singing trees of the forest, jubilant fields...

I've read of singing trees of the forest, jubilant fields, rivers clapping their hands, and mountains singing for joy, and now I've witnessed it. (Psalm 96:11-13, Psalm 98:7-8) We overnighted in Havre, MT and headed out this morning for West Glacier. We stopped in Browning, MT where we visited the Museum of the Plains Indians (great museum--thanks for the tip Byron), had a picnic lunch, then rolled westward to West Glacier, the west entrance to Glacier National Park. Here's a picture of the Sweet Grass Hills in Montana. Remember the movie with Robert Duvall called Broken Trail, where he and his nephew drive a herd of horses, along with 5 Oriental girls, across Montana? Well, the picture below shows where they were supposed to be. Here in Monatana is where the Sweet Grass grows. At one of the girls' funeral, Duvall mentions "from the Sweet Grass to the packing house". This is where we get our best wheat, Golden 86 and Red Chief. It's grown here in this corner of Montana, and the fields are beautiful.

"Amber waves of grain" is all we saw for awhile.

Then we arrived in Browning. We remembered being there 2 years ago when we sagged Nathan (son) on his Texas 4000 bicycle ride from Austin, TX to Anchorage, AK with a group from UT who were riding bikes 4000 miles and raising money for cancer awareness. We were in our RV and about 25 college kids were on their bicycles. Browning brought back many memories Nathan! And Glacier National Park is calling you!

As we approached the park on highway 2, we could see the snowcapped mountains.

We drove through the west entrance on The Road to the Sun, the 50 mile road that goes through the middle of the park. It was open for only 15 miles, but we walked a little, took some pictures, and then drove 3 hikers from the Netherlands, Germany, and the Czeck Republic to their meeting point. They were here for 2 weeks with a group of 15 young adults seeing the National Parks from Seattle to San Fransisco. They had walked too far and were worried they might miss their sag van.

See them in the background? I think they drew straws who would ask us for a ride.

While Alan and I were walking in a picnic area, we saw a tree that had fresh wood shavings on the ground. We saw all these rectangle and square cut outs. At first we thought some kid did it with a pocket knife, then remembered we read about the Pileated Woodpecker here does this, looking for insects. They can hear the insects inside the tree, and they peck out a perfect square or rectangle "hole" in the tree. The picture shows the rectangles down low and up high. Alan put his cell phone next to them to show a size comparison.

We're going to stay here a couple of nights, then on to Kalispell. I haven't told any of you yet, but I have marked on my atlas where every quilt store is! Thank you sister Judy for giving me my first Quilt Store Travelers book several years ago. I faithfully mark in yellow every town along our route that has a quilt shop. How fun is that? Alan agrees to drop me off at the front door of the ones I want to visit while he takes a short nap. His motto is "Stop, Shop and Roll". And he can maneuver our MH in some pretty small downtown streets and find a place to park our Mothership and Pod (motorhome and Jeep Liberty). Kalispell has 2 quilt shops I think. Woohoo!

So as the picture below shows, Alan is a man on a mission. We are rollin' along. He's so focused. Maybe I had just finished serving him his midmorning cup of Cafe Vienna.

I'm having fun blogging this, so I'll probably keep it up even after we get to Missoula for the summer.

from sea to shining sea, mimi