After having a great time in Glacier National Park and only writing 1 paragraph about it, I decided that sometimes I really should try to actually write my blog, not just summarize and skim over all the details. Part of the reason I don't is because it takes a lot of time and I'm a lazy bastard, another part is because I dont' always want to share stuff in such a public forum. But at the same time, I decided to write this blog, so if I'm gonna share, I might as well do it right when I actually have something to write about. So here we go, attempt number 2 at my time in Glacier National Park. And this time with pictures too.
The Dance portion of my sister's exhibition
As you already know, I'm in Montana to visit my sister. I'm home for about 10 days, and I'm spending the weekend here with her. Of course the point is to see my sister, but the point of coming all the way to Montana instead of just getting her to come home, or going to California when she's there, or whatever else, is to see her first ever photo exhibit. There's this thing called First Fridays in Missoula, where a bunch of cafes and bars and shops and various other establishments around town accept local artists (via an application process) to come and display their work for a month, and the first Friday night of the month is for an opening party at the establishment, during which time the artist is present and introduces their work to whoever wants to come and say hello. So my sister got her first one at one of the local dance studios (who, coincidentally, keep their artists on a 2 month rotation instead of 1 month), so she's got 9 photos up there, divided into travel photography and dance photography, 2 things she's passionate about and wants to focus on. It's pretty great to see her get her first show, and even better to hear that she sold one of her photos (though actually I'm surprised that of all the photos, the one of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia wasn't the first to go, cause that one is awesome. She agrees on this). Hopefully this is the first of many. I keep pushing her to do more, she keeps finding excuses not to, but soon enough she will.
Hot new Amish ride
After that, it was a quick stop at the Farmer's Market for some ice cream (lunch of champions) and then off to Glacier National Park. The park is about a 3 hour drive from Missoula, but we took our time and made a couple of stops along the way. The stop of note was the Amish general store, where I bought edible souvenirs for friends (a theme in my souvenir shopping, when I do souvenir shopping). There were many Amish there, but dissappointingly now a wide range of Amish-made goods. I was hoping everything would be Amish-made, and while there was some, it was also pretty much just your standard supermarket with more Amish-made goods than average (the average of which I assume is at or near zero). But it was all worthwhile when we left and saw the horse and buggy out front that one of the Amish guys pulled up on. The whole experience did leave me with one question, though. I was under the impression that Amish shunned electricity and modern conveniences, but there was definitely electricity and other modern conveniences in that store (like cash registers. And candy). So I'm not sure what the deal is with that.
Glamping
Then we actually went to Glacier. First we stopped and checked into our tipi (we were glamping for the night, as my sister calls it. We hired a tipi with cots, which seemed awesome until we actually went to sleep and found out that the train tracks are like right next to the campground and the trains run all night, so that wasn't fun. Between jetlag and trains, I got like 5 hours of sleep that night. But I'm getting ahead of myself), and then we headed to the park to grab a kayak and head out onto Lake McDonald. When I say we, it wasn't just my sister and I. Her boyfriend came along as well. So my sister and I got a tandem kayak, and her boyfriend got a stand-up paddleboard, and we spent about 2 hours out on the lake. It was great. Beautiful, perfect weather, clean water, a bit of exercise, and bald eagles. Well, a bald eagle (who we named Mohammed and/or Mordechai). We actually got a pretty late start, and then went for BBQ for dinner, which we ended up finishing around like 9:30, but the sun stays up until like 10:00 here, so it doesn't feel weird at all. Then it was back to camp to pass out for 5 hours, followed by early morning reading for 3 hours until everyone woke up and we drank lots of coffee and continued our adventures.
Water fun times on Lake McDonald
Adventuring for day 2 took us for a drive up the Going-To-The-Sun Road, a narrow 2-lane highway through the mountains that cuts across the park via Logan's Pass. It's pretty spectacularly scenic. To be honest, when we were on the lake yesterday I was like "oh this is nice, but it's no Patagonia or Nepal" which is a totally douchey thing to think but I guess I'm just spoiled. But once we started heading up into the mountains, I changed my mind. Like I said, it's pretty spectacularly scenic. So we drove up the mountains, stopping along the way to take pictures of mountains and valleys and waterfalls and trees and animals, before making it to Logan's Pass where the fun really began. There's a short 1.5 mile hike you can do to the Hidden Lake Outlook, which we decided to do. One would think that being just 1.5 miles it would be a quick 30 minutes, but how wrong we were. There was lots of snow (Still. In July. In a heatwave. When it's 99 degrees.), so we had to hike uphill through the snow. And being that it's just a quick 1.5 miles, we thought we'd be like an hour or so and we decided not to turn back and put on sunscreen when we realized we hadn't. That was a terrible decision, because now I'm very red and in pain (also I'm very itchy with like 12 mosquito bites on my legs alone. I thought I got away from mosquitoes when I left Shanghai). But anyway, the hike itself was pretty wonderful, and once we got to the outlook it was gorgeous. If not for the fact that it was noon and we were hungry and sunburnt (a fact that was as yet unbeknownst to us) and my sister had (and still has) mutated bug bites on her feet which probably are full of baby spiders waiting to hatch and therefore her feet were killing her, we probably would have done the other 1.5 miles down to the actual lake itself. But we turned back, got in the car, drove down the mountain, ate a bison burger, then came back to Missoula.
Hidden Lake and Bearhat Mountain
It's been a long and tiring start to the trip to America, and it doesn't help that America is like the only place I actually get jetlagged, but today I felt like a real human being for the first time. That didn't stop me from taking a nap, but at least I feel normal. Which is good, because sometimes I feel like whenever I come home I'm kind of mean and short-tempered because I'm so tired. Hopefully this time will be different. I also had a chance to hang out with my sister's boyfriend today while she worked and actually get to know him, which was a good thing. Other highlights of the trip so far include my new computer, which I'm currently using to write this blog.
An assortment of crazy Christian billboards in rural Montana
Ok. I did it. I wrote a real blog. And now it's time for music. And because I wrote a real blog I'll be sharing this on Facebook, which means I need to share a fantastic new artist. The first person that comes to mind is the mysterious Anna B Savage, who is a fantastic new artist whose debut EP (cleverly titled EP) I have been obsessively listening to. But there are only 4 songs on the EP and I already shared my two favorites here and here. So she's out for today. Other options are Howard and Nadine Shah, two artists that I've been waiting to share music by until I had something to write, but then I didn't really write much for a very long time and so just shared their music anyway. But you can listen to those here and here (update: after finishing writing this blog, I went to find the hyperlinks and found out I haven't actually shared Nadine Shah yet. Whoops. I will soon). The final option, who's in the same "wanting to share but already shared" category with Nadine Shah and Howard, is Bomba Estereo. Except they're probably the best out of the bunch, and their new album, Amanecer, is one of my favorites of the year so far (NPR agrees). Which means they win and we share Bomba Estereo.
I already shared by favorite song by them, Mar (Lo Que Siento), so I won't be sharing it today. But you should listen to it here. Instead I'll start with another fantastic song by them, Fiesta. I have purposely chosen to share the video. Watch and you'll understand.
Fiesta was the first track I heard by them and it clearly caught my attention. How could it not? It's still one of my favorites but the album is full of fantastic tracks. It's pretty hard to choose what to share, but as we all know I'm a sucker for a great opening track, so up next is Amanecer, the title and opening track of the album.
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