DAY 2 - September 27

Welcome back to Day 2 of our vacation. Since we didn’t make our drive in on the Sun Road from the east side on Monday, we decided on that for Tuesday morning. Mother Nature had other plans, but we were blissfully unaware.

We left the Cheap Sleep Motel, donned our sunglasses, and headed toward the park. We drove Highway 2 around the southern perimeter, and returned to the Two Medicine area, hoping to get better photos of Two Medicine Lake with the sun at a different angle. We stopped a few times along the way, marveling at the bright blue skies and beautiful fall colors.

Holy cow for wind!! I mean, we knew it was windy, but this was a lean-in-to-it-or-get-pushed-backward wind. Even though I shot from a tripod, most of my pictures show vibration jitters. (I need a beefier tripod.) We managed a few shots in the Two Medicine area (with cameras on shutter priority, at 1/500 sec.), then headed to the St. Mary park entrance and the Going to the Sun Road, with intentions of  heading up to Logan Pass, where the road construction would again force us to turn around.

Two Medicine Lake - high winds and clouds forecasting our future photography efforts

According to "Plants of Waterton-Glacier National Parks" this is Cascade Mountain Ash.

What we noticed right away were cloudy skies ahead, although it was sunny at the visitor center. I bought t-shirts and postcards for my grandkids (another off season plus/minus – souvenirs are marked down/selections are iffy), and we came out to sunny skies and light rain being blown in from the distant clouds. We headed west on the Sun Road where the sunny skies abruptly ended, and a steady rain began. We drove in only a few miles, to the iconic Wild Goose Island turnout. Temps were now in the upper 40’s, and the rain was non-stop. Picture making wasn’t going to happen here, so we turned around and headed east – into blue skies.

Wild Goose Island - our only shot from the Sun Road

At the St. Mary entrance, we headed north toward Babb and the Many Glacier area. Again, as soon as we were inside park boundaries, we hit rain. But for every storm, God gives us a rainbow, and a fine one it was :)

Behind us - steady rain 

Before us - a feast for the eyes

This is the "rainshine" we dealt with on the edge of the park.

Playing with my fisheye lens

Another image of the "rainshine" with the fisheye lens - this is unedited.

We again turned around and decided to head to West Glacier in the hopes of getting out of the rain, and also hoping for the opportunity to get decent sunset photos. The weather on the return drive was cloudy, and Highway 2 was wet. About 25 miles east of West Glacier, we were second or third on the scene of a rollover accident. An eastbound SUV lost control on a sharp curve, slammed into cement barricades on the west bound side, spun out, and flipped. Both occupants were out of the vehicle and appeared uninjured. We stopped to offer help, but volunteers were covering traffic in both directions. None of us had cell signals, so we continued west, and when we finally picked up a signal (near West Glacier), we saw two emergency vehicles heading east, so we knew help was on the way. 

Grateful no one was hurt.

Our hunch with the weather was right on, so we went to Five Lake, near the town of Hungry Horse, and took sunset pictures on a glass-calm lake. We met two photographers (a husband and wife team). They were talking to a young man who was on the Sun Road construction crew. He said work on the Sun Road had been halted earlier in the day due to high winds. Get this – a gust of 94 mph was recorded at Logan Pass! 

This is a photo merge of four portrait (vertical) images of Five Lake.
It spans nearly 40 inches, so this doesn't do it justice.