Grinnell Glacier Hike and Huckleberry Beer

We ended up sleeping in pretty late... We camped in a mountain valley which provided some good shade from the morning sun keeping us fast asleep until about 10 a.m. We were woken up at about 8 a.m. by a man shouting at a park ranger who had apparently issued him a $50 ticket for leaving out a plastic food bag all night. It was pretty comical, but in the end we both decided that sleep was more important than listening to this guy lose his head, so we just rolled over and continued our sleep. When we finally woke up, we took the Going to the Sun Road again to the

east side of the park. Today, fortunately, was quite sunny so we got to see the road in its full glory. In order to get to Many Glacier, the camping area which we would be setting out for our 11 mile hike in, we had to leave the park and head north a bit and reenter at another location, basically driving around the mountains as opposed to over them. On our way,

Katie spotted a little joint called Two Sisters Cafe, which will come up later in our story, so just keep it in mind for now. We made our way to the trailhead and booted up for the hike. The ranger that we spoke to about the trail informed us that there had been a lot of bear sightings recently along the hike, so Katie was a little nervous when we started off. After about 2 miles she wasn't worried about bears anymore, but more worried about the climb to the top. The climb was reported to have a gain of 1800 ft and we hadn't climbed a bit. Her worries were definitely founded as the last 4 miles of the hike were basically a straight uphill. I think

Katie's feelings toward the climb can best be described by our conversation right at the top. Keep in

mind that the last 0.4 miles of the climb was almost like a giant staircase, slightly reminiscent of our climb to the top of Mt Sinai in Egypt. Anyway, after taking about 3 or 4 breaks right in a row, I turned to Katie and kindly asked "Are you doing OK?" Her response: "Nooooo! I just want to die!" I proceeded to have a good laugh about this which of course did not help the situation. Once we reached the top, we walked down to the waters edge, enjoyed some granola, and filled up our

water bottles with glacier water, after being filtered of course. Let me back up here for a second. Just as we were about to make the final assent, we were passed by a group of about 8 people who were moving way quicker than we were. As they approached, the lead girl, obviously a local, was telling her friends about the place she was taking them after the hike for food and drinks - Two Sisters! We asked her about how the food was and after a positive review, we were sold! OK, back to the present. After enjoying our time at the top, we made our decent, which let me tell you, is much more pleasant than climbing up. We got back to the car and headed right for Two Sisters, we had both worked up quite an appetite and hadn't eaten anything but the granola at the top. On our way out of the park, there was another bear jam and we pulled over to the side of the road to watch a little. When we got to Two Sisters there was already a 25 minute wait for

the only restaurant in "near Babb" which is where they claimed to be located. Even the group that we had gotten the recommendation from on our climb was outside waiting. The place was really awesome and had a ton of stickers an license plates

all over which made the atmosphere very fun and inviting. While we waited the owners kept coming and talking to us, dogs from miles away gathered outside which we got to pet, and we even got to follow the yellow brick road to the bathroom. We got seated and ordered our food after a short wait. I was thrilled to find out that they had Huckleberry beer

which was amazing. After we ate we took the long road back around the park since the Going to the Sun Road was closed for construction at night. After a 3 hour drive, we made it to camp only to find all of our stuff wet, we must have drove right around a storm. Though everything was wet, even in the morning when we packed up, our tent weathered the storm just fine and we slept dry and warm all night.