It ain't heavy, it's my bike: Glacier National Park, Day 2

A panoramic view of Iceberg Lake

Reed and I walked around East Glacier Village and got the dog situation under control. We saw a big, strong boxer with big, strong balls who jumped over the fence in his owner's yard and decided to be our tour guide for the rest of our walk. He walked out in front of us proudly and cleared the way among the other stray dogs who were wandering around, of which there were many. They were all well fed and healthy looking, but there were many of them.

A couple of free goodboys - photos by Reed Thompson

We gathered up Nathan and went to the Two Medicine Grill for breakfast, which was a diner where you could sit at the counter on stools. Reed had got some intel at the gas station on the dead cow from the night before -- since East Glacier is on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the roads are marked as open ranges, the owner can sue you if you hit their cow. Some redneck at the diner said that a Blackfeet had hit the cow and had run off to the reservation to hide from justice, which didn't make any sense because they were already on the reservation when they hit it. Anyway, the gist of the matter is that it's real hard to be a white man these days.

We loaded up the car and headed for Many Glacier, which involved some off-roading through a lengthy, thorough construction zone on the way. We came into the park and immediately saw 30 cars stopped alongside the road -- a mama grizzly and two cubs were about 100 yards away from the road.

Trying to get a grizzly view - photo by Reed Thompson

Nathan had 20x binoculars, which was helpful.

Big ol' binocs - photo by Reed Thompson

One of the babies was light-colored.

A couple of bears at a safe distance

We couldn't check into the hotel right away, and Molly was feeling under the weather and walked us to the trailhead. She practiced her bear spray technique, and saw a deer from 8 feet away. Nathan, Reed, and I hiked to Iceberg Lake, which was cool, 10 miles roundtrip and 1500 ft elevation gain. I guess there are icebergs in it most of the year, but not today. 2/3 of the people who we asked on the trail saw bears. Reed jumped all the way into the lake, and Busse photographed it.

Couple more bears

Taking a well-deserved break from the trail

We met Kevin at the lake, and he hiked back with us, despite us not extending an invitation to him. We saw bighorn sheep butts briefly as we were leaving. We saw a couple of young, unprepared guys heading out as we were leaving. We were pretty tired when we got back. We had a beer in the lobby and had dinner. Our room was choice, classic vintage and elegant, great lake and mountain views.

Many Glacier Hotel lobby - photo by Nathan Busse

Many Glacier Hotel on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake

Pretty good!

The highlight of dinner was our server, Shawni, talking about the staff living arrangements, which sounded pretty fun -- they all live in dorms and work seasonal jobs in different places throughout the year. We looked at the stars from the balcony; it was incredibly dark. Reed fell asleep hugging his pillow.