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Today we drove the Going to the Sun road. We stopped and did a two hour hike that took us past waterfalls and to Avalanche Lake, which is fed by a number of glacier-produced waterfalls. Today, like yesterday, it was a little hazy as temperatures were headed to near-record highs for Glacier, in the mid-nineties or higher. We expected those temps in Moab, but not in Glacier. The exciting part of the Going to the Sun road as the road crosses the Continental Divide was filled with views of glaciers and waterfalls. Unfortunately the haze continued to thicken and we really couldn't see much of anything. We couldn't even stop at the visitor center in the middle of the road as the lot was jammed with cars. Isn't Glacier supposed to be less crowded? We did get some pictures of mountain goats (or bighorn sheep, I'm not really sure of the difference) and saw some really cool waterfalls, but the drive was a big disappointment.
We stopped at our campground for the night, which, unlike the night before, was virtually shadeless and just hot. As it was only 3pm, and we had pretty much done what we wanted to do today, we decided to do laundry, as our clothes from the backpacking trip were making everything in the car smell like feet. While Andrew was waiting in line to buy laundry tokens, he heard people talking about all the trails that were closed in the area. We stopped by the Ranger Station, and it turned out that nearly all the trails in the Many Glacier area were closed to do high levels of grizzly activity. Our only plan for the next day was to take a long hike in this area, and so we just did our laundry and left the park.
Instead of three nights in the park, we spent basically 24 hours. Glacier was the first major disappointment of the trip. We drove a long way to the park, and our only plans for the park were to see the views and do some hiking. The views weren't really visible, the hikes were closed, and it was unbearably hot. So we hit the road and drove to Great Fallls for the night, to start the long trip home.
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