DAY SIX.
Our sixth day started with another really long drive to our sunrise location. We drove to St. Mary Lake to watch the sunrise over Wild Goose Island. This was the most smoke filled sunrise of them all. We waited and waited for the sun to come up, and it never showed itself through the cloud of smoke. We had a literal minute of pink skies until it faded to gray again and we decided to head out to start our hike for the day.
Today's hike was to Iceberg Lake. We started just as it became light out through the trail. The jagged mountainous skyline and blue skies with clouds made for some of my favorite landscape photos of the entire trip.
Once we reached the top of the mountain there were numerous trails through a bunch of trees. When we saw Iceberg Lake it resembled the views from the previous day at Grinnell Glacier. The water was just as blue, but ironically with less icebergs. We sat down for lunch and enjoyed our surroundings, even talking with another couple who just got to the park and this was their first hike. Before we left the lake, Danny was determined this whole trip to get in as many lakes as possible. I definitely didn't let him get into the water at Grinnell Glacier, but he was determined to get into Iceberg Lake. We took our shoes off and put our feet in the water. It was painful, but Danny wanted to jump in. So he did. Everyone watched in empathetic pain at how cold that plunge must've been, but Danny was content. He got out of the water, dried off, and we made our way back down the mountain.
When we were leaving the Many Glacier area, we saw a bunch of cars stopped in the middle of the road which is the first sign that there's an animal in sight. We stopped and looked out the window to see a black bear (which yes, are sometimes brown, crazy). I snapped the best photos I could get from the opposite side of the road and car, from inside the car of course, and we continued back towards Two Medicine. Our drive to and from Two Medicine became so familiar. We knew the way, where the free roaming cows liked to stand and sometimes sleep in the middle of the road, where the sketchy and winding edge of the mountain section was and how to safely drive it. Looking at the pictures of our drive from the car take me back to the moments we spent in the car and exactly how they felt.
When we got back to the campground, we made our way over to Two Medicine Lake for dinner and to watch the sunset. The water on the lake wasn't so reflective this evening because of the wind.
Once we watched the sun mostly set, it was too cold and windy to keep sitting out by the lake, so we decided to make our way into the small town of Two Medicine again for some highly recommended pie for strength, which was just some more huckleberry pie from another place. Fair warning, huckleberry pie is pretty expensive for a piece of pie and if it weren't I would have eaten it every day. On our way to and from town, the sky was still just slightly illuminated with soft colors, creating beautiful silhouettes of the shapes of mountains. So after pie, it was back to camp to rest up for day seven.
