The curse has finally been broken! First, my Seester’s trip was canceled (something about her having Breast Cancer & a double mastectomy), then my parent’s trip was canceled (something about helping said Seester during chemo), and lastly, my cousin Amanda was going to visit, but her trip was canceled thanks to the CrowdStrike Outage stranding her in Texas. I was convinced 2024 was doomed to be a year of no visitors.
Thankfully, my cousins Heather and Kris had a wedding in Bozeman to attend last week. From Bozeman, they traveled to Kalispell and spent the last few days letting Rost and me tour them all over Glacier.
I had two full days to show them why I am so in love with this place & needed to make the most of our time. Since they’ve had the pleasure of touring Alaska with us before, they knew to expect full days on the road.
We spent our first day primarily on the iconic Going to the Sun road & walked about the Many Glacier area a bit. While Heather & Kris broke my 2024 no-visitor curse, they also broke my “Never been to Many Glacier & not seen a bear” streak as well. I can sadly no longer boast the fact that I’ve never been to Many Glacier & not seen a bear.
Day two required a bit of sleeping in, so we got a late start to the morning. Our first stop was the Old Steel Bridge by the house to show Heather that the colorful rocks of Lake McDonald were, in fact, present outside of that lake despite social media’s content creators saying otherwise. It was here that I was relentlessly attacked by a rogue Canada goose. While Heather was mostly concerned about grizzly bears while walking about, it was a wild goose that sent us running back to the truck – all the while holding a laughing toddler above my head.
After a quick trip through Kalispell, we headed north through Polebridge & up to Bowman & Kintla lakes. On our drive, we spotted migrating Sandhill Cranes, swimming beavers, adorable baby deer, fresh wolf tracks emerging from a stream, & the only bear we saw on the entire two days of driving – the gummy bear!
With any luck, my first visitors of the year won’t be the last, but they set the bar high. Rost & Kris are now the best snacking buds & Rost has decided to call both Kris & Heather “Taco” rather than their given names for some reason. I guess Taco is easier to remember.