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August 10, 2004

Butte, MT

Its almost 9am and besides a 2 hr nap in a giant parking lot in Helena, MT we've been going nonstop for 24hrs. The days have begun to run together, but not in an altogether unpleasant way. Roads are the same wherever you go. A million white stripes serving as beacons pointing in the right direction, whichever direction we're going.

We drove non-stop to Glacier National Park and got in around 6am. The beauty of Glacier is beyond words. I am constantly amazed at how nature can surprise me with its varied wonder. Ancient granite peaks shoot thousands of feet straight into the sky with carpets of greenery struggling to stick to their 70 degree slopes. Even though we arrived later than we had hoped, we managed to have decent light for a couple hours as we wound our way up the road towards Logan Pass, the continental divide. That 25 or so mile drive was hampered by our inability to drive more than a couple hundred feet without needing to stop to capture what we were seeing on film. Hundreds of pictures and 4 hours later we found ourselves at the Logan Pass visitors center with completely darkness nearly upon us and no where to camp. At the visitors center a large Buck had been trapped up a stairwell and just stood there eating something. Behind the center a herd of bighorn cheep grazed. As I was walking back from using the bathroom past where I had seen the Buck, I heard a noise close-by in the darkness. There, less than 10 feet apart, the Buck and I started each other. Certainly he could have easily turned on me and turned me into road kill. He slowly walked towards the stairs that served as my only exit and stood just off to one side. I slowly, step by step, I crept towards and down the stairs with the grazing Buck only a couple feet away. Every couple steps he would look up at me and I would stop. Even though it seemed I was in a tenuous position, I wasn't that nervous. I felt the Buck most likely wouldn't feel the need to attack unless provoked and must be used to humans by now.

As we stared at the stars in total darkness near the car trying to decide whether to just sleep in the parking lot, a park policeman came up to tell us all the camp sites were full and we would probably need to drive out of the park to find camping. After he left, we decided to risk it and camp in the parking lot anyway thinking it unlikely he would come by to patrol again in the middle of the night. We got out our sleeping bags and after an hour of watching shooting stars and dozens of satellites careen across the sky, we turned in. Not a moment later we realized the patrolman was coming back. We quickly stashed our sleeping bags in the car and stood casually by the car. Obviously we were wrong about how late they do their rounds. So we left and decided to just keep driving. Greg drove for a couple hours and I continued for a couple more until we got to Helena, the capital of Montana. It was there, in a large strip mall parking lot, near a dumpster, I took a nap in my bag. That was until the garbage man came and shook the ground with his racket.

Now we're at Denny's in Butte, Montana on our way to Yellowstone where we have camping reservations.

Posted by wonko at August 10, 2004 09:22 AM

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Posted by: Turd Furguesson at August 12, 2004 01:39 PM

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