Glacier National Park

8-22-12 to 8-23-12

On Wednesday the 22nd we drove from Lewistown, MT to St Mary, MT which is the east entrance to Glacier National Park.

After crossing the seemingly endless expanses of Montana, we got our first look of the Rocky Mountains before we got to Browning, MT.





This time we decided to stay at a KOA campground in St Mary, MT on the east side of Glacier NP. I won’t mention how much it cost to stay here per night, but we could have stayed in the last campground for 2 weeks. We will be staying here for 3 nights to explore the area on the motorcycle.

Here is the trike, trailer and motorhome at the KOA.



Today, Thursday the 23rd,we rode the trike over and back on the “Going-to-the-Sun-Road” in Glacier National Park. This is a 50 mile road that runs from St Mary on the east to West Glacier on the west side. Glacier National park was established in 1910.



This is a view as we traveled west along St Mary Lake in the morning.



Sandy quote- “One thing about riding on the motorcycle is you can smell the fresh clean pine- scented air while you ride through the forests”.  I won’t make a lot of commentary on the pictures of the mountains as it would get boring when I keep repeating how “Grand and Magnificent” these Rocky Mountains are…. not that our Blog is earth shatteringly stimulating to begin with.



If you want your children and grandchildren to see any glaciers like this, you better tell them to get on the road now. There were approximately 150 glaciers here in 1850, now only about 26 remain. These glaciers are predicted to be gone by 2030. I won’t get into the politics of “global warming” as I believe in global climate change because this area had 5,000 foot thick glaciers 12,000 years ago.





Logan Pass can get up to 80 feet of snow over winter and it may take 10 weeks to clear the road for traffic.



Now how far did you say this path goes? You could only go 1.5 miles to the Hidden Lake Lookout  at Logan Pass. After that, the trail was closed because of grizzly bear sightings. The boardwalk has been installed to keep people from tramping across the fragile alpine landscape.





So far this Columbian Ground Squirrel has been the only wildlife we have seen in the park.





“Going-to-the-Sun Road” was originally completed in 1932 and was built to accommodate vehicles of that era. Vehicles over 21 feet long are prohibited. A portion of the road is undergoing major renovation. We had to wait over half an hour for the pilot car. While waiting we met a couple (Noel and Sandy) from Mountain View, Alberta, Canada, which is just north of the park. They were headed to Kalispell where they have a cabin. While Sandy took this picture of Sandy I was getting advice from Noel about driving along the east side of Flathead Lake south of Kalispell. He said it’s like driving through an area in 1950.  He said they still put the hay up in round stacks rather than using a baler.



We started today’s excursion at 8:40 and it still took us until noon to get to the Lake McDonald Lodge where we had lunch. This view of the beautiful lodge is from the street side. The historic lodge was built in 1913 and at that time the only way to get to it was by boat until the “Going-To-The-Sun-Road” was completed. While inside eating lunch Sandy said this place reminded her of the movie “The Shining”.



This picture is from inside the lobby.





And this is a view from the lake side.



This view looks east on Lake McDonald with the tour boat leaving port.













Until next time,

Dave and Sandy

Medora Part 2

August 20th and 21st.

I must apologize for editing mistakes because we are going to try and post close to “real time” as opposed to writing, then re-reading the blog for a couple days before posting. This morning I noticed on our previous post I had us leaving on the 19th instead of the 18th.

This is the scene we woke up to on Monday morning the 20th. Kind of nice for $5 at night (with a senior pass).



Sandy and I are getting suited up for a trip to the North Unit and then north a little further, then west so we can come down the west side of the Park and National Grasslands. We ended up putting on about 230 miles.





The Visitor Center has some Roosevelt memorabilia plus an interesting 17 minute film.





This is a Fracking (a somewhat controversial method of oil drilling) site north of Belfield, ND. We probably saw 20 of these in the 67 miles from Belfield to Watford City.



The North Unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park is 52 miles north of I-94. With all the road damage in the park from the spring rains we were only able to drive 7 of the 15 miles into the park.



Here is the Little Missouri River. The water in the river is more like thin mud than water. Roosevelt’s ranch, Elkhorn Ranch was along this river and about 2/3’s up from Medora to the north unit. Elkhorn Ranch is on a back road that I did not want to take the trike on and only the foundation ruins are left.











After going through the park we continued north to Watford City before turning west. Here you can really start to see the buildup of people with the temporary housing and new business going up due to the oil boom around Williston, ND.About all you see around here are pick-up trucks, water and oil tankers. Most of the housing is small camper trailers with skirts around the foundations. I think you might be able to buy a cheap camper in a few years after the boom busts.





There are also a lot of small parks with just a few trailers parked.



It seemed that everyone was adding on more units for rent.



A new truck stop under construction.



I wonder how long this will last as the last oil boom in the 80’s only made it about 5 years.

Today, Tuesday 8-21, we worked our way west taking I-40 56 miles to Glendive, MT. There, I’ve had my fill of freeways for the month, too bad we’ll probably have to get on them all too soon. Out of Glendive we picked up MT 200 and continued west to Lewiston, MT where we are spending the night.

 

We sure saw lots of hay bales and grain fields.

 

Until next time,

Dave and Sandy

Heading west for a few weeks. Medora part 1.

August 18th and 19th.

We left on our “Out West” trip a day early, Saturday the 18th. I had planned to drive 600 miles the first day to get to Medora, ND, but as we had some walleye that we were going to drop off at Sandy’s folks on our way back we decided to leave early and drop them off on our way out. So it was 300 miles to Aberdeen the first day. Being that I don’t drive the motorhome as fast as the car, what is normally a 6 hour trip with a stop for breakfast in Glencoe took us 7½ hours.

We left Aberdeen at about 8:00 AM and headed west to Medora. After we crossed the Missouri River in Mobridge we came across many fields of sun flowers in full bloom.



After about 340 miles of driving we got into Medora and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.



Our campsite at the Cottonwood Campground in the south unit of the park was #23 and looked to the northwest at the bluffs cut by the Little Missouri River.





Once we got settled in we drove into Medora and had supper at Boots Bar and Grill. Then after supper we drove the 36 mile loop through the south park, where we got to experience three “Bison jams”. It was a good thing I had my photographer with me so I could concentrate on an escape route if we needed to get away quickly. There were some close enough we could have pulled their tails.



The Prairie Dog jams were caused by the cars stopping to take pictures rather than their taking up space on the road so we felt safer!!!



Here are some pictures of the North Dakota Badlands. They remind us more of Wyoming then the South Dakota Badlands.









Until next time,

Dave and Sandy