We continued our way north to the St. Mary entrance of Glacier National Park, where the sight of a desolate parking lot awaited us. Empty spots soon to be filled with tour buses, shuttles, vans, trucks, cars, people, screaming children, you name it, lay vacant in an eery silence. A lone car pulled up with Utah plates, as we exchanged a warm smile and continued on our way. I leashed the dog up and headed into the park by foot, thinking we wouldn't be able to drive too far in, but much to my surprise, the road continue onward for a ways. After capturing the photograph below, we turned around and headed back towards the parking lot to continue our journey by wheels.

Glacier National Park enticed 2.91 million visitors in 2022 to enter its wild and mythical landscape. When I first moved to Montana in the Spring of 2021, I lived a fews hours south of the West Glacier entrance. I visited the park on a crisp May day, and while the interior of the park remained closed, I did catch a glimpse of what it had to offer. Fast forward to April of 2023, when I decided to take a few days off to visit the East entrance of the park. Even though I knew the interior was once again closed due to winter conditions, I wanted what little of the park I knew I could access to myself. 

Winter in Big Sky, Montana, what can I say? Well for starters I hadn't even planned on staying for one when I arrived here in May of 2021. Greeted with snow on Memorial Day I thought to myself, "what have I gotten myself into?" Fast forward to 2023, and here I am just wrapping up my second winter. A winter filled with sub zero temperatures, 3am wakeup calls, and a massive amount of that thing they call snow

Our final stop takes us to the Normandy American Cemetery where 9,388 service members, most of them whom were killed during the Normandy invasion, lay to rest. Latin crosses made of white marble mark the graves of 9,238 protestants and catholics, while the other 151 are stars of David to mark the Jewish deaths. 304 unknown soldiers are buried amongst them all.

I didn't really know what to expect when I first saw Omaha Beach in person. As I made my way to the shoreline. My only real visual knowledge of the landings were thanks to the movie Saving Private Ryan, and we all know how movies like to exaggerate moments in history. The first thought to come to mind as my eyes gazed over the shores of Omaha Beach were, "OH MY GOD, these poor men were sitting ducks!"

Pointe du Hoc is a 110 foot cliff overlooking the English Channel, a highpoint between the landing zones of Utah and Omaha Beach. While most of us know about the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach thanks to the movie Saving Private Ryan, this would be the first time I had heard the story about the brave Army Rangers who had to scale these walls to overtake the German forces.