Days 1, 2, and 3 — Give it the Beans

well, a lot has happened already

keegan and i drove a little over 24 hours straight to get to glacier.  we only paused long enough to wolf down some food or take some pictures — thankfully there was no pausing for police officers.

our stamina was rewarded as middle-of-nowhere, MT offered some incredibly vast skies that filled up at nighttime with more stars than our minds could comprehend and glacier offered gorgeous going-to-the-sun vistas, incredibly clean lakes with beautiful backdrops, windy roads that satisfied both the turbo and our itchy pedal feet (APEX!), and a very hungry (just for berries, thankfully) bear.

unfortunately, the trip thus far has not been without casualties.  after an intense stretch during which going to the sun road magically cleared and keegan “gave it the beans”, we paused to get on foot and ford what appeared to be a very shallow river and take some pictures looking back at the car.  the river turned out to be a tad deeper (and the rocks a tad slippier) than we imagined, and both of our phones took a swim.  keegan’s survived, in large part due to his blowing (see below), but mine did not.  come on, 5S!

i just dropped keegan off at the great falls airport (which apparently takes great pride in being an international airport), and now i’m watching a pink sun glint off the clouds while lovingly encouraging the starbucks wifi to upload these pictures for you…

in a few minutes, i’ll be hopping back in the focus and either driving out into the middle of nowhere to take some more pictures of the stars, going to sleep in the parking lot, or driving a few hours back to the park.  this decision isn’t more than 3 or 4 minutes away, but i have no ideal what i’m going to do next.  that’s what i’ve been looking forward to most about this trip — flying by the seat of my recaros without a fully formed plan.  this is a way of life i’ve been without for too long, and i look forward to letting my brain relax from the stress of planning over the next few days.  i wonder what it’ll produce.

hope all is well in the civilized world, and i’ll be back soon with more pictures and stories in another post…