Empire Builder - Glacier Mountain National Park

And then we came up to the part of the trip that I was waiting for, Glacier Mountain National Park. I have seen pictures of it and couldn't wait. The guy that was running part of the lounge car said that I wouldn't have enough memory in my camera and he was pretty close to being correct.

This is one of the tourist spots near the park.

I wish I knew the names of some of the peaks, but that's okay I guess. Being from Michigan and having never really travelled out west (except when I was young but I don't really remember it much), I've never really seen mountains and I was amazed.

One of the lower mountains.

A cliff face.

A shot of one of the mountains in front of a lake.

Another one of the mountains. I was still amazed I could see snow on them, but I guess they are pretty high up and it is still cold up there. Makes me wish I was staying here instead of passing through because I imagine there are some pretty impressive waterfalls.

A shot of the track winding into the woods. One of the other nice things about travelling by train is that it is built through some pretty wild area for the most part. So you get to see some scenery that you wouldn't normally get to see by car.

A shot of the Empire Builder as it heads around a bend. This is one of the shots I was waiting for. For as big as a train is, it's amazing how insignificant it looks compared to some parts of nature.

A shot of the moutains towering over a valley.

I kind of liked this mountain because it looked like a pyramid.

Another mountain.

Another shot of the Empire Builder and a pass. The tracks through the mountains were pretty windy, so I had lots of opportunities for shots like this. Because of this, the train moved fairly slowly through the park and also there were trains heading the other way and that limits the speed they can go. So I guess it moved slower than normal.

One of the streams going through the park. Again, I'm not terribly sure what body of water this was. If I had my proper GPS, I could have found out.

A bridge off in the distance and a river.

A closeup of that shot.

An old Great Northern diesel engine.

The Walton Hotel.

Another shot of mountains towering over a valley.

Another stream. It was getting later, so I had to bump up the film speed a bit.

This was one of those shots of being at the right place at the right time.

The moon coming over a couple hills. I think we were still in the park at this time.

Another river.

As we were leaving the park.