America the Beautiful... part II

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

I was really excited for the opportunity to spend time at Glacier, particularly given the dire predictions about climate change and the loss of actual glaciers inside the park. It was great not only getting to see one of the glaciers, but to learn about the science and culture of the park.

For the few weeks leading up to my visit, I was on pins and needles waiting for the Going-To-The-Sun Road to open. One of the great AND terrible things about Glacier is its inaccessibility - it is over 1 million acres of pristine wilderness, and there are very few ways to actually drive around the park. GttS Road is only open for around 4 months each year, and plowing the road in the spring is notoriously difficult. 

Jackson Glacier

My initial plan was to drive across the park from the St. Mary entrance to get to West Glacier (where the seminar was being held), but the day I arrived, about 37 miles of road was still closed.

Nevertheless, I set out from St. Mary's up the GttS Road as far as I could go. Because it led to a dead end, there weren't many people on that side of the park. I first drove straight to the end of the road, at the Jackson Glacier overlook. Jackson is the 7th largest of the 25 or so remaining glaciers in the park - and one of the only ones visible from a road. Over the past 50 year, it lost almost a third of its size, and scientists think that by the year 2030, all the glaciers in the park will disappear.

I made my way slowly back to St. Mary's, stopping first at Sunrift Gorge for a quick hike to Baring Falls, but I was edgy the whole time and quickly headed back. I'm not normally a nervous hiker, but I was by myself and without bear spray, and grizzlies are a very real threat in that area. In fact, for the few days before that, the very popular Avalanche Lake hike was closed because there were too many bears in the area.

See that tiny island with a few trees? That's Goose Island - famous for being the opening shot in The Shining...

St. Mary Lake

With my Pals, Jason and Britnee

I decided to make my way to West Glacier and pick up Britnee, another teacher who was sharing a hotel with me before our seminar started the next morning. On my way to pick her up, she ran into another teacher at the airport who asked to join us. As long as he was OK with cramming into my tiny Toyota Yaris, the more the merrier, I thought. And the Road Trip Trio was formed...

The lobby (and trophy heads) of Lake McDonald Lodge

Britnee (middle school science from North Carolina), Jason (outdoor educator from Wisconsin) and I decided to drive up the GttS route from the west side, as far as we could go. We stopped to see Apgar Village and listened to a ranger talk, had huckleberry ice cream, and visited the Lake McDonald Lodge before getting to the end of the road at the Avalanche Trailhead.

The color of the glacial melt in every body of water we saw was absolutely mesmerizing. The water is so incredibly clean and clear, and the rivers almost seem to glow with their practically neon turquoise color.

We had a nice dinner in Kalispell (tried the elk sausage - good!), and the next morning we checked into the Glacier Institute Field Campus to meet the rest of the teachers. The seminar was a great blend of science and culture, highlighting the Indian tribes that once thrived here (interestingly they call themselves 'Indians' rather than 'Native Americans,' like I had always been taught). The Blackfoot, Kootenai, Salish, and Pend d'Oreille tribes all still have a presence in the area, but sounds to me like they were basically cheated out of their lands and aren't able to use it for their traditional ways of life. We were lucky enough to meet with Blackfoot tribal members for a welcome blessing and to hear about their way of life as well as preservation initiatives.

We took a short hike with Helen, a member of the Blackfoot tribe and a professor at the local college, who told us about native plants. She took us to Running Eagle Falls, also known as "trick falls" because there are actually two waterfalls in the same place. When the water level is low, the falls only come from the lower opening, halfway up the cliff. If the water level is too high, the upper falls obscures the lower falls and it just looks like one big waterfall. We were lucky - the water level was just right, and we got to see them both.

Getting to do hands-on research was one of the highlights of the week. We helped with a huckleberry monitoring project using GPS to find specific plants, watched a plankton tow to check for invasive mussel species, and helped monitor and pull invasive plant species.

Into the field we go!

Before...

... and after!

Pulled weeds in my moose socks...

Plankton tow to check for zebra and quagga
mussel larvae in the waters below Lake McDonald.

Perhaps my favorite activity of the week was our hike to Avalanche Lake. The week before, this popular hike had closed for a few days due to heavy grizzly bear activity, so we were lucky that it was open on the day of our hike. And it was truly breathtaking.

Avalanche Gorge

At the start of the hike, we crossed a footbridge and got a look at Avalanche Gorge - a lush, fern and moss covered area with sparkling turquoise/teal water. No joke, the place had to be enchanted - I kept expecting fairies or gnomes to come popping out.

Dipped my feet in... holy cow was it
 cold! The lake is fed by Sperry Glacier.

At various stops along the hike, Laura gave us a great overview of the region's geology (from the precambrian stromatolites, to evidence of thrust faults, to hundreds of trees downed by avalanche, to glacial erratics). And then we reached Avalanche Lake. Unreal.

Throughout the week, I was amazed by the quantity and diversity of the wildflowers. They were all over the park, and there were so many different kinds, in so many different shapes and colors.  Even though we learned about how some were non-native invasive species, it was still beautiful seeing them!

They were all over the
trails!

The abundance of beargrass
was particularly impressive -
they don't normally get as much
as they did this year, but it was
EVERYWHERE.

I feel like there were so many times on the trip that we "got lucky" - with perfect timing for different hikes and activities. But by far the luckiest was the opening of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which finally opened the day before our workshop ended. So that night, right after dinner, we all took off to see the sights. Rather than going on the bigger shuttle, I went with Steph, Bethany, and Megan in Steph's car, so that we could get a better view. It was definitely worth it - the road has spectacular scenery, and we got to take our time and stop along the way.

At the summit of the mountain is Logan Pass - the Continental Divide, where one side of the mountain drains to the Pacific Ocean, and the other feeds into the Atlantic via the Gulf of Mexico. (Interestingly, I also saw Triple Divide Peak on the St. Mary side, where a watershed leading to the Arctic Ocean is also present.)











Going after dinner was also great timing, because it meant we got to watch the sunset through the pass. The colors were spectacular - and it really wasn't that scary driving in the dark!



On our final day of the workshop, we did some hands-on activities that we could bring to the classroom, such as creating glaciers and modeling soil erosion. We also had a talk on climate change and the loss of glaciers, and learned about the new methods of tracking glacial melt using satellite imagery.

The Groovy Glacier Group - a great group of amazing teachers!

A few of us were staying an extra day, so we took two cars back up GttS Road to try for a final hike. We made it to St. Mary Falls and Virginia Falls - and even saw some crazy kayakers plunge around 15 feet down into the water. A fun way to end a great hike... and a great week!

America the Beautiful

I love National Parks. Love love love them. So I was so thrilled when I found out I got into not just one, but two different teacher workshops in National Parks this summer!! The workshops were just a few days apart, so I planned a little road trip for myself. Not only would I get to spend time in Yellowstone and Glacier, but I was also going to do a short trip to Grand Teton National Park.

Weirdly, flights from California always seem to land in Montana at around midnight. So I stayed in Bozeman the first night and drove down through Idaho the next morning to get to the Tetons.




GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK

The Tetons are a cool mountain range, with some really interesting geology. The range itself was formed when tectonic movements forced the eastern plate down under the Teton plate. The Tetons got pushed upwards to form mountains - called a fault block mountain range.

This is significant, because it means there is a steep eastern-facing slope (the side we see from the valley), there are no foothills (so the mountains rise up suddenly from the flat valley floor), and you can actually see fault scarps (cliffs or steep slopes) on the mountainside. This gives the most amazing views of snow-capped mountains while driving through the valley of Jackson Hole.

I only had a two half-days to see all of the park, but it meant I could drive through almost all of it and go on a couple very short walks. On the first day, I did the loop from Moose through Moran Junction. Stopped to see the Chapel of the Transfiguration, Menor's Ferry, Jenny Lake, and drove up to Signal Hill. It was a gorgeous day, and the wildflowers were in full bloom.

It was like a superbloom, but they have them every year!!

The view from Signal Hill

LSR Preserve Center - the tiny parking lot keeps visitors to a minimum, but
it's worth the wait. The Preserve is meant to help provide an opportunity for 
solitude and reflection while connecting with nature.

The next day, on my way to Yellowstone, I drove up the Moose-Wilson Road and stopped at the Laurance S Rockefeller Preserve. I had no idea the Rockefellers had such an impact on the creation of this National Park - in the 1920s and 30s, the businessmen and ranchers in Jackson Hole had a really Ron Swanson view of the government and thought they'd be loosing their freedom if a park was established. John D. Rockefeller came and visited in the 1920s and fell in love with the area - so he created a company to buy private lands from landowners who otherwise would never have sold to Rockefeller. He then donated the 35,000 acres of land to the National Park Service for the creation of Jackson Hole National Monument, much to the dismay of locals. They tried to have the monument abolished, but by the end of WWII, when local citizens started realizing that tourism was bringing in a lot of money, their attitudes changed. in 1950, Grand Teton National Park was created.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

I continued the drive north up into Yellowstone, going the Eastern route (by Yellowstone Lake) to avoid the traffic around Old Faithful. Stopped first at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone before making my way to Gardiner to check into the Yellowstone Forever Overlook Field Campus. It's up on a hill with an amazing view of the North Entrance as well as the junction of the Gardiner and Yellowstone Rivers. It was the night before the seminar started, and there were only three of us there - Candace from Arkansas and Jill from Ohio.

The day before the seminar, I went into the park to see what I could see. There is always a ton of traffic because of road closures, but I made it to the Norris Geyser Basin, Firehole Lake Drive, and Artist's Paintpots to see some geothermal features.

The mud pots and fumaroles at Artist's Paintpots

Throughout the trip, of course I saw plenty of wildlife...

Like this bachelor herd of bighorn sheep...









And the ladies, looking out over their domain...

I even saw my first ever badger! These animals are quite shy...

I SAID NO PICTURES! GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!!

There were lots and lots of marmots...


And in a strange turn of events, saw a coyote being chased off by a pronghorn. His buddies were howling... in laughter??


There was amazing wildlife viewing from our cabin - on several separate occasions, we had elk, bighorn sheep, horses, and marmots in the field right outside our kitchen window.

One day, from the spotting scope, we even saw a rare white elk! Since it had patches of color, it most like isn't a true albino - it probably has leucism (loss of pigmentation).  At first, we were amazed that she survived given her stark color contrast, but then thinking about it, she's so much better hidden in the winter...!

What? Am I not good enough for ya?!

There were plenty of ungulates (hoofed mammals), like pronghorn, mule deer, white-tail deer, and elk. But no moose. sigh. someday...!



















The Yellowstone STEAM Teacher Workshop was a four day course that gave us tips and ideas to blend art into STEM curriculum. We got lots of time to work on our own projects, both in the studio and out in the field. The best part is that you don't have to be a great artist in order to create great art - you just have to learn how to be a good observer and not be afraid get pen or pencil to paper. Since we were only given 10-15 minutes to do our sketches, we didn't have time to get bogged down in details or try to make things look perfect.

On one day, we went to Mammoth Hot Springs and tested the water for pH, temperature, and cyanobacteria. With a pH of 8-9 and a temperature of around 100.2°, the Grassy Spring pool we were testing probably had Oscillatoria as its microbe. We learned about Yellowstone's different thermal features (hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, and mud pots), and how you need 5 ingredients (P2HEW - Plumbing, Preservation, Heat, Earthquakes, and Water) in order for them to exist. We discussed how the travertine terraces were formed from water and limestone (and how they're so dynamic, moving and shifting so that trees are killed and boardwalks have to be reconstructed).

Sharing my Paint Color Acrostic

Another fun activity was the paint palette acrostic - we were given paint swatches and had to find something in nature that matched one of the paint colors. With the name of that color, we wrote an acrostic poem.

Watercolor session at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Finding what we can find, on the forest floor...

One of the most enjoyable (and surprisingly relaxing) experiences was sitting out in the field and drawing what we observed. We got to do it a few times and I found that it really made me notice things that I otherwise wouldn't.




Observing in nature isn't just seeing the big picture, but getting down and close to see things like individual leaves, bugs, and sometimes even looking through a microscope.

We got to test out several different cellphone microscopes (and figured out that the more expensive ones definitely are NOT the best ones!!)








At the end of the workshop, we had a fun little art show to display all the work that we'd done that week.



There was a small handful of us that decided to stay one last night, so after a leisurely lunch, Amy, Candace, Marge, and I drove back into the park for some hiking and sketching. We went back to Norris Geyser Basin (where I'd already stopped on the way in, but you can't get enough of that place, I say!) Since I had seen Vixen Geyser erupt a few days before, I figured it was one that erupted fairly often. So we stood in front of it for a while, and sure enough, the water level kept creeping upwards until we actually watched it erupting! We also spent the time sitting at Echinus Geyser, attempting to use watercolors to capture the strange colors.

Echinus Geyser, in photo and watercolor.

The erupting Vixen Geyser

The next morning, after a lovely breakfast with my new friends, I left Yellowstone and drove up to Great Falls, Montana. I stopped at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center for a quick visit (and learned a ton about Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's expedition through the western half of what is now the US in 1804-6. President Thomas Jefferson wanted to map out the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, and Lewis and Clark sought a route to the Pacific Ocean to stake American claim before the Europeans got to it. It's crazy to think they set off into the unknown, with none of the modern conveniences and no idea what they'd find. Imagine meeting a grizzly for the first time, or cresting the continental divide, or portaging over Great Falls. Then, when you actually reach the Pacific Ocean, you've gotta turn around and trek back home again. Oof.

View of the jump from the Visitor's Center

Just outside of Great Falls, I stopped to see the First People's Buffalo Jump in the little town of Ulm. There are records that say this is the biggest jump in the world, as well as the world's most used jump. And it was really an intriguing place.

From the base of the jump

There's evidence that the site was up to 5,000 years old, but it didn't really start being a popular site until around 900CE. Without access to horses back then, Native Americans would drive herds of bison off these cliffs as a safer way to kill large numbers of animals. They would then use the hides, meat, and bones to make the shelter, clothing, tools, and weapons that they needed for the year.

From the top of the jump

Definitely impressive seeing the site, and fascinating to think about trying to drive herds of buffalo down off the cliffs. It really gave an insight to how the Native Americans used the landscape and the natural resources to survive, but did it in a sustainable, environmentally responsible way.