Today, I had my first experience hitchhiking. Another employee and I decided to go hiking, but we couldn't find anyone with a car that had the day off and an interest in a long hike. Since all the nearby trailheads lead to boring trails that we'd both already done, we opted instead to hitchhike about five miles into the park to the Rising Sun campground. The first car to pass us picked us up - a middle aged couple from Southern California on their way to do some photography and a mild hike of their own. They dropped us off near the trailhead and we set off. This five mile trail had a 2000 foot elevation climb - most off which happened in miles one and four. The trail itself was incredible and varied - we started in a woody area surrounded by mossy spruce trees, opened inot a meadow bordered with yellow, purple, and orange wildflowers, climbed across rocks and snow in an open stretch of mountainside void of all plant life, and ended in an ice-coated lake in a basin between several snow-capped mountains. Although we didn't see any animals, the landscape was incredible, the hiking was tough, and the final destination was picture perfect. The hike out took about two and a half hours, but with a half-job, the return trip was under an hour and forty-five minutes.
Once we had reached the road, we obviously had no interest in hiking another five miles to get back to the lodge, so we attempted hitchhiking again. This time, our luck was much worse and over twenty cars passed us before a white van pulled over. I have to describe this van for you... There were no seats in the back, but instead they had three lawn chairs (one already occupied by a South Dakota-born woman with long, twiggy hair in a pony-tail, very crooked, yellow teeth, glasses that magnified her eyes to the size of Professor Trelawney's, and a crackly man-voice). On the right side of the van's interior, the entire wall was covered in makeshift shelves, on which sat all the fishing gear. On the floor, a basketball rolled around knocking down several coffee mugs, a potted daisy, and assorted hunting equipment (although I didn't see any guns). The van smelled strongly of propane, and the floor was carpeted in a thick camouflage blanket. The woman told us about their road trip from SD and showed us pictures of a bison alongside the road, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse. The driver spoke very little, and the man in the passneger seat was silent. The woman explained to us that he was her friend from Iceland visiting, and so they were showing him the US. After a stop in East Glacier, they had no plans as far as where to go next. So they dropped us off at the lodge and continued on their bizarre road trip, and we laughed about our good fortune in getting a ride in the most unusual lawn-chair-van ever.
