Vandrea Does America: Day 47 (Monday 8/6/12)- Glacier National Park, MT

Our first day in Glacier. We couldn't have been more excited. It did not dissapoint, quickly dethroning the North Cascades as the most striking scenery we've come across. Unfortunately, Glacier thinks it can coast by on its good looks. Everything else about the park is shabby or dysfunctional. Still, these are mere side inconvieneces when confronted with the natural marvels of Glacier, which not only compensate for, but nearly induce amnesia for the accompanying hassels.
Going to the sun road is majestic and a mess. It is in the middle of a 10 year construction project. An unimprovement project it seems. Traffic is bad. The road nearing the top becomes a one way, producing a 15-30 min delay each time you drive up or down it. There are bikers and pedestrians. The road is narrow, windey, and treacherous. Luckily, the park provides a free shuttle service. We, therefore, were able to enjoy the ride (one of our drivers explained that he had driven the road for 15 years without ever realizing "how beautiful it was" until riding the shuttle himself) as well as resting the van's breaks. We also, thanks to the shuttle, didn't have to worry about parking. For, as the same driver informed us, "There hasn't been a parking spot in Logan Pass since 1932." Indeed there were cars slotted and wrenched into all sorts of nooks and edges on the already tight road surrounding the parking lot. Such creativity, we noticed, had been rewarded with a $175 fine and, since it is a federal park and thus a federal offense, a mandatory court appearance. Large vehicles aren't permitted too far up the mountain because of the road's constraints. Somehow a RV missed signs explaining this and ended up near the top in a construction zone and with a $2500 fine.
Navigating the shuttle system is a bit of a chore. I don't blame anyone for this. It has got to be an incredibly difficult job and, for all the reasons mentioned above, way better than driving ourselves. Still, there are 2 different buses, a big school bus type and a smaller one that sometimes goes directly from the start of the park to Logan. Usually not. The big bus, because of its size, can't go to the top. There are no posted arrival or departure times. Transfers, are usually required, but not always. The transfer points might shift. Sometimes you sign up for a seat, sometimes wait in line, sometimes those lines look more like a tic tac toe grid, sometimes a kindly elderly volunteer twice, within a matter of 10 minutes, forgets the conversation you had with him wherein he promised you a seat and consequently miss two buses. So it works out that we once shared a whole bus with only one other passenger and another time we stood doing anemic pullups for an hour (did we mention the road is far from smooth) snug with 20 other people, all of us hovering over the lucky 23 that got seats. The drivers ran the gamut from a retired flirt (yelling out, while driving, to female flaggers how much he's missed them) to a mutterer of explitives (He, turns out, is no fan of tourists parking in the roadway, nor a fan of tourists using parking areas as passing lanes). All and all they were great. As to the views, words and photos are beyond inadequate. Several people who work and live at Glacier spoke of how it was taking them a lifetime to get to know the park and how every day and every drive reveals some new aspect of it.
Our first adventure in Glacier was a hike at Siyeh Bend. The walk was full of georgeous wildflowers and the lush shade of greenery beside and over us. Still my favorite part of the trail was the descent. As the ranger we met going back down explained, visitors feed the park's wildlife desensetizing them to humans and emboldening them to the point of being a nuisance to forest employees. There was a deer to attest to his claims. This particular deer, we were told, will often block the trail until it is fed. (Nature's toll booth). For us the deer followed along as we hiked back down the trail. We gave it no food, but did take 50 photos of it. We had thought the closest we would get to a deer was our last encounter at North Cascade Pass and the closest we would get to any animal was the bison roadblock in the Grand Tetons. We really need to learn the lesson of thinking, "it can't get any better than this."
We finished the day riding the shuttle around the park getting a sampler of all the different views along the Going-to-the-sun road and along the way saw two different crowds who had spotted bears hillside.