Many Glaciers Valley

Spent a good part of yesterday afternoon driving in Many Glacier's Valley, which is a lovely scenic 12-mile drive in Glacier National Park, which oddly enough I had never been to in spite of having lived here for nearly three years.  There were a lot of great things, many of which I photographed.  We saw some bears, from a great distance, but the scenery was far more spectacular than a couple of black dots on a hillside.  Here are some of the pictures I took; the first one is actually a composite of two pictures edited together (the sunlight was very bright so the lighting was off in some pictures) - it is now my desktop wallpaper:

This was taken about 3/4 of the way to the end of the road; the rest of the pictures following are shown in the order that they were taken, and essentially unedited aside from resizing.

This is the first place we stopped, and we probably spent more time outside of the car here than anywhere else.  This shows Lake Sheburne, near the end of the lake (the lake actually begins later on, near where our road ends); in some of the pictures below you can see the dam at the end of the lake.  Evidently the water level is extremely low now; from Google Maps it is obvious that this area (which we walked over) is normally under water.

The tower in the picture fascinated me to no end; at its base there is a place for the water to flow through, and the other side of the dam (which I unfortunately did not get any pictures of) is a high cliff where the water comes out on the other side in a little stream.

As you can see, it was quite a windy day.  A lot of my photographs did not turn out for either of two reasons: the wind, and the extraordinarily bright sunlight.  I forgot to bring my tripod, so I was unable to take any really good photos to do my editing magic on, thus any problems with exposure are basically unfixable.

I found these lake-bed patterns rather fascinating.

We were getting ready to leave at this point, and my sister borrowed my camera and snapped this photograph of me having a blast.  It's okay to laugh.

I took this picture further down the road; this is also where I took the very first photo shown, the one that is now my desktop wallpaper.  That was on the other side of the road from this one.

Further down the road, I got some pretty pictures of the lake/creek winding through the valley.  The best is yet to come, but this is pretty nice anyways.  The mountains here are awesome; it's truly a lovely day in a lovely place.  Just after taking this picture, the car in front of us (which turned around and began driving back) informed us that just before we got there, some bears had crossed the road directly in front of them.  Presumably they were talking about the same bears we saw later on, albeit from a distance.

This was probably my favorite scene (which I snapped tons of photos of); for some reason, I find the combination of the river, the rocks, and the trees stunningly beautiful.

Same location, facing the other direction.  You can see where the water comes from - the top of the waterfall, which comes down from Swiftcurrent Lake (which is where the Many Glacier Hotel is).  I had to climb down to get some better shots of the waterfall though; it was nearly invisible from the road.

Probably the best waterfall shot I have, though I have several; and another shot of my favorite scene in the trip:

The view from the road of Swiftcurrent Lake, and on the other side of the road, the beginning of the waterfall:

This is where the resort was, but most of the photographs didn't turn out that well (it's starting to get dark by now) and I prefer the nature photographs, so I didn't bother to include any of it.

On the way back from the Swiftcurrent Lake area, we came across a bunch of cars which had stopped along the road and were looking up into the hills.  We looked, and we saw first one bear, then the second one.  This is not a very good photograph; it was getting dark by now, and the bears were far away.

Half the time I wasn't taking pictures of the bears at all, because this gigantic mountain (too large and too close to fit into a single photograph) had me fairly captivated.

Another picture of the bears; they're just black dots here, not very easy to see.

The other side of the road from the bears; the moon is rising over Glacier National Park, making an interesting picture.

Looking toward Swiftcurrent Lake.  The sun has dipped down low enough now so you can see the mountains better (though unfortunately I still couldn't get the best exposure, because I didn't have my tripod) - including some patches of snow high up in the hills.

Another fantastic mountain, just to the right of where the bears were.  I took a few pictures of this one, but this is the only one that turned out very well.  The wind was pretty strong at this point, so it was hard to hold my camera steady.

By this time we're heading back home, and this is back at the beginning of Lake Sherburne, actually at an earlier point than where my first pictures were taken from.  This is right beside the dam, looking back at the lake.

The last picture I took.  This is the end of Lake Sherburne - the dam, the tower, the hills, the lake, and the moon.  Time to head home.