Climb Ev'ry Mountain

Daily Mileage=36; Trip Total= 6938

Yes, another Sound of Music title but we are in the mountains so they just seem to fit in!

Today we went to explore yet another portion of the park, called Two Medicine Lakes. This area actually has three lakes which are a beautiful emerald green (don’t know why it’s called “two”). Many of the hikes are only accessible by boat and you can not drive to most portions of the lakes. Unfortunately, the boat services are not operating yet. Fortunately, we chose a few hikes that were around the southern shore of the middle lake and that we could get to rather easily.
Again we had to worry about bears especially since they have been seeing them even close to the trail head. So we started out with me clapping my hands again. The first hike was a short one to Inspiration Point. We ended at a nice lakeside spot which gave us a view of the mountains across the lake (and, all around us). It was only a mile so we decided to continue on.

The continuance took us on the Aster Park Viewpoint trail. This trail took us into deep forests, through wide meadows, across several fast flowing big streams and ended up climbing up the side of the mountain. We saw a very cute jack rabbit (notice the big ears), we called him Jack. See how he is posing for us and he would not give up his trail (real wild huh?).

Also, the trail had an interesting bridge over one of the streams. It only had one railing and two plank logs to cross over. Good thing it wasn’t too high.

We then were gifted with a very pretty waterfall (I think it might be number 20 or so) but one can never see too many waterfalls. Then it was decision time. Do we turn back or finish the trail which was another half a mile further.

After I said, “How can we not finish now?” we neglected to see that the trail climbed an additional 670 feet from our base of 5,000. Talk about sucking wind. The trail had some of the steepest switchbacks I’ve seen in awhile. Let’s just say that by the end of the trail I didn’t care if the bears came out and met us on the trail. (Rich said, “If they eat us, we won’t have to walk back!)

The view at the top of the mountain was superb and we tried to show the height we were at in our photos. If you look at this one, you can just make out the general store way down at the bottom of the lake. OK so we got down a lot easier than up. It was only 4 miles according to the hike charts but Rich says they measured by air miles. We didn’t see a bear (Thank God!)

We were pretty tired after that hike but did do a very short 1 miler to see yet, another rushing water fall (I think we’re up to about 52 now and Yellowstone and Grand Teton are still to come, YIKES! Rich has really gotten into taking photos of waterfalls and rivers. I can’t tell one from the other anymore).

We did some mundane things this afternoon like laundry. Rich’s friend for tonight is the penguin sticking his tongue out on the totem pole. We have no idea what it represents but it seemed appropriate for Rich. (We also don’t know how these American Natives knew about penguins since they’re not common here.)

Tomorrow we are driving all day to get to Bozeman, Montana which is just short of Yellowstone where we’ll be for a few days and then Grand Teton (just below it) for another few days. We may or may not have service while we’re in the parks. So don’t panic if the blogs are absent for a couple of days.
Good night. Love & joy, Mare& Rich