Tuesday, September 25, 2007
And here is the second installment of Matt's writing about our family vacation in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks and the Pothole State Park in Washington:
I figured our first venture into the backwoods with the kids should be
unchallenging. I downloaded topographical maps and trail guides and phoned some of the most remote ranger stations in America trying to figure out exactly where we should hike, and finally settled on a glacier-scoured finger lake in Glacier National Park called Upper Quartz Lake. The hike covered three miles, and I figured we¡¯d stay there for two days, maybe explore a little, just kind of hang out in the wilderness. ¡°How far is three miles?¡± Paola wanted to know. I told her five kilometers. ¡°Five kilometers?¡± she asked again. ¡°Is that too much for Alice?¡± ¡°Too much? It¡¯s nothing! We should be walking fifteen in a day! Twenty! For 4-5 days! When I was a kid the priest would never let u
s take strolls like this.¡± So it was Paola who turned out to be the real taskmaster of the expedition. We blew past Upper Quartz Lake to Lower Quartz Lake, and she practically made me run along the 10-mile trail to Iceberg Lake. In following days we took the kids over Triple Divide Pass, where freshwater icebergs bob around in limpid ponds even in August and where the continental divide separates to the north as well, so that a third hypothetical raindrop landing at our feet would travel down the St. Lawrence River and empty into the Northern Atlantic. We hiked out to 
Grebe Lake in Yellowstone, and then on to Observation Point, and after we evaded the bison on our path and returned to our Grebe Lake campsite it was pouring rain and the five of us, including my dad, had to eat our plates of spaghetti crouched inside a three-man tent. It¡¯s said that Albert Reynolds, the famous 19th-Century rambling ranger of Glacier, could ¡°walk a horse to death,¡± but Paola would win his title. (Fun camping pun: What¡¯s it like eating during a thunderstorm? In-tents.) During our forced marches, we saw bison, grizzly bears (never closer than 100 meters, a
lthough my dad, hiking with a different group, once had to yield the trail to a sow grizzly and two cubs coming in the other direction), wild swans, woodpeckers, a zippy little bird called the cedar waxwing, longhorn sheep, mountain goats, grouse, coyote and mule deer, to name a few. Dad saw a moose. The only animal we wanted to see but didn¡¯t were wolves. We asked a ranger where we had to hike to see them and he said they¡¯re too shy, they won¡¯t come out when we¡¯re around. I hoped we¡¯d at least hear them howling at night but we never did. I can say without reservation that the kids had a great time. Yellowstone allowed campfires even though there 
were 257 wildfires burning in and around the park, so Roy got to build a hearty blaze every night. He also wanted to pee on Triple Divide Pass to see if he could get his urine running in three directions. His greatest glory came when he somehow convinced Alice to bury a lump of coal that she¡¯d found in precisely the place where he¡¯d buried a turd. Alice made friends easily. We¡¯d generally pitch our tent in big campsites with lots of cars around until we got our bearings, then head into more remote areas. While at the Fish Creek Campsite in Glacier, Alice spent a few days palling around with a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska. The girl said she attended a school called Norris that is ¡°kind of famous.¡± Judging from the size of her family¡¯s RV, I figured Norris was some elite preparatory academy, the Andover of cornhuskers. Then she said it was famous because it was destroyed by a tornado. ¡°A lot of people know that,¡± she said. Unfortunately, Norris was destroyed during the summer holiday, but anyway the students got extra days off during the next school year, not because of the tornado but because other schools get more snow days than Norris and that¡¯s not fair. It all made sense to Alice, who knows about tornados from The Wizard of Oz.
I figured our first venture into the backwoods with the kids should be
unchallenging. I downloaded topographical maps and trail guides and phoned some of the most remote ranger stations in America trying to figure out exactly where we should hike, and finally settled on a glacier-scoured finger lake in Glacier National Park called Upper Quartz Lake. The hike covered three miles, and I figured we¡¯d stay there for two days, maybe explore a little, just kind of hang out in the wilderness. ¡°How far is three miles?¡± Paola wanted to know. I told her five kilometers. ¡°Five kilometers?¡± she asked again. ¡°Is that too much for Alice?¡± ¡°Too much? It¡¯s nothing! We should be walking fifteen in a day! Twenty! For 4-5 days! When I was a kid the priest would never let u
s take strolls like this.¡± So it was Paola who turned out to be the real taskmaster of the expedition. We blew past Upper Quartz Lake to Lower Quartz Lake, and she practically made me run along the 10-mile trail to Iceberg Lake. In following days we took the kids over Triple Divide Pass, where freshwater icebergs bob around in limpid ponds even in August and where the continental divide separates to the north as well, so that a third hypothetical raindrop landing at our feet would travel down the St. Lawrence River and empty into the Northern Atlantic. We hiked out to 
Grebe Lake in Yellowstone, and then on to Observation Point, and after we evaded the bison on our path and returned to our Grebe Lake campsite it was pouring rain and the five of us, including my dad, had to eat our plates of spaghetti crouched inside a three-man tent. It¡¯s said that Albert Reynolds, the famous 19th-Century rambling ranger of Glacier, could ¡°walk a horse to death,¡± but Paola would win his title. (Fun camping pun: What¡¯s it like eating during a thunderstorm? In-tents.) During our forced marches, we saw bison, grizzly bears (never closer than 100 meters, a
lthough my dad, hiking with a different group, once had to yield the trail to a sow grizzly and two cubs coming in the other direction), wild swans, woodpeckers, a zippy little bird called the cedar waxwing, longhorn sheep, mountain goats, grouse, coyote and mule deer, to name a few. Dad saw a moose. The only animal we wanted to see but didn¡¯t were wolves. We asked a ranger where we had to hike to see them and he said they¡¯re too shy, they won¡¯t come out when we¡¯re around. I hoped we¡¯d at least hear them howling at night but we never did. I can say without reservation that the kids had a great time. Yellowstone allowed campfires even though there 
were 257 wildfires burning in and around the park, so Roy got to build a hearty blaze every night. He also wanted to pee on Triple Divide Pass to see if he could get his urine running in three directions. His greatest glory came when he somehow convinced Alice to bury a lump of coal that she¡¯d found in precisely the place where he¡¯d buried a turd. Alice made friends easily. We¡¯d generally pitch our tent in big campsites with lots of cars around until we got our bearings, then head into more remote areas. While at the Fish Creek Campsite in Glacier, Alice spent a few days palling around with a girl from Lincoln, Nebraska. The girl said she attended a school called Norris that is ¡°kind of famous.¡± Judging from the size of her family¡¯s RV, I figured Norris was some elite preparatory academy, the Andover of cornhuskers. Then she said it was famous because it was destroyed by a tornado. ¡°A lot of people know that,¡± she said. Unfortunately, Norris was destroyed during the summer holiday, but anyway the students got extra days off during the next school year, not because of the tornado but because other schools get more snow days than Norris and that¡¯s not fair. It all made sense to Alice, who knows about tornados from The Wizard of Oz.