DAY NINE.
The last day started with another sunrise at one of our favorite spots right on our campground at Two Medicine.
This sunrise had no clouds, just colors changing on the mountainside below a blue sky. We watched as the shadows grew smaller and the earth started to warm up as we drank our last cups of coffee at Glacier National Park. I couldn't take enough photos to stop the moment. Go figure. Luckily, a group of birds came along and landed in the lake in front of us causing the reflections to ripple and the silence to break. This was our cue that it was time to leave. So we packed up our breakfast supplies.
After this trip was also a learning process for me to be able to test different editing techniques with landscape photography. I've never had such a wide variety of shots from so many days, this was truly an experience. Here's a few shots of the sunrise edited in a different style.
But, by that time the water had settled and I wanted to just get a few more shots of the mountains and document us with them. At this point, my outfit was solely dictated by the fact that these were the only "clean" clothes I had left from the week. We packed up and drove the short way to Pray Lake for one last look.
We then made our way through the park for one last hike before heading back to Canada to spend the night before our flights back home the next morning. It was an easy hike with barely any elevation gain. We figured this would be a good hike to end on. We were also told that this hike was the highest probability of seeing moose along the three lakes throughout the trail. We began the hike and quickly got to Bullhead Lake. No bullhead moose at Bullhead lake.
We decided to continue on and hope to catch some moose on our way back down the trail. We made it to Redrock Lake, the second on the trail. We then went on another trail to climb some rocks and see the Redrock Falls. The falls were pretty loud when you were close to them, so as I spent some time photographing them, I lost Danny. I looked all around and could not see him anywhere. Slight panic hit as my thought was, "Of course on the last day. Something would happen to him on THE LAST HIKE.". Finally, he revealed himself on top of the rocky side above the waterfalls. So once I knew he was safe, I took some time to take pictures of him on the rocks.
We then journeyed on to the third and final lake, Fishercap Lake. We decided to walk past the lake first to see where the trail led and found a ton of fresh moose tracks in the mud, but no moose. We also found a ton of bear scat on the back part of the trail, and decided we didn't want any unexpected run ins, particularly on the last day. So we turned around and settled on some rocks on the shore of Fishercap creek and ate our last lake hike lunch of the trip.
We hiked back down the trail, stopping at each lake to search for moose, but with no success. We decided that it was necessary to swim in one more lake, so we popped into Redrock Lake and dove in together! We of course stopped at one of the lodge stores before starting our road trip to Canada to purchase some souvenir shirts that I had already picked out at the beginning of the week. I was the one to drive to Canada, so Danny snapped a few photos out of the car window. It was incredible to see how much the smoke had affected the scenery and the sky by this point. Ironically enough, the park was closed the day or two after we had left due to the wildfire. When we got closer to the Canadian border I pulled over to have Danny drive. I wanted to fully take in the last glimpses of Montana.
Not a minute after we crossed the border, I burst into tears and cried for what felt like an annoyingly long time, as poetically enough a giant lightning storm brewed all around us. Danny just held my hand and knew. Knew that we had just experienced one of the best times of our life, that we had seen some of the most grandiose and awe-inspiring scenes of our lives, and that we would be back to this place again one day.