Quinn Endicott/SWC
110 9th Street West
Columbia Falls, MT 59912
8/6/21
Today ended with a somewhat fun night. A friend from the St. Mary valley asked if I wanted to join them at their employee prom. Since I was going to stay over at their apartment already I decided that I would go ahead and go. I was hoping the music would be fun to dance to but was sadly disappointed by the guy who was in charge of the music. At one point I asked him if he could play Uptown Funk as to which he drunkenly replied, "$!&@ you, we aren't playing white people music!" It was not the response I was expecting but I laughed anyways. Ironically he was an upper class white male who goes to school in Europe. We ended up leaving the prom a little bit after that interaction and then heading to bed. Before bed though one of my friends read the story You are Special and I hadn't listened to a bedtime story in a while. It was quite relaxing hearing a story before bed, especially one that has a great moral plot. Overall it was a fun experience in spite of having terrible music.
8/7/21
Today I woke up early with molly to go hike Dawson-Pitamaken which is a 19mile trail in the Two Medicine valley. We arrived at 8:00am and started the long trek. We wove through multiple pine forests until we came to the summit of a ridge line next to Mt. Morgan. We then went around the entire mountain's north face in 50-60 mph wind. It wasn't too bad because the trail was strongly established but it was fun to turn and spread my arms out to embrace the strength of the wind. We stopped for lunch under a rock shelter to avoid the cool wind and then continued on our way. It ended up taking us around 9 hours to complete the 19mile hike. It was a very beautiful hike as well. That evening we drove the rest of the way to the West side where we met up with some other friends to go to dinner and then to the Blue Moon bar. The Blue Moon has live music and dancing which was quite entertaining. There were many older couples pulling off some fancy swing dancing moves and a younger couple doing flips and spins! I recently shaved so when I ordered a drink the bartender thought I had a fake I.D. There was an old man sitting at the bar when the bartender was checking my I.D. and he was elbowing me and nodding and gave me a wink, which I took to imply that he thought I was underage too and trying to use a fake I.D. This reminded me as to why I had a beard in the first place, due to me looking like I'm 14 when clean shaven, so I will be growing the beard back out again. It was a fun night with great conversations and memories.
8/8/21
Today I went to the airport to pick up my sister Rachel and two cousins, Megan and Evan. I had to stop by AutoZone to refill the fluids in my van before making it to the airport. It was fun getting to see and hear my families reactions to Montana and getting to share with them the information that I have been learning throughout this summer. We stopped at DQ for lunch and then went to REI so that I could get some training supplies for climbing. Finally we drove to the West entrance of the park, while Rachel and Megan covered themselves with blankets when we passed through the entrance gate so they couldn't be seen laying on the bed, and then we made our way to Logan Pass. When we got there the fog was so thick that we couldn't see the visitor center right next to the parking lot. I had done the trail I had in mind around 4 times so we decided to still go since we were already there. Once we made it a half mile in though the fog opened up and we were able to see most of the near mountains. The rain continued within the fog and we eventually made it to the hidden lake overlook. We saw a Marmut just chilling underneath a rock overhanging but didn't run into anything else. We started our walk back and that is when the wind and rain picked up. We all weren't super prepared to be hiking in the rain so we were completely soaked and cold because it was around 55 degrees. We all grabbed a change of clothes and then ran to the bathroom building to change. Some of the bathrooms smelled extremely bad but some of us suffered through to be able to change. We then piled back in the van and drove the rest of the way to Swiftcurrent. The girls had enough space in the back to make PB&J for all of us so we weren't too hungry when we got back. I ended up taking all of our clothes and putting them in the dryer while Rachel, Megan, and Evan basically went straight to bed after settling in since they had been awake for almost 20 hours. I watched a movie to stay awake for the laundry and the once it was done I went to bed as well. The girls are staying in the van and Evan in sleeping in the cabin next door that is empty.
8/9/21
Today my family and I played a game of National Park Monopoly. It was fairly close most of the game until Evan landed on Free Parking and got $1,000. It totally changed the game and he ended up completely destroying all of us. We then played a few other card games before I had to get ready and go to work. They ended up going to Red Rock Falls and saw a moose! They came in to visit a few times during my shift and after work I went down to the employee rec room, the dungeon, and played a few rounds of Super Smash Bros. before going to bed to work at 6am the next day. I'm excited to hike with my family tomorrow and it is crazy that we only have a little over a month before the season is done.
8/10/21
Today work went well even though it was 6am-2pm and I had stayed up a little late. I was more excited to get started on the hike to Iceberg so the shift passed by fairly quickly. When I got off the activity began for packing dinner and prepping anything else that we would need for the hike. Finally, we started at around 3pm. The first part of the hike is the hardest so we all were breathing heavily once we hit mostly level ground. The rest of the hike is fairly flat and has great views. We stopped along the way for the occasional photo and then rested for a while at Ptarmigan Falls. We continued on our way discussing random things about what is coming up next for our lives or the occasional cousin/sibling jokes. We made it to Iceberg Lake after around 2 hours. The wind was crazy strong so my hat flew off into the trees and my sister helped me find it. Luckily there was a pit toilet there as well so that one of us could use the restroom. We sat by the stunning blue water to refuel with food while the wind created white caps on the lake, which is tucked away in a bowl and surrounded by mountains in a 200 degree angle. We started the trek back and made our way to the end of the trail by 7:15pm. We ended up hiking around 10.5 miles and took over 23,000 steps. We finished the evening with some board games. We played settlers of Cataan, and I destroyed them by winning with the next closest person being at 4 points to my 10. Then we played Monopoly and Evan again won with some extreme luck and bad negotiations and set the new record for the most money at the end of the game. I like to keep track of who wins and how much they had at the end. I ended up not going to bed until 12am because I thought I had a chance at beating Evan...obviously I was wrong.
8/11/21
Today I worked again at 6am and went until 2pm. However, this afternoon we planned to do Grinnell Glacier, which is a hike that I have not done before. We started at around 2:15pm and the day was much more clear than the previous one. We walked along Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine for the first 3 miles until we split to go uphill to the glacier. We passed probably over 150 people going up because of how popular the hike is. We also came across a deer right next to the trail and saw a moose in the tail end of Lake Josephine. The moose ran out of the water and almost hit a hiker because they were on the other side of a large bush and couldn't see the moose. We continued on our way until we found a nice spot to eat. We were joined by many ground squirrels trying to score some food. Megan was even able to pet a few of them because they were so friendly. We were only half way at this point and it seemed like a long time before we would make it to the glacier. We had to cross over a part in the path that had a waterfall running over it so we carefully walked across and Evan walked through the water to get cooled off. We soon found a really nice overlook of the valley and took some time for a photo shoot. Then we finally made the last stretch to the glacier after a great climb, and me digging out a sign that said the glacier was discovered in 1882 even though the indigenous people had lived out here for thousands of years before hand and knew about the glacier. Gotta love American culture, that was sarcasm by the way. We sat by the glacier lake until it got sunny enough for me to jump in and stand on an iceberg floating in the lake. It was pretty cold but honestly felt good when I got out. We sat for a while longer until the sun starting getting low and then we started on our way back. Megan's knees were really bothering her so I found some pretty crappy walking sticks that I ripped off of a dead tree and we slowly made our way back. We came across the same deer and saw a bull moose standing over a creek eating some leaves. The conversation was pretty good with Megan giving me some advice about girls and life in general and we finally made it back to the car. We then drove to Swiftcurrent to get some pizza and I found some homemade cinnamon rolls in the EDR so I snagged them for dessert. I didn't read the descriptions of the pizza that we ordered so Evan and I had to suffer through a spicy pizza to get our filling. I had asked my friends in St. Mary if we could crash at their apartment to avoid construction traffic the next day so we drove to St. Mary for the evening. One of my friends co-workers came over and played a few of her original songs on the guitar, and she was absolutely amazing at it, and then we all went to bed to get some rest before driving out the next morning.
8/12/21
We left St. Mary at 6:50am and stopped for a quick photo at the Glacier National Park sign. The girls had to cover up in the back, since they were laying on the bed, to get through the check-in but no-one was there so we made it through without a problem. Everyone mostly slept or enjoyed the Going-to-the-Sun road (GTTSR) views until we made it into Kalispell and stopped for breakfast at Chick-fil-A. We attempted to go to IHOP but they were really busy so we opted for CFA instead. We also made a stop at Krispy Kreme before driving to the airport and saying goodbye. We took a few minutes while Evan, Rachel, and Megan packed up their things to fit under the seats of the plane and then hugged and said our goodbyes. It was 10:30pm when I started on my way back to Swiftcurrent so I wasn't feeling too rushed. However, I decided to take the GTTSR and that was a mistake. Everyone was going 10mph under the speed limit so I had to zoom around some people when I got the chance and I got caught in construction on the way back in. I still hadn't made it back by 1:30pm so I started changing in the car while slowly moving through construction and finally made it back by 2:00pm about 20 minutes before I had to work. The shift went well and I was dead tired when I got off so I went straight to bed.
P.S. It is great to be with people, especially family, that know you really well
"Rachel, stop looking at my cards!" -Quinn in reference to Rachel knowing what I was going to play
"Well stop dressing like a hoe." -Rachel in reference to flaunting my cards so she could see them
-a sibling discussion-
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