Plan of bears met September 4 - 7, 2002 about abrupt changes in weather, a gingerly bear, and a way back home.

	There! That's where we'll be driving and hiking. We will experience a dramatic weather change by the hill near Sid's head

	Round, glacier-swept valley below Logan Pass Scenic Going-to-the-sun Road curves up the slopes

We woke up into a gloomy morning in a gloomy motel. At the nearest cafe we then tried to make a French waitress tell us what she thought of those leaden clouds, but she eluded us by saying something in the sense that it'd be great once the weather improves, which it might. The sky was really clearing from the west and so we decided to drive around Glacier park, and enter it from there. Sid said that Going-to-the-Sun Road was prettier from west anyway.

A good choice. Clouds tried to spill over from the other side, but never quite conquered the steep peaks. We enjoyed sunshine and various views, moving slowly towards Logan Pass. The weather broke there, evidently; on one side of the pass, we looked into low clouds, on the other side, we looked into the sun. Fortunately Garden Wall, which we planned to hike on, was in the sunny half of Glacier park.

	Trail through the Garden Wall occasionally led through a vertical section

	Omnipresent ground squirrels lazily avoided being stepped on during our hike

I love American tourists. They go by cars, staying on highways, taking picture from parking lots and vista points -- and don't hike. One has but to walk a bit, and gets the whole nature for herself. Using our leisurely sightseeing, picture-taking pace, we advanced along a mountain trail, which almost exactly copies a continental divide, and enjoyed views to mountains, marmots, ground squirrels, and mountain goats. We met a handful of people; sun was shining, waterfalls were falling, flowers blossomed -- and we have collected several dozens of great pictures depicting almost the same thing (a mountain across a valley, with a waterfall).

Having walked thus for about two hours, we reached another pass, which had a surprise for us -- we found ourselves again at a boundary of bad weather. A valley behind us was filled to the rim with sunshine, while the one in front of us drowned under black-on-black clouds. Thunder and lightning soon joined the party and we literally made a lightning-fast decision -- not to go any further. We turned our backs on thunders and briskly marched towards our wagon (several miles away). Alas, the weather was faster. Buckets of icy water descended on our heads (and other part of ours, too) somewhere in the middle of our way back, which made me try to remember in vain what those outdoorsy books advised about electrical storms in mountains. I could not recall anything reasonably applicable and so I just kept on being afraid, for good measure. Sid, being an electrical engineer, appreciated with a professional courtesy every single bolt of a lightning, saying that he likes to watch the competition. He also claimed that he had ordered all this storm as a "demo", to make our hike more exciting.

	We found ourselves at the boundary of perfect calm (behind us) and a mountain storm (over us)

	Through Garden Wall Clements Mountain in the background		A creek, a road, a river Heavens Peak in the background

Excitement rained through my windbreaker and literally poured into my shoes (coming from top, down my legs, making my socks uncomfortably wet). Then sun came out again, I pulled my windbreaker off hoping to dry it, or, to make it to our car before the next black wave comes, which gathered its strength over this beautiful hill with a waterfall. Not a chance. Sid possibly skipped reading the small print while signing the demo order, and did not notice that it may come with a bonus. You'd probably believe me that a mountain storm rain is quite cold; well, you can be sure that mountain storm hail is colder yet, and every hit with a little ice-bean hurts. Just have somebody pour you a bucketful of frozen peas on your head from atop of a 10-floor building! We were lucky to have brought our leather hats on our hike with us, or else we would have been hospitalized with a concussion.

We reached our car in full sunshine again -- which did not change a bit the fact that there was not a thread dry on us, and I shivered with cold. We performed a full striptease number, doubtlessly causing a welcome break in otherwise dull afternoon of many a car-locked tourist (we had the fortunate foresight and brought our bags with extra clothes). Turning the heat in our wagon to maximum, we descended back to the valleys -- how else -- to have a dinner. A pizzeria attached to otherwise upscale lodge offers considerably cheaper fodder, yet at a disproportionate sacrifice in quality. Can you imagine that even Hippo did not finish this meal!!!

Persistent rain kept waking us at night, and we rose into a morning dampened under a solid gray lid. We drove again through the park, finding miserable visibility, and we decided that by leaving now we would not miss much. In a driving rain, we exited in the direction of Idaho. Sunshine returned to us near Flathead Lake and our bodies as well as souls began to defrost again.

	We met our scheduled bear plan near this wonderful lake (Flathead, Montana)

And here again it became obvious that it is me Sid can thank for enjoying this trip so much. He has been claiming quite boldly that if we want to see some bears, we must go to Montana, but it was I who had to find one for him! So there I was, driving peacefully among meadows, noticing this very black cow, which did not look like a cow at all. Then I was standing on breaks and Sid was jumping out of the car with a camera. A fuzzy furball rolled down a field towards a creek, which was crossing our road -- and he disappeared in reeds. Sid carefully approached the stream from the other side, hoping to glimpse at least a piece of bear's paw -- and then "boo!" The bear had crossed the creek, hidden under willows and reeds, and emerged right in front of Sid on the wrong side!!! There was a lot of getting scared and running. Done by the bear, that is. My Hippo stood unmoved, he only cursed himself for not being quick enough to make a snapshot, when he was so close. The bear trotted back towards a forest, spraying water all around, and it took him a while to notice that we were not in pursuit; then he decided to try the creek again. Meanwhile we sat down on the road to stop looking like these really huge bears and haggled over who's going to use binoculars and who's going to have the camera with the 400 mm zoom. I don't quite remember how long we tracked him, but it sure was worth it. Sid finally scored a few pictures of his sought-after black bear, and I discovered how big, strong and frightening my husband is. Not that I'd ever doubted his qualities, of course, not in the slightest, but I certainly did not expect him to scare away a bear...

A black bear inside the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana

At Columbia River we had to choose to drive either on the Oregonian or the Washingtonian side. We picked Washington, for we had not driven on this side before and also because Oregon's traffic requires strong nerves. Regular roads (no matter how straight or deserted) are limited to 55 mph, which effectively kills you over long distance. Eventually our route turned south anyway and we had plenty time to "enjoy" Oregon.

	A dam on Columbia River connects Washington (left) a Oregon (right)

	I would not like to receive this natural gift without a strong hat and/or while barefoot.

Sid even claims that Oregon uses longer miles -- which in reality feels like this: if you go to a town sixty miles away, it will take you several hours. That is, you will be crawling at fifty-five, and at any notion of intersection (e.g., a farm access road approaches a highway), posted speed limits are dropped to twenty five, within town limits even to twenty miles an hour. And so you drag on and stop often and lurch forward at walking speed and your mind wanders and comes up with ideas: maybe Oregon should build super-speed tunnels for motion-enabled "out-of-staters", while motorically-impeded locals could maintain their perception-of-safety based, ox-wagon pace. It would also help to remove this infernal invention -- the automobile -- from a landscape otherwise mostly untouched by progress.

It may seem unbelievable, but we actually eventually reached Bend, having planned a lunch at Pine Tavern (they really have a live three hundred years old pine growing through the roof of a dining hall) and in mere three more hours we found ourselves whole ninety nine miles farther -- at Crater Lake. Light drizzle was falling and the lake's famous blue color had all faded into pathetic gray. At Cloudcap viewpoint, winter reeked in the air so intensely, it invoked memories of Christmas in Czech-Moravian Highlands. It felt romantic, but we dropped all urges to camp out there. It even started to snow just when we were leaving. White spots on the slopes of Mt Scott suggested that it wasn't the first time in last few days. Still hauling our clothes in our car's trunk, slightly wet from Glacier hailstorm, we started to get the idea: it was time to return to sunny California and dry a bit. After all, why not? This year's plan of bears (and hail) was already met.

Copyright © 2002-2006 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.