7/7/15, “The Hunt for the Plaque”
Kalispell, Montana
“Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt
for so small a thing? So small a thing!”
While Boromir was lamenting about a small gold ring that the Fellowship
spent 13 months trying to destroy, the same could be said about the 3-foot by
2-foot bronze Plaque my mother and I, along with a significant portion of the
Glacier National Park NPS staff, four hours attempting to locate. This was not the first time we have done this
together. Unfortunately, it will be the
last time. Here, on our last great
summer road trip adventure, on our last day together, it was all about the hunt
for the plaque.
When we spoke to my
father two nights ago, we were sad to admit that we hadn’t had any great meals
yet on the trip. After I closed last
night, we headed out to dinner, which turned out to be the best meal of our
trip. A little dive that had rave
reviews and soup only referred to as “good soup.” The soup was very good, maybe even the best
of the meal, though the orgasmic buffalo steak and scrumptious huckleberry
milkshake certainly gave it a run for its money. They were sold out of fish, so mother had to
have the pork chop, though she allowed that the soup and bread and sides was
enough of a meal and barely touched the pork.
After dinner, I lit up an Ardor and began sorting my photos, a process
which I will need to finish tonight so that I can post my album tomorrow. After my pipe, still light out at 10:30 PM, I
headed to the lounge for Wi-Fi and did some office work. We were unsure of the schedule for today, and
I left open the option of waking up at 6:30 AM, getting a stamp at Many Glacier
VC, and heading back to meet my mother for breakfast at 7:30 AM before making
our way through the park. The
alternative was to still do the 7:30 AM breakfast and then go to Many Glacier
together, which would push our day back by at least an hour. That was fine, since we had plenty of time
today. The main part of the park was a
50-mile road with a good hike at the Logan Pass VC, where we believed the
Plaque to be. We could have gotten to
our hotel at 3 PM if all went well. All
did not go well.
It was 9 PM when we got
to our hotel. It didn’t matter. This wasn’t going to be an “every stamp”
visit, but I still wanted to get as many stamps as possible. However, the most important thing was the
Plaque and saying “Mainland US Complete” as I lit up my last Partagas. Finding the Plaque at a US WHS is rarely
easy, in such contrast to how prominently and proudly displayed they are at
Canadian WHS. In fact, three WHS we have
visited display the Plaque next to a bathroom.
Next to a fucking bathroom. In
contrast, cf. my pictures of the Canadian WHS Plaques, especially the one in
Quebec. Well, I’m getting ahead of
myself.
Breakfast was an ordeal, somehow
taking a full hour, which now put us two hours behind schedule, and my stress
levels were rising, especially since I read that the parking lot at Logan fills
up around 10:30 AM, and heavy rain was forecasted in the afternoon. I wanted to get that hike in at Logan before the
rain. The natural beauty of this site,
however, quickly ameliorated my stress.
We went to Many Glacier VC, and I got my stamp. We wanted to do a short nature walk to the
lake, and the trail maps were not very informative, but the ranger was on the phone
on a lengthy conversation. She was
clearly talking to her supervisor, and we had no problem with waiting as long
as it took for her to write down her tasks for the day, but, when she started
flirting with him and suggesting he come visit her district with a bottle of
wine, in spite of our visible impatience, our stress levels quickly
returned. Once she hung up, she
half-heartedly apologized, and I knew what was going on.
She had a crush on her supervisor, and I kind
of forgave her. If a girl I had crush on
called me while I was at work, I would be in hurry to hang up. In fact, I remember when I had a crush on one
of my coworkers, and I took any excuse to visit her desk and discuss things in
person that could have easily been answered by email. “The heart wants
what the heart wants,” my mother offered when I told her my theory. That did not stop us from being annoyed with
her. We asked her about a short hike,
and she told us about this two-hour loop.
I said that I wanted something shorter.
She asked how long we had in mind.
If my mother hadn’t quickly said we wanted a thirty-minute hike, I would
have sarcastically offered that I wanted a hike that was “shorter than that
phone call.” She told us where to go,
and we soon found the trailhead.
I lit
up a Las Calaveras, and we made our way to the lake and back, taking plenty of
ceremonial pictures. We made our way
into the parking, gassing up by our hotel, and my mother commented on the
dramatic beauty of the landscapes. A
year ago today, I was at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, which has similar
landscapes but is an order of magnitude more dramatic. Nothing can quite compare to that, but this
is a close second. Yellowstone,
Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, traditionally known as the “big three,” might round
out the top five, though Olympic always holds a special spot for me. We got our stamp at St. Mary’s VC and headed
up the famous, historic Going-to-the-Sun Road, on our way to Logan Pass VC,
where the Plaque was alleged to be. We
had no doubt that it would be there.
This was going to be a special moment for us. Unless we go to Italy or some other country
together, this was to be the last Plaque we saw together, on our last great
summer road trip adventure.
We went to
the VC, got our souvenirs there, got the stamps, but no Plaque to be found. We asked the ranger. She said that it was out back on a big rock
by the trailhead. Really? Were they actually properly respecting the
Plaque here? We got ready for our hike
and walked out together. We found the
big rock with a bronze plaque, but it was upright, not horizontal. Fuck!
That meant that it was the International Man and the Biosphere
plaque. No worries, the WHS Plaque is
usually right by the MAB plaque. Surely
it was on another rock nearby. No, it
wasn’t. Hmm, now the panic started to
set in, but we were used to this. It was
Great Smoky Mountain National Park all over again. We checked every rock, we looked all over the
parking lot, we asked the rangers again, including one whose job it was to man
the parking lot. One ranger thought it
might be at headquarters, which closed at 4:30 PM (it was then noon), the
other, the one who had been there for a while, said he’d never seen anything
like it. This was discouraging. We were not going to worry about it yet. I had read about it maybe being at wayside on
the road, and we’d check every wayside.
If we couldn’t find it, we’d go to headquarters, and, if anyone knew
where it was, they would at headquarters.
We were going to enjoy our hike first, and then we’d go to
headquarters.
Even though I hadn’t found
the Plaque yet, nothing was going to stop me from lighting my Partagas and
announcing, “Mainland US Complete,” though it was not the triumphant moment I had
expected, and there were no tears of joy.
We went back to the trailhead, and I lit up the Partagas. “Mainland US Complete. All 48 states, all 18 World Heritages Sites.” No other words were necessary. It held so much meaning. I remarked that it would be two years until I
went to Hawaii and that I had already done Alaska. We made our way up the trail, enjoying the
breathtaking views and the close up mountain goats, and we took plenty of
ceremonial pictures along the way. It
was a wonderful hike, but we were starving, and we had to figure out the rest
of the day.
The Plaque was most
important, and we forewent lunch and another hike to get to headquarters as
early as possible. We stopped at a
pullout for a lake view, but that was it.
We checked every wayside, but we couldn’t find the Plaque. After about an hour, we were near
headquarters, but we first stopped at the Apgar VC, where I got another stamp,
while my mother asked if they could call headquarters about the Plaque. The ranger thought it was there, and she
called headquarters to confirm, expressing little confidence in the women who
was manning the desk there. Her
confidence, or lack thereof, in Amanda was misplaced. I think I’m in love with Amanda now.
Anyway, Amanda had gone outside to look for
the Plaque, and the ranger at Apgar said that she had seen it there. She relayed that Amanda had said they had “all
three designations there.” No, no, no,
that didn’t sound promising. A WHS
plaque is one designation, not three.
Did they have three Plaques? The
ranger at Apgar showed us a picture of the outside of the building. No, it was just a small plaque with three
logos, including the famous diamond in the circle of the WHS program. That wasn’t it.
We made our way to headquarters. When we got there, Amanda took the lead in
finding the Plaque for us. She basically
went on a treasure hunt for us, looking all over headquarters, asking people
who might have known, having them call other people. The Park Service must have spent eight
man-hours on this project, maybe more.
They were relaying phone and radio calls. Rangers were driving around chasing down
leads. This was a serious treasure hunt
for them, and they kept apologizing. We
were starving and joked about ordering a pizza to headquarters. We should have.
We were there for two hours. The two top answers were Logan Pass VC and a
wayside called The Loop, both of which we had already checked. We were able to confirm that there were only
three plaques at Logan, none of which was the WHS Plaque. The Loop had two plaques, but they were both
too small to be the right one. Amanda
stayed on the task, asking anyone and everyone who might now, literally asking
every staffer she saw or could reach.
She went above and beyond the call of duty. In fact, the whole staff did. One thing led to another, and they got in
touch with the former employee, the guy who would have installed the sign 20
years ago. He thought it might have been
at Goat Haunt. How do you get to Goat
Haunt? You have to drive up through
Canada, to the Waterton part of the park (where they have the Canadian version
of the Plaque) and then take a boat ride back across the border. We spoke with someone who had been working at
the park for decades and he swore that there was no Plaque of the right size
anywhere along the Going-to-the-Sun Road and that it wasn’t at Waterton
either.
As 5 PM approached, which was
well after closing time, we exchanged contact information, and called it a day,
hunger starting to kick in, as we had skipped lunch in exchange to allot more
time to the hunt for the plaque. Amanda
was so wonderful about everything, promising to find it for us, especially
after we told her this was our last World Heritage Site, that we had seen them
all, a slight stretching of the truth, since I excluded Hawaii and since my
mother had not been along for all of them, but it was close enough to the truth.
The veteran walked outside with us, and he
thought Goat Haunt would be a good place to look, which I will be doing
tomorrow. As I was taking my ceremonial
pictures with the unofficial plaque, I got a phone call with a Kalispell area
code. This had to be it, the good news,
that they had found the plaque. The head
curator, I think that was her title, Mary was her name, was on the other end of
the phone. She had spoken to the park’s
wilderness director, who said it was at Goat Haunt.
Encouraged, we went to Apgar for ice cream,
which was slightly disappointing.
Resigned to getting the Plaque tomorrow and alone, we had a more
pressing problem. We needed to exchange
the car, the fuel gauge issues becoming a serious problem. We headed to the airport, but they couldn’t
help us, since the location was locally owned, but he called around, and the
nearest corporate location was in Canada, but we would only be able to exchange
it for an American-registered car. We
were now absolutely starving. We
exchanged contact information, too, and made our way to Kalispell for
dinner. I then got another 406 (the area
code for Kalispell). It had to either be
the car or the Plaque, good news either way.
It was the car. I could exchange
it in southern Alberta. Perfect. Kalispell had a charming historic downtown,
right where our restaurant was, but there was a thirty-minute wait.
Apparently, we had chosen the hottest restaurant
in town. I could not wait that long to
eat, so we went to a soda fountain, where I got a hot dog to tide me over. I was glad we had waited. The meal was perfect. Fried calamari, a buffalo burger, and two
local huckleberry beers, maybe the best meal of our trip. Over dinner, we reflected on the ups and
downs of our trip, and my mother allowed that this was the most awe-inspiring
National Park she had ever visited. We
were both proud of ourselves for not killing each other. These six days were the longest we had ever
spent alone together.
We stopped for
Blizzards at DQ afterwards and then headed to our hotel. After we settled in and called my father, we
headed downstairs. She printed her
boarding pass, and I went outside, where I proceeded to write this entry, which
I will now close so that I can publish and get to sleep. We have to be up in five hours, her for her
early flight, and me so that I can make my way up to Canada as soon as I drop her
off. I wrote yesterday about how much I
love the Wild West. We are now in the
North, and it is even more beautiful here.
As I make my way further north, it will only get more beautiful, just
like all the beautiful girls we have seen with the Northern look, even Amanda, especially
Amanda.
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