September 16, 2010 - Day Eight

DAY EIGHT

OUR LAST DAY AT GLACIER

Here is one of our favorite places to relax. You can't really see the fire, but there is one in there. Notice the book in Phil's hand, and the coffee on the arm of his chair, the tree trunk on the right.

After this, we went for a walk to the one place we hadn't explored yet. Down the highway to a big gulch with a train bridge over it. It was even more interesting than I thought it would be.

Can you see the rainbow over the lodge?

This is an entirely different view of the East Glacier Lodge.

And the construction under the bridge was interesting too.

... back to wildflowers! Rose Hips!

I don't know what this is, but isn't it pretty? Its tiny.

Back to the train bridge.

After we walked away, along came a train!

This is the rear engine of the train going away from us.

This was probably the least lovely day, weather wise. The wind was blowing, the sky was cloudy. They were taking down the big tents in front of the Lodge. That was interesting to watch.

Landscaping flowers.

This is a structure built from slivers of stone.

It was fascinating and a little different every day.

It was not glued down or anything, it is what it is.

It must have taken some time to build.

Have you ever seen anything like it?

I'm still wandering around frantically taking pictures, not wanting to miss anything! This was near the parking lot, I don't know the purpose of this little house, if its private or the gardener's house, or what...

And Phil had this idea of taking pictures through the holes in the fence/railing around the veranda.

We decided to spend our last little bit of time in the lounge, looking at the lovely mountains outside the windows and eating a little tiny snack...Phil looks like he's getting sad, doesn't he?

...and I'm trying to cheer him up...

But this two pound plate of nachos cheered us up plenty! We couldn't finish it - but the waiter said we did a "noble" job. I had to give Phil most of the credit! It turns out we don't really eat anything else until we get back home!

Our luggage mixed in with everyone else's who is getting on the 6:45 train. . . The Lodge loads it all into a van, to take to the station, then a school bus pulled up to give us a ride to the station. Its an easy 5 minute walk, but it was raining!

A last view of downtown from the train station...

A last view of the Lodge, with the red buses returning from their day of travel.

See the big tent out front is gone?

..and here comes our train...

I admit we were less excited about the train ride home. But, we enjoyed looking out the windows and reading our books. I wanted to get pictures of the Izaak Walton Inn on the way back, but it got too dark to get a good photo. We stopped in Whitefish for about 12 minutes and we got off the train and walked around a bit. Phil wanted to see this engine and I was surprised to get such a good photo in the dark.

The Whitefish train station was super cool, but I was getting anxious about getting back on the train before it left us behind. That wouldn't be so bad if all our stuff wasn't on the train.

And the outside of the Whitefish Depot. It was pretty mild outside and not raining here. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. The train was full. We read, we tried to sleep. We stopped in Spokane (Phil got off the train but I was neurotically afraid of the train leaving without me so I stayed inside). We knew a lot of the people walking down the train to the dining car.

We are beginning to look forward to being home and seeing our kitty and using our cell phones to see what W has been up to for a week.