McGee Meadow:
We approached Glacier from the southwest, out of Missoula. We brought our sleeping bags and tent, but being too chicken to start
camping right away, we had reservations at a cheap motel near the park's entrance. Unfortunately,
the hotel manager mistakenly rented our room out from underneath us. He was terribly apologetic, and
after 20 minutes of calling hotel after hotel, he found alternate cabin
lodging for us for the night. He was nice enough to pay the difference in rates between the hotels!
The cabin turned out to have little more than a bed and a space heater, but this was all we needed.
The next morning we left on
our first hike, a half day clamber to the lovely glacial Trout Lake. It was beautiful and peaceful, but my
appreciation was tempered by the grim knowledge that I was standing on the same rocky shoals where,
in 1967, five people were stalked for a day by a grizzly,
and finally attacked at night, resulting in one person being killed.
Furthermore, in a coincidence of legendary proportions, that same night another woman about twenty miles away was
killed in her campsite by a different grizzly.
Beth and I decided we liked our cabin so much that we spent three nights there. (Really, we were still chicken.)
On our third day we birded and hiked, and then at noon started
searching for carnivorous plants. We visited McGee Meadow (shown above) along Camas Road,
a large sedge field which was knee deep with bone-chilling water. Scattered here and there in the sedges, mostly concealed,
were holes and rivulets. Probing these holes with walking sticks we were unable to reach the bottom.
As you might guess, walking the treacherous sedge field was exciting.
