Day 18: Glacier National Park

We had an excellent night’s sleep. So much so that we decided to stay another night in our Kabin and drive the 140 miles to Glacier National Park and then back. The KOA in Missoula offers a breakfast buffet, so we had that and filled our bellies. We bundled up before heading north. However, we weren’t bundled up enough because after about 25 miles we had to stop so I could bundle up more. I was drowsy so about half-way up I put an energy strip in my mouth…you know those things that are little sheets that dissolve in your mouth? I had bought some at Dollar Tree (first red flag) that were ‘energizing’ and ‘peppermint.’ Yuck. Extra yuck. It tasted like expired cough medicine. If you know me at all, I HATE the taste of cough medicine. I really thought we were going to have to pull over. And wouldn’t you know, I couldn’t get the water tube to come out enough. I spent the rest of the day trying to get that taste out of the back of my throat.

Luckily we drove right through a whole slew of cherry orchards, and each had roadside stands. We stopped at one and got 2.5 lbs of fresh cherries. They were SOOO good. We finally made it to the park (where we save another $25 with our park card). The main purpose was to ride the Going to the Sun Road, one of the best scenic roads in the country. It really was beautiful: 

  It was also full of traffic and…construction! Even in the midst of this beauty we managed to find unpaved road:

And a good stopping point for pics though:

We finally made it to the middle of the pass at Logan’s Pass. We saw a ground squirrel that kept chirping at us. We love to see all the wildlife and had been holding out to see a bear. It was here that we did…kind of:

The traffic and construction was too much so we went east to avoid it. As soon as we did we saw more melting glacier snow up close and then 3 big-horned sheep on the edge of a cliff. The riding was beautiful and scenic and much less stressful without the construction and traffic. Once we got outside the park we saw more wildlife, in the form of cattle on the side of the road. And a few miles down there were horses in the road. Out here they have a lot of open range. We encountered MORE unpaved road and a little bit of traffic because of an accident. Going south of the park instead of back through it was the right idea because we had some great riding. The train goes along this route and we followed the tracks most of the way. At one point we were travelling right alongside the train which was super cool. We were riding through the mountains and valleys. In one of those, as we were coming down the mountainside and there was a large valley on our left a bald eagle was flying right alongside us. Again, it was spectacular.

We made it to West Glacier, the town just outside of the park where we stopped at a Whiskey Distillery. It too was cool because they had a pet yak. I petted her nose. We then got a small bite at A&W and filled up with gas before heading back. In part of our trip, there was some road construction where cracks in the road were being filled with tar. There were big long white sheets covering the tar while it cured, and we are pretty sure it was toilet paper. We had to go through several Indian reservations, and we passed by the National Bison Range (although we didn’t see any, bison that is). When we made it to Missoula it was dark so we had Wendy’s before getting in the hot-tub for a quick soak. After taking our showers, we hit the hay in our nice warm cabin.

Today we rode 418.9 miles for a total of 4956.3 miles across America.