The Many Glacier Hotel was built in 1915 by the Great Northern Railroad as a draw for visitors. The theme is a Swiss Chalet on steroids. The building is huge, the rooms small, but the view is magnificant. Sitting on Swiftcurrent Lake you are surrounded by huge peaks, lush trees and lots of critters.

There are 2 Grinnell hikes. One goes right to Grinnell Lake. The other goes up to Grinnel Glacier. We chose the latter.

We decided to take the morning boat across Swiftcurrent Lake and then go over the short trail to Lake Josephine and take the second boat to the trailhead. Just something different.

This was an incredible hike. Tremendous scenery, lots of elevation gain, and a glacier at the end. What more could you possibly ask for? Well, maybe an espresso stand but what the heck. A little suffering is good for the soul.

The beautiful weather we had yesterday went elsewhere. Today it was a less than balmy 44 with wind and rain. Not great hiking weather for us, so we drove Going-To-The-Sun Road. This is one of those great engineering marvels from the 1930s and is the only road through the park. There is some work being done on it which it needs after 75 years of tourists, and it can bet a bit tight in spots, but the views are so worth it. No matter what the weather, this is a must do if you go to Glacier.

We decided on this hike because it was so very different from the Grinnell Glacer trail. It has 3 possible parts. Red Rock Falls, Bullhead Lake, and the Swiftcurrent Headwall and Pass.

The pass would take us over to the Granit Park Chalet, which we hiked to on our last trip, so we decided to go just to the Headwall and then come back.

This trail has some open areas but a great deal of it is a small cut through shrubs and trees. We did our usual bear calls - my favorite is YoYo Ma since I figure all bears are cello fans - so although we saw bear scat, we met no bears.

Except for a moose, we feel we saw a nice amount of critters on the trip. Some we just happend upon while hiking. Others were seen along the side of the road. In the case of the mountain goats they were not far from the hotel, but very high up on the cliff face. The bears were alll feeding along the road - well away from us I will add - so neither they nor we were in any danger.

Since I am on overload with the vast amount of trail shots, I figured I would just lump all the critters into their own place.

On our trip through Idaho last year we stopped in Arco, the first town to be lit by nuclear power. Unfortunately the EBR (experimental breeder reactor) site was closed for the season, but this time we were in luck.

The INL is a huge complex that covers 890 acres and has multiple active sites. It is also where the nuclear powered submarine was developed. Yes, Idaho. Anyway, this is a great tour to take. It has always been a non-weapons facility, something they stress, and it has been a part of many nuclear related tests and research, including the recent Fukushima Facility disaster.

Nuclear supporter or not, this is a part of our history and worth the quick side-trip.

If you know us, you know we just can not pass up an old mine, ruin, kiln, whatever. This is one of those places we read about years ago but had not gotten to until this trip.

In 1868 Ebenezer Hanks organized the Union Iron Company. At its height the town had almost 100 people, a schoolhouse, foundry, machine shop and more. In 1877 the Union Iron Company closed its doors and the town died.

When we left Cedar City we took UT-14, the scenic route. Since this road goes right past the southern entrance to Cedar Breaks we decided to do a side trip since we love to see all the parks we can. We are so glad we took the time.

The geology is much like that of Bryce but with more trees and nice, cool temperatures. Since it was getting late in the day we did not have time to do any of the hikes so we settled for driving the scenic road and taking in the overlooks. Wish all the things we had to settle for in life were this good. Must go back.