I arrived into Glacier National Park on 6-27-17. I stopped by the Ranger Station to try to figure out if Frank and I could do the hike we had planned on doing where the short answer was “no” and so I spent quite a while there trying to find a different route which proved very difficult because all of the mountain passes were still covered in snow and unpassable which really restricted where we could go. I found a decent alternative, left the Ranger station and decided to try a hike to Avalanche Lake before heading to the hostel for the night. I started the hike late, around 7PM, and decided to hike until 8:05 which would give me time to get back to my car and drive to my hostel before sunset which was around 9:30PM that day.
Around 8PM I ran into Daniel (Not his real name) walking back towards the parking lot. The first thing he said to me was, “I hope you are not planning on making it to the lake”. I responded I was planning on turning soon but was going to see if I could make it to the lake first. He told me I was only about halfway there so I figured it was best to turn around now and walk back with him but not before he took me around one more curve where I saw my first elk of the trip.
He was probably in his mid twenties and as we walked back to the cars I learned that he recently just got out of the Navy where he was an engineer on a submarine for the last 5 years in Georgia. He was driving from Georgia to Portland to start his new job. He was not enthused about this new job as an engineer and told me his true passion was scuba diving. When he wasn’t on the submarine he was working at a dive shop and had completed the requisite dives and certifications to be a diving instructor. He was planning on working in Portland until January then move to the Caribbean to work full time as a diving instructor.
I mentioned that I just recently got certified and he said he was planning on going diving the following day in the park and had enough gear for two people in his truck. He invited me to join him and which I accepted. He said he was sleeping in the parking lot at the hotel at Lake Mcdonald and that the dive was in Lake Mcdonald so be there around 8AM.
I asked about him sleeping in the parking lot and he responded that he had traveled from Georgia to Montana sleeping in parking lots of National Parks over the last 10 days and hadn’t paid once for sleeping. He figured this is federal land and his taxes pay for him to sleep anywhere in them. (Eh, whatever works for you) He would park his F250 Diesel truck in some parking lot, crawl underneath his scuba gear and fall asleep. I felt like such a naive, idiot. I built this car to sleep in and yet I was paying to sleep in places meant for RVs. How much money had I wasted over the last three weeks?
I left him in the parking lot with the expectation of seeing him the next morning. I never saw him again.
When I got to my hostel that night I met several guys who were 2 days into their trek of the Pacific Northwest Trail. This trail runs from Glacier National Park all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Lucky for me, these guys just walked the path that Frank and I had planned to hike but in the reverse direction and they said there was one part that was a little tricky but if you had an ice axe, you would be fine. This first person account is what led Frank and I to complete our original route. (When we went through 4 days after them, we probably didn’t even need ice axes but since I had one, I used it).
Three of these guys, Will, Ian and Erik, went to college together and look to be recent graduates. They invited me to play a board game with them before they headed out to to their tents for the night. The game was Carcassone which I had never heard of. It is a map building game where you pull tiles extend the map and place your pieces to earn resources and points. I won, NO BIG DEAL!
Jonathan was another guy staying at the hostel that night and the only other guy actually sleeping in a bunk as the PNT guys were all sleeping in their tents out back. Jonathan looked several years younger than me and as per usual we started a conversation about our travels. He was on a 10 day vacation where he drove from Orange County to spend a week in Glacier NP. That night was his last night in Glacier before he was starting the 20 hr drive back to Southern California. The last thing he was going to do was see sunrise at Bowman Lake which was about 30 mins from our hostel. I invited myself along.
When I told him what I was doing he responded with something like, “Well, I hope you find whatever it is you are looking for.” Obviously, this is a notion that I have spent time thinking about. What causes someone to drop everything, quit their well-paying job, leave their established life to go live out of a car. I’ve never really come up with a good answer. Am I looking for a purpose, a job, a calling, something I’m interested in, relaxation, an experience, a challenge? All of those things? None of those things? I try not to think about it because then I start thinking about getting to the end and looking back and realize this was all a waste. That nothing came out of this and I’ll be back working in some office doing the responsible thing, living a life. I guess if nothing else I’ll have some cool pictures I can put up.