Webcams represent one of the great joys the Internet provides. You can visit places you'll never really get to, track the weather somewhere you want to go (or someplace you've been), follow a cruise ship from port to port.

You can even follow the life cycle of snow people.

Most webcams are static. They overlook the same road intersections, day after day, or they watch nothing happen in a national park, day after day. But maybe something does happen.

On Christmas Day last year, a snowman appeared at park headquarters, in view of the HQ webcam. I'd had lunch at a picnic table here a year or two before, in the summer, when the trees were leafed out and the grass was green. Maybe the snowman had been on the table for a while, but I first saw it on the holiday.

By early January 2008, the park webmaster had given us a closer view.

On March 1, park webmaster Bill Hayden posted the following update:

"It's March and spring is in the air. It's in the 40s each day consistently, and while most have been enjoying the warmer temperatures, it hasn't been so good for the snowmen. I've got the grass skirt and the scarf drying in the office and I think the deer ate the noses. Maybe they will still make a return visit if we get another big dump of snow."

. . . Who makes these fun snapshots possible!

I hope to visit the park again in the summer, to see the beautiful lakes and rivers in their non-snowy states.

I wasn't sure about permission for park site pictures, so I wrote the info email address to ask. I received the following helpful email from Ellen Blickhan:

"You are welcome to take those pictures off the website and use them. There is no formal permission that you need to write an article. It would be nice if we could get a copy of the article when you are finished."

So you see, the pictures of the snow people are legit.

Now all I have to do is get around to writing the article I had originally planned, all about what to do and see in beautiful Glacier National Park!