Whitefish and Glacier Montana Trip August 2008

Whitefish, Montana and Glacier National Park – August 2008

We spent August 20 – 27 in northwestern Montana at the home of Jack & Carol Verschuur. Early in my academic career, Jack & I struck up a friendship when we were both new faculty at the University of South Dakota. We have kept in touch over the past 25 years and have visited one another in such places as Omaha and Tilden Nebraska, Fargo, North Dakota and New Lynn, New Zealand. A few years ago, Jack and Carol bought a vacation home on Big Mountain in Whitefish Montana.



Oh, not this home – it is on the market for a mere $15,000,000 on Big Mountain, along with many other million dollar homes. Seems the housing bust has hit hard up there.

Here’s their home:




The huckleberries were in fruit and we gathered and ate these sweet berries.




Not very big are they? So it takes a while to pick enough for a pie.





or a crumble



But they are worth the effort. Of course, during the picking process about half are consumed on the spot. Even their dog (whom I’ll call Huckleberry hound got into the spirit.



Yes, Stormy is actually eating the huckleberries. She just loves them>

Carol is quite the cook. Besides the huckleberries, she treated us to cherry pie made with cherries from their tree in Omaha. No, I’ll not give you directions to their house.



Jack & Carol live next to the slopes on Big Mountain – a very nice ski slope.


Here’s a view of Big Mountain from the main street of Whitefish, Montana



One day we took a 3.5 hr hike to the top of Big Mountain on the Danny On Trail (of which 45 minutes was spent picking and eating more huckleberries. Little known Don Sluti fact. I grew up right next to Huckleberry Hill Road. Yes, there were wild huckleberries in Connecticut in my early years. Here’s a few of the views from the hike. We see Whitefish Lake, Glacier National Park and even a bit of Flathead Lake in the distance.





After appreciating the views from the summit we opted for the easy return and rode the chair lift down





On the next day, we engaged in one of Jack’s favorite hobbies, fly-fishing. The North Fork of the Flathead River forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park. It has some very good trout fishing spots. So off we went with Jack vigilantly searching for a good spot.



Found a nice patch that took us though a large area of wild raspberries that were ripe. Yep, more snacks off of Mother Nature.


Don't they look yummy?

Then we fished.






Results, Jack 2, Carol 1, Elaine 0, Don 0. All I caught was the branch of a tree when trying to cast the thing. Even if the fish did not cooperate and those caught were too small to keep, it was a fun experience. I think I’ll stick to worms, as fly-fishing is a talent one must work on.

Carol had this wild idea to take a 12-mile hike along the Continental Divide in Glacier National Park. Jack opted out, as he can’t see hiking to a spot where there are no fish to catch. Up and at it on Sunday for a 7-hour hike from Logan Pass to the Loop on the Going to the Sun Road. The Trails taken were the Highline Trail & the Loop Trail. The scenery was absolutely stunning.












Besides all that majestic scenery, wildlife abounds. Besides the Bighorn Sheep and Mountain goats pictured, deer, hoary marmots, and ground squirrels were also seen. This is the lower 48 home of the grizzly bear, with black bears and mountain lions common. We did not see these predators, however.





They were right on the trail and let us just walk on by.




It amazed me how these animals just kept on grazing, as we were so close to them.

I also enjoy photographing wildflowers. The Highline Trail takes one right through what is called the Garden Wall, a riot of wildflowers. In 2005, we traveled here about a month earlier and the flowers were all different species. Here’s a sample of what we saw.






If anyone knows what kind of flowers these are, email me.

This one is an Indian Paintbrush flower surrounded by fleabane flowers.



A blanket flower



Glacier National Park is about the most beautiful of the USA National Parks, we plan a return trip soon.

I’m going to put in a plug for Priceline.com here. We needed to rent a car for a day, as Jack & Carol were leaving for a month Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia. Don’t you feel sorry for them? Well, they left at 8 AM and our flight wasn’t until much later in the day. We rented an economy car on Priceline, but when we picked up the car it was a 2008 Nissan (I think) Infiniti, a $40,000 car. For the price of an economy car.

(That’s it in front of a quilt shop we visited.)



Elaine’s newest hobby/interest is quilting. We spent out last day in Montana haunting the quilt shops of Kalispell.



Then zoom, zoom and we flew away.