Glacier National Park
After our breakfast of all-you-can-eat pancakes once more, we opted to do our laundry before heading to Glacier, hoping to beat the crowds in the evening.
While there, we discovered how KOA rakes in the revenue ($2 for 2/3 regular load, about $11 for all of our laundry!) and we met two Taiwanese women traveling together. They had attended kindergarten together back in Taiwan and had stayed close, and were now embarking on this epic road trip across Canada and the Midwestern United States, as one now resides in southern California and the other in northern Washington. Auntie and I were struck by how unexpectedly heartwarming their story was—childhood friends from another country, traveling without any men, a high school rising junior in tow, across the country, and all of Asian descent! These women possessed a fierce independence and passion for hiking and traversing the landscape, and they would not be deterred. 
We pulled into Glacier National Park at last and, after a brief stop at the visitor center to admire an osprey nest, we drove along the acclaimed Going-to-the-sun Road.
Recent projections predict that by 2020 there will no longer be any glaciers remaining in Glacier National Park due to global warming. Many of the glaciers here have already disappeared, but the sculpting and depositing effects of these behemoths of the past have left their mark on the Montana landscape, scraping crevasses for deep lakes, forming elegant trickles of waterfalls, and leaving enormous buttes framing the area. 
We drove from slender Saint Mary Lake in the east to Lake McDonald in the west, where I promptly hopped out of the van and dunked my feet in the clear cold water. You do not know cold water until you have been in glacial water. 
Despite the massive construction in Glacier, the winding roads were occasionally deserted enough to provide the eerie feeling you might just fly off the side of the mountain into the river valley below. Surprises like the Weeping Wall, an entire rock face dripping water right onto the road, and Heaven's Peak, a glorious mountain looming at a soaring 8,987 feet tall, kept the ride anything but monotonous. Clandestine waterfalls, devastation from a forest fire, and bear warnings assailed our curious eyes. Even the miniscule glimpse we stole of Glacier was incredible, and we so wished we had had the time to discover more of her unique offerings.
But our heroes were weary and famished, and so they returned to camp that night and feasted on soup, pizza, orange juice, and huckleberry ice cream.
