Notes To My Mother

 In 2017 I visited Glacier with my son in law, Francisco.  We spent three days together and then met up with a photography workshop led by Andy Cook, of Rocky Mountain Reflections and photographed for another five days.  This year I met up with eight good photography buddies three days before the workshop then joined Andy Cook for another five days.  We were all completely exhausted by the time we did our last evening shoot after 8 days of hiking in the park. On our first morning, I looked out my window at 5:30 am and the sky was on fire!  I grabbed my camera and tripod and ran for the shore of Lake McDonald.  We were staying, as before, in Apgar on the west end of the lake.  I caught the above scene and within a few minutes the colors faded.  I later talked with a ranger and he said it was unusual to experience such intense sunrises here, so I felt very lucky. Later that same morning we made our way to the Hidden Lake and Mount Reynolds overlook....

Glacier National Park is a great place to visit and a superb place to photograph.  If you have not been there it is good to know there are basically two sides of the park, Westside and Eastside. On the west side you will find Avalanche Gorge, pictured above, and Lake Mc Donald.  Connecting the west and east sides is the Going to the Sun Highway.  It is only open once the snow is cleared and this year, 2023, there is no telling when that will be.  In a normal winter it is usually opened by the last week in June.   At the top of the pass there is a visitor center and a large parking lot.  There are also trails that leave this area going in a variety of directions.  The highline trail is a great one and I got this image early in the morning looking back toward the south as the sun was rising.  Bear Grass is shown in the foreground, a lucky find as it does not stay around long. If the Going to the Sun road is closed you can still get the east sid...