off a couple of hot fudge sundaes. I agreed with my photographer when I heard him say, “There’s nothing better than ending a great day with a bowl of ice cream.”
Back in the room, Tom placed me alongside the TV set where I watched him, and his wife, try to find a good show to watch. When my photographer found nothing of interest on the “boob tube”; no Ancient Aliens, nor Bigfoot shows; not one Seinfeld episode; and no Presidential documentaries. Disgusted and tired, Tom shut the lights off and was fast asleep shortly after eight o’clock.
Throughout the night, my thoughts were centered around Chief Mountain. Over and over, I heard Greg Kintz’s voice in my mind – telling us about the sacred site and its importance to Native American tribal culture. We had one full day left during our time near Glacier National Park and I felt compelled to go back to Chief Mountain to witness a sunset. For some strange reason, I had a feeling in my resin gut the Native Americans spirits would make that sunset one I would never forget.
