GrampCamp2024 Part III -- It is NOT a block of ice

William is our guest author for this page, too. I added some clarifications, but anything I wrote is in italics. Amtrak deposited us in Glacier National Park for a couple of days. Long enough to take a great bus tour of the Road to the Sun, packed with views of "The Crown of the Continent," a title that Glacier has given itself. Take it away, William:

We got off the train and walked to our accommodations at the East Glacier Lodge,. It was 702 steps. The lodge transported our luggage in a refurbished 1957 Checker Taxi, and the bell hops wore silly engineer costumes. We were just glad we weren't at West Glacier Lodge where the bell hops wear Liederhosen.

The Checker Taxi. The Lodge and Dancing Lady Mountain are in the background.

William and William! (grandson and and grandad)

Inside the lodge, they had a goat! Real phone booths and great food!
The timbers inside were 800-year-old Douglas Fir logs from Washington State. Outside they were Cedars from Oregon. (Next time, Montana, cut down your own trees)

Two days later we went into the park and had a 6 hour tour! Here is the scoop about our tour!

This is a moose that we saw on our tour! Other wild life we spotted were a grizzly bear and a couple of golden eagles.

So this is me taking a selfie!😍
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This is the Blackfeet glacier. It is not a block of ice; that is what I thought is was.

(Grammy's note: Glaciers are blocks of ice, but because they have snow on them they look like blankets of snow. They are slowly moving fields -- at least 25 acres-- of compressed snow and ice. And when they move they bring along whatever debris that gets in their way and deposit it at their leading edge where the melt creates a lake of a beautiful color. Climate change has led to a lot of glacial retreat and to actually touch a glacier requires a hefty hike that we didn't have time or inclination to do. And if you were to reach the glacier, you are asked not to touch it anyway) )

This lake is green because of the glacier. The hunk of junk that is in the glacier melts with the glacier. So it gets in the water. DUH!

This is me when the waiter at the dining car gave me a "glacier". We were seeing how long it would take to melt and become a lake. The water was the lake and the ice was the glacier! It had melted about 1/2 way in 14 minutes, when we had to leave the dining car. So if each second was a million years, it would take 840 million years to melt 1/2 of a glacier.

At the top of the mountain.

Me putting my hand in the snow. It is freezing! And hard!

Glacier National Park is on land originally belonging to the Blackfeet Nation and their reservation is immediately adjacent to the park. We stopped to look at the Blackfeet's land. Here are the pics.