The great Montana road trip

Howdy, a few weeks ago Steph and I got her moved up and settled into her new surroundings in Billings, MT. My boss was gracious enough to give me some time off so that it wouldn't be a up to Billings and back again kind of a trip. So being that this was the last time we had together before I went back to Golden we wanted to make the best of it. We were able to spend three days in Glacier Nat. Park and spend some time visiting with Ma & Pa. I was able to squeeze in a little fishing and we did some huckleberrry picking. We came back with a pretty good gob of berries. Anyway, I was a bit of a shutterbug on this trip and snapped off a few pictures. I thought I would share my favorites.

At the Logan pass visitor center there was a mama mt. goat and her baby. Steph and I were a bit peeved at the idiot people pretty much getting on top of the animals to get a picture. The mama goat didn't seem to mind too much but the poor baby was stressed out. You could tell that the poor thing wanted to stay close to mom but kept running away when people were breathing on the mother. Luckily a ranger came by and told people to get back. Anyway, I wanted a picture but didn't want to be a jerk. Steph said "how about we go into the visitor center and take a picture through the glass?" I thought "I'll have to turn off the flash and there will not be enough light, but what the hey I'll give it a shot." It actually worked!

Here is a picture taken from the tour bus on Going to the Sun road. They had a free shuttle, which was nice because we could let someone else do the driving and we could look out the window. The downside was that it ate up most of the day and we spent a lot of time waiting for the next bus, because it not just one bus east and one bus west. It was pretty complicated in that you had to really be on the ball and know which bus to take at which time or you could be stranded on the other end of the park.

Some cool water falls, the St. Mary Falls if I remember correctly.

Here is a picture taken from the Many Glacier visitor center.

Here is a picture of Trick Falls, named so because it looks like water is just randomly shooting out of a rock wall. Pretty cool.

This is a gnarled tree in the area Dad has dubbed the "Twisted Forest." I have no idea what is up with trees in this area. I can only imagine that it is either some localized parasite or some genetic mutation that has been passed on to seedlings and for what ever reason the seeds have not gone to far from the parent tree. Weird

Me catching a monster rainbow trout. By "monster" I mean a seven incher. Hey, it's better than being skunked!

Steph picking huckleberries. She makes a good huckleberry picking companion. She doesn't eat stuff that hasn't been rinsed off. Probably a good idea to wash food first but I have no issues with eating berries right off the bush. So vis a vis, I'm not a good huckleberry picking companion because I will return to the truck with a purple lipped grin.