Category Archives: 107-Columbia Falls, MT (Glacier Natl Park) 2016

107-Columbia Falls, MT (Glacier Natl Park) 2016

Our second visit to Glacier National Park

We decided to revisit the Glacier Natl Park while we are travelling through the northwest area. We were here in July of 2013 and now are visiting in early August 2016. We were not surprised to see that many of the glaciers have shrunk visibly…and it’s not just that we’re here a bit later in the season. One hundred years ago there were 130 glaciers within the bounds of the park, now there are 25 and it’s predicted that they will all be gone by 2030. The region is warming up!

The area is beautiful! Although there was a recent fire near the St. Mary’s Lake area that caused quite a bit of the forested area there to be completely burned, and there was a fire several years ago near another lake, the area is beautiful. Lots of forested areas, lakes, rivers and waterfalls from the snowmelt.

The mountains themselves are beautiful and quite different. Many of them are steep and the tops look like teeth because they are steep and ridged along the front and back. This is caused by the glaciers on these mountains, when the snow melts and moves, and then refreezes it ‘scrapes’ the mountain away.

We also saw some animals while in the park. We caught a bear just a little way from the road busy eating berries. A bighorn sheep actually stood at the roadside as if he was posing while cars jammed up in the road and people got out and one guy actually got within about 15 feet with his camera and tripod. And, we saw many butterflies, Jeff got a beautiful picture of one that I’ve included.

Here are some of the pictures we took:

107-Columbia Falls, MT (Glacier Natl Park) 2016, Full-Time RVing

We’re pretty far north for a while to escape the heat…boy are we!

We’re currently in Columbia Falls, MT which is very close to the Glacier Natl Park and also pretty close to the Canadian border.  It’s very pretty here in early August.

Being full-time RVers, we have the freedom to go where we want, when we want. We are choosing to spend a little time this far north is to escape the very hot weather in much of Utah in August.  But, we didn’t really expect it to get down into the high 30s/low 40s at night!!  We’ve had to dig out our cold weather pjs and got sweaters and socks out for the evening and morning.  During the days it gets to the high 70s or even low 80s which is very pleasant.  We’ll spend another week or so “up north” and then will start to head south; it’ll still be pretty hot in Utah but we’ll manage.