After spending the first month in Iowa watching far too much TV and annoying my sister I finally managed to land a job with a landscaping company. The job was quite fun, and while I worked 50 to 55 hours per week, the days alternated from very boring labor (read watering and deadheading flowers), to 11 hour days of hard manual labor. But like I said, I enjoyed it and it kept me outside for a good chunk of the summer.
When I drove to Iowa at the start of summer vacation, I drove by a few places that I knew I would want to go back to and actually spend some time looking around, so I made sure to leave myself around a week and a half to do the 2,400 mile drive back to Eugene. The three items on my tick-list to see were The Badlands in South Dakota, Devils Tower in Wyoming, and Glacier National Park in Montana. I had planned to meet up with somebody at Devil's Tower to climb with, and then do a climbing road-trip back to OR, but at literally the last minute he called and had to bail back to OR because of family problems; but he said that I could climb with his original climbing partner, so the trip was still on... sort of.
(Please note that all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them)
I split the drive into two days from Iowa city to Devils Tower (842 miles), and arrived on Monday night to a very warm welcome. South Dakota is my least favorite state to drive through, not because it is over 500 miles from East to West, but because of the enormous amount of billboards on the side of the road. It got very tiring to constantly see billboards telling you were only 250 miles away from their attraction. On my way through SD I stopped off to see the Badlands National park, which is a stunning place. The park was created from hundreds of thousands of years of water erosion over the desert like landscape. The following photos are of the badlands, AND of the Helicopter that I rode in for a tour over the Badlands (See previous post for a film from the helicopter).
I also saw the Minutemen National Attraction, which is where during the Cold War Minutemen missiles were housed (all throughout South and North Dakota incase of a nuclear strike from Russia). All of these missiles were launch ready, during the war, and could be fired in 5 minutes time once authorization had occurred. Then it would only take 30 minutes for the missiles to reach their targets in Russia.
After the Badlands I drove to Devil's Tower which is in the North East corner of Wyoming and spent two full days there rock climbing on the tower itself. I met up and climbed with two very nice and interesting guys. The following are pictures of the tower and the climbing on the tower.
The rock climbing at Devil's Tower is amazing, I won't get into details about the climbing specifically, but it is a beautiful place, and if it were not well over 1,000 miles away from me I would be going back very soon!!
After Devil's Tower I drove straight to Glacier National Park (510 miles). I had a quick stop off at Custer's Last Stand National Park again. It was mainly a food and gas stop. In the middle of Wyoming and Montana there are a limited number of gas stations, so you have to predict when you will be hungry.
The following photos are from the drive from Devil's Tower to Glacier National Park. It was a very pretty drive cutting through almost all of Montana.
This is the sun setting behind Glacier National Park:
The views in the morning were OUTSTANDING!!!
By the time I got my food that I needed for a few days of backpacking, the Park was technically closed, and while they have an after hours fee station for just the situations that I was in; I did not notice it because I had just driven 500 odd miles and did not bother looking around too much. So I just drove back up the road a little way and found a place to pull off. I figured this was probably illegal so i set my alarms for 6am. The ranger station opened at 7am, so a 6 am wake-up call was fine.
Well, I got a rude awakening, because I stayed in my tent 5 minutes too long, and a ranger came by and pestered the hell out of me for being in a non-camping zone. But it all got sorted out, and I was at the rangers station by 7am to get my camping permits. With the Rangers help I decided on doing a 35 mile hike from Two Medicine Lake to St. Mary's Lake, and then take a bus back to Two Medicine. This hike was going to include two nights of camping, which would give me the first day to hike 16 miles, 10 miles on the second day, and 8 miles on the morning of the third day to catch the bus in time to get back to my car.
Two Medicine Lake is located in the lower righthand side of the map. The trail I took went through Dawson Pass, Cut Bank Pass, Morning Star Lake, Triple Divide Pass, Red Eagle Lake and finished at the Saint Mary Visitor Center.
The hike was easily the most gorgeous hike I have ever done. You started at the mouth of a valley and hiked out to a mountain pass, then down into another valley, and out of it to another mountain pass. This occurred many times, and around every single corner was something new and beautiful to see. Glacier National Park is known for its Black and Grizzly Bears, and while I was aware of where bears might be I did not yell or clap for 35 miles worth of solo hiking. I actually never saw a bear. I did see a mother moose with two calves, a bugling elk, some snakes, and around 20 mountain goats. One of the highlights for me was getting to Triple Divide Pass, which is where Triple Divide Peak is located. This mountain separates the three watersheds of North America: The Pacific, The Atlantic, and The Arctic. The following photos are from my entire hike in the park.
While on the hike I met up with somebody who offered me a ride back to my car if I hiked out a night early. As I was going to be really pushing it to make it back to Eugene by the evening of the 13th I decided to take him up on the early hike out and ride back to my car. This made for a long second day, 18 miles! So instead of doing 35 miles over 3 days, I did it over 2 days. I was glad to get back to my car a night earlier because it gave me a full day to do the drive back to OR, instead of trying to to it over the night and arriving in the early AM on the 14th.
Well as you can tell from the photos I had amazing weather, which lead to an amazing hike! For a number of years I have wanted to go see Glacier National Park, and it was everything I thought it would be and more! The following set of photos is from my drive along the Going To The Sun Road which constantly is ranked as one of North America's most beautiful drives.
I managed to start driving on The Going To The Sun Road around 8am, and I drove it East to West, so I had the sun at my back the entire way. Also since I was on the road early enough I did not have to deal with traffic. By the time I left the park around 930am there was an enormous line to get into the park on the West side. Once leaving the park, I only had to drive 540 more miles until I was home again in Eugene!!! This drive through eastern Washington and Oregon was a very hot drive as my car does not have working air conditioning. It averaged 109 degrees inside for around 3 hours!!
Eastern WA
Driving into the setting sun over the Columbia River Gorge.
I arrived in Eugene around 1030pm after 2,400 miles worth of driving, and seeing many beautiful sights.
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