Glacier National Park East - St Mary, Montana

Don't try to find St Mary, MT on Mapquest or your TomTom because it's not there.  Looks like Browning is the closest thing to where we're at.  We're perched across the street from the park with an awesome view from Johnson's RV Campground (that's our tin can in the pic):

As you can see from the picture, there's still plenty of snow on the mountain in the park!  Only 12 miles of road are open at 2 different park entrances on the East side of the park.  When you see the aftermath of an avalanche that swept across the road and how the trucks must have torn the trees as they removed the snow you can understand why it takes months to clear the road ahead:

Even with only 12 miles open there was more than enough to get in some good sight seeing.  We were also expecting rain but blue skies and the sun have been out since we got here!  Makes for beautiful scenery in the park:

We were fortunate that the winds were calm too so the reflections from the lakes added to the beautiful views:

The views along the scenic drive were spectacular:

Our first afternoon in the park we saw this black bear cross the street in front of the truck and climb up in the brush beside us:

we saw moose:

and mountain goats:

a grizzly mom in the thick woods just off the road:

with her two cubs following close behind:

This wild mare and colt ran down the hill and across the street in front of us - they were being chased by stallions:

Herds of elk in the field off in the distance:

in addition to many prairie dogs and Columbian (that's how they spell it) ground squirrels that are easily confused for one another from a distance:

Along the way we stopped at several waterfalls:

We were able to hike down next to this one:

The next morning we headed out early to see what we could find.  We weren't disappointed at all.  One really nice thing about being here at this time of year is that we saw no other cars for the 1st hour or so in the park.  We did spot this black bear mom and her cubs - we were able to get about 30yds from them - so cool!!!

One of the cubs seemed very curious about us - kept checking us out:

We saw this deer scouting us out for a herd with fawns behind it:

and this eagle's black and white colors stood out from about 1200yds across the lake perched up high:

In some parts of the park it still looked like winter as the lakes were frozen over:

We hiked down this multi level fall until we hit too much snow to continue - each individual fall along the way was beautiful.  With 65 degree weather the snow is melting fast causing the falls and rivers to overflow:

But the best part was when we got to the top, Suze whispers to me "bear".  I look up and see this black bear about 30 yards away from us up the mountain side:

I take his picture and when I look back, Suze was gone (:   We've seen so many bears in the last 2 days that I was feeling a little more comfortable so I stuck around and took a few more shots - this one was camera shy and walked away.

We also caught a couple more moose.  This one was on the move:

and this one either thought he was hiding from us in the branches or he was posing for the camera:

* Just squeezed in this pic in (after initial post) from an afternoon drive where we saw a black bear, several deer, elk and this muledeer with fawn:

We scoped out some of the hikes here but weren't able to get too far because of the deep snow, yet the scenery was incredible:

We found some rough trails down by the water with a good place to rest and take in the view:

What a great place to visit even though the whole park is not open!  In some ways perhaps better as we've been told thousands of visitors will travel the park road in one day in the summer.  We plan to stop here again in August on our way back through.  The entire park should be open by then. We're off to Canada - Banff being our 1st stop.  More to come . . .