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| St Mary KOA Lake and Nature Trail, MT | |
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| | St Mary KOA Lake and Nature Trail, MT | | | |
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St Mary KOA Lake and Nature Trail, MT
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| Walk / Tour | 1.96 Miles |
102 AEG |
| | Walk / Tour | 1.96 Miles | 57 Mns | | 2.67 mph |
| 102 ft AEG | 13 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | 7-31-2022 (written 12-3-2022) drive from the ranch to Chester to St Mary KOA. After breakfast I left the ranch. They were on harvest break starting that day as the winter wheat was cut and now they had to wait for the spring wheat to finish ripening. When I got to Chester I stopped at the local bank to get some change to wash the dead and mushed up grasshoppers off of Tonto 3's grill. I discovered that if I kept washing Tonto, the grasshoppers were easier to get off when I got back to Arizona.
The drive back to Glacier National Park is a very nice drive, even if it is on the very narrow shouldered US Highway 2 (altho some of it has been widened in the last few years). You have views to the north of the Sweet Grass Hills, the occasional train that you would see and of course, the Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park would get larger and larger. I don't recall seeing the wind farm at Ethridge before and wow is it large!! I stopped at Shelby and Cut Bank looking for tent stakes as I had forgotten mine and another water filter; my Sawyer was acting up. I finally found some tent stakes at Norman's in Cut Bank... and then come to find out; I found my stakes later, they were deep in my duffel bag.
I took Duck Lake Road (Highway 464) from Browning rather than 89. It's much easier (less traffic) and a prettier drive. As I got closer to the Park, I could see this pointy mountain in the distance and I couldn't figure out which one it was. Well come to find out, the normally flat looking top of Chief Mountain looks like a pointy horned mountain from this angle. Once I turned south on 89 I started hitting traffic. One car, in particular, that didn't even come close to the 70 MPH limit for the most part but decided to play the slow down/speed up cat and mouse game; funny how I still remember that.
I checked into the KOA and got a cabin just down from where we were a couple weeks ago. I then ran over to the St Mary Visitors Center as I wanted to see what the Ranger activities were as that is not online anymore. I stopped at the St Mary Grocery store to pick up something to eat for the next couple days.
After my dinner I did the KOA Lake/Nature Trail walk. It's really a pretty little walk and for much of it I was protected from the wind that would plague us the next few days. I got the pleasure of seeing a deer and her two fawns but didn't have my regular camera with me so my phone camera pics aren't as good but the movies of them turned out fine. There were a few of us watching them. I think we watched for almost ten minutes as they made their way through the grass and bushes. This would be my third time seeing a deer and her twins  as I saw a couple at the ranch.
The wildflowers are still blooming and it was nice to walk between the aspen. There were a couple campsites still available but they were filling as I was walking. I went to the camp store to get a Huckleberry Ice Cream. When I got back to my cabin I got a text from a couple other Minnesota Glacier Chatters that happened to be staying here as well. They came up to my cabin and we had a "Huck It" (the only place that had it of all the stores I went to in the last couple weeks was the St Mary Grocery store). We formulated our plan for tomorrow's hike and picked the Three Falls.
Enjoy [ youtube video ] (includes Many Glacier which I would go to in a couple days)
and here is the drive from Chester to Glacier National Park via US Highway 2 and Duck Lake Road [ youtube video ] |
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Wildflowers Observation Moderate
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For me, sometimes it's just as much about the journey as the destination.
Oh, and once in awhile, don't forget to look back at the trail you've traveled. |
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