OVER THE HUMP

On the “Big Day”, July 12, Logan Pass finally opened. We drove past tall walls of snow that had been pushed aside to let us through.

Due to global warming,

it was the latest opening of the 8,000- foot pass on record.

In a few month it’ll begin snowing again

and the mountain pass will close once more.

For the same reason the world is quickly losing its glaciers.

Glacier National Park still had 50 of them in 1980. They’re down to 25 now and at this rate, will not have any by 2040.

Obviously we all need to do what we can to global warming. That’s one of the reasons Francesca and I are practicing

"hyper-millage” (gas saving driving techniques) on this trip.

At the Logan Pass Visitor Center we encountered a big horn ram strutting though the visitor center parking lot.

He’d not seen hoards of people for eight months but he was seeing them today. He seemed angry, that his territory had been invaded. This ranger yelled and threw her hat at him to shoe him away. He trotted off to join his friends on a nearby “horn”.

Francesca and I added to the graffiti

everyone was carving

in the snow. We knew the sun would soon take it

away.

The two-hour ride across Glacier Park reminded me of a high road I’d taken long ago through Austria. Snow was enjoyed by hundreds of us. Some kids took to it with snowboards and skis.

Its melting creating some incredible sculptures including this one I call, “Woman of the Valley”.

We descended 4000 feet, left the park, and entered another tourist zone, "Huckleberry Land". All the businesses were hot on huckleberries and you could buy a dozen different things made from them as well as the tiny berries themselves.

We settled on the delicious ice cream.

Huckleberry bush growing out of a tree stump

We then resumed our drive west through endless fields of golden Montana wheat.

THOSE BIG RED CARS

Beautiful old touring cars roam the parks out here. Glacier National Park has the red ones and Yellowstone the color you’d expect. They were made by the White Motor Company in the late

30’s.

We see happy people inside being driven by guides who seem to know their stuff. For thirty bucks anyone can join the fun.

The canvas tops even roll back so you can see the mountains top to bottom.

NEW FACES

One of the great things about camping is meeting people doing the same thing. In Glacier National Park we met Mael Fabiani. The young Frenchman is touring America on the cheap, riding a Chinese scooter.

“It’s not very fast”, he told us adding, “35 m.p.h. tops. Maybe 5 or 10 on a steep hill.

Every night Mael beds down

in a small tent, or, goes couch surfing. That’s an internet group in which member agree to be each other’s house guests.

If your want to check Mael’s progress as he heads for Alaska go to http://intothelife.over-blog.com .

Maybe you’d like him to surf on your couch. We told him he could sleep on ours anytime.

Late in the day a couple rode up to the campsite next to us on bicycles. After introductions the man explained that he and his eleven-year-old daughter were on a 400-mile bike

tour. They set up camp and peddled out the next morning.

As they were leaving I asked if I could take their picture as we

passed them in the next hour. He said, “Sure, but please don’t honk like the others. Riding uphill is hard enough”.

As we both were heading for Logan Pass we waved, smiled, and

took this picture.

GOING GLACIAL

As we were preparing to leave our Missouri River campsite, an antelope stopped by. Pi’s barking scared her so bad she tore up a hill.

We left the river and the hills surrounding it for the western Montana prairie. Fields of wheat and the bright yellow flowers of mustard were surrounding us when we came upon the historical marker. It told us that The Lewis and Clark folks had had no problems with the Native Americans until they camped here. They accused the locals of trying to steal from them. The resulting fight resulted in two indians dead and a hasty retreat by the explorers.

A mile north we saw an amazing sculpture, two indians on horses, in the heart of the Blackfeet Reservation.

The descriptive sign was gone. We assume it was dedicated to the two who had died. There are two sides to every story.

Fifteen minutes later we were in Conrad, a beautiful indian town. Almost everyone on the streets seemed to be Native American.

In a food market were given advice on approaching the huge mountains just to the west, Glacier National Park. An older, long-haired man told us, “The only way to drive through the the park, Going-To-The-Sun Road, may still be snowed in. A month ago the snow was still thirty feet deep in the highest part, Logan Pass”. Glacier was our northern goal, we drove on anyway.

An hour later we were setting up camp

just inside the park boundaries. We learned that

main road was closed but that they were hoping to have the snow cleared in two days.

We spent those days marveling at the huge, steep mountains around us. Thick glaciers had sculpted them into “horns"

as in Switzerland’s “Matterhorn”. Again, we were warned of bears but never saw any.

On the second day there, a ranger stopped by

our campsite to say hello. We asked him if he’d ever seen a bear in the campground. “I see them every day, he responded, “As I was just walking up to your site a sow and her cub were walking fifty feet behind you”.

DREAMING OF SACAJAWEA

As the Montana Folk Festival was ending the rain began. Francesca and I decided to drive north hoping the skies would clear.

Three hours later the rain ended and our search for a campsite began. Another fourteen hours day on the road (four of them dancing) had exhausted us. Three miles down a dirt trail we came upon a fishing camp on the the edge of the Missouri river. Briefly we watched men pulling rainbow trout and five pound walleyes out of the swirling water before we succumbed to sleep. Images of Lewis and Clark expedition along with its guide, Sacajawea, danced through my head. If our Toyota had been parked here 206 years ago we’d have seen them pass by.

A WORLD OF MUSIC

The Montana Folk Festival is a world class event. Every year this once-fading mining town gathers the kind of the musicians you’ve always wanted to hear. It’s not a “folk” festival really but rather a “world music” event celebrating our planet’s rich diversity of cultures.

The musicians play for three days on six stages multiple times. That way, if you like, you can hearall twenty of the featured artists. Check it out at www.montanafolkfestival.com . Miami should be as lucky as this city of 35,000.

We arrived on Butte on the last day of the event. Still, in one afternoon we were able to enjoy,

• New York’s Klezmer All-Star Band
• Maria De Barros and her band playing the soca rhythms of the Cape Verde Islands
• 
  
• Los Texmaniacs doing an exciting set of Tex-Mex music. We got to dance to them a folk festival on the Washington Mall three years ago.
• The Inuit throat singing sisters, ‘Nukoriit”
• Samson Schmidt and his Django Reinhart All-Star Band (Gypsy jazz from France)

• And closing out the show, Haiti’s own Boukman Eksperan. They brought down the house (well, a very large tent) with their fantastic fusion of Haitian, Caribbean and rock rhythms. We danced a little more and got to try out our limited creole with one of the group’s singers afterwards.

Like the posters said, the festival was “wild and free”. Local businesses picked up most of the tab. The rest was covered by volunteers who collected contributions in big, red buckets.

The musicians we weren’t able to see played blues, country, bluegrass, and cajun music. We caught bits of groups paying the sounds of Arabia, Korea, and yes, Cuba. Why don’t we all get together in Butte next July? We’ll have a great time and experience a world of music!

FIELD OF FLAGS

We drove into Butte looking for a shaded place to park our van and the dog inside. Critters weren’t allowed inside the festival. We found the perfect spot under this big mining shed.

Next to it was a hill covered with plastic American flags. Intrigued, I walked over to check it out. After taking this picture I spoke to a woman carrying a flag away from the event. She told me it was Butte’s “Hill of Heroes”, 500 flags planted f

or three days to honor soldiers, first responders, and anyone else that you might want to buy a flag for.

I asked her who her flag honored.

I was not ready for her answer.

It was for her son who was killed in an accident last month.

I consoled her as best I could.