Today is starting our third day (July 3rd) and we are heading to the East entrance of Glacier National Park. On our way out of Sheridan, WY, we stopped at the Holiday Inn, used their Wifi connection, sent and checked email. We followed I27/US87 and then joined I90 going west to Great Falls MT. Recent rains have made everything green along the highways. The landscape is beautiful with the long mountain passes dotted with black cows grazing on the hill sides. We are traveling along the north side of the Bighorn National Forest. This day is going to be a long one, the travel is slower with the mountains and the curvy roads. At Great Falls, MT, we joined I15 to the north to state road 44, than to US 89 into St Mary. The last 80 mile leg of this took 2 hours as the narrow road is full of switch backs and steep grades. It winds through the Blackfeet Indian reservation. Many little white crosses dot the shoulders of the road indicating the location of where someone died. We arrived at Glacier east entrance around 5 PM local time and found a real nice camp spot. Our plans are to spend 5 day here leaving on Wednesday.
Today is July the 4th, the campground is full. We spent some time making our spot (#151) into the best one in the campground according to Barbara. Lots of nice things about this camp site. Out or from window we have a view of the snow covered mountains sometimes with clouds drifting by. Our spot is very private with mostly aspen trees, Doug fir, and rose thickets all around. We went on a few hikes in the campground, visited with other travelers, went to the visitor center and saw a couple of films in the 230 seat auditorium. The St Mary river is about a 1/4 mile walk from out campground. We drove to the St Mary Lodge and gift shop. While there I got the Wifi access code, but it didn't work. We will try again today, maybe. We also drove a few miles on the Going to the Sun Highway. We plan to take a shuttle bus across the 50 mile length tomorrow. We built a nice campfire from old fence wood that we brought from Lubbock. For supper we had a hotdog roast on the campfire. Big fireworks show is planned at the KOA that is located about 1/2 mile to the East. It turned out that we got a spectacular show that lasted to about midnight local time. They fired off some of the big ones. We have no cell phones service. Only Verizon phones work here. We were interested in riding the old red open top scenic buses that Ford Motor Co restored and re-powered, but the price is a little high. We'll pass on those bus rides. However all the other buses are free and run every 15 to 30 minutes.
Today is the 5th (day 5) and we are starting early so we can get the early buses to take us across the park. The Going-to-the-Sun-Road is a very historic and beautiful road that was opened to travel in the early '30. It is restricted to vehicles of 21 feet or less in the pass area.
We started the day with a trip to St Mary Lodge in hope to hook to the internet to send and receive email. It is the only spot in town and it is not working very well. We took the free bus service to Logan Pass and did a small hike in the snow. The weather is in the 60's and nice. We got a close look at some large Big-Horned sheep and a big black bear crossing the road. The next bus to Avalanche Creek was a small diesel powered 12 passenger that is suited for the switchbacks and steep grades. The distance between St Mary and Apgar is 50 miles, round trip is 100 miles. This 100 miles and all the walking and hiking around took us just about 8 hours.
At the campsite this evening we had a fire and had our hobos.
All the campgrounds are without any hookups. The generators can only be run at 2 hours intervals during the morning, noon and evening, but we do well with large battery capacity and a large 1750 watt inverter. We have no off the air TV, but we have satellite and nearly 50 DVD movies from Don King. We have a good amount of canned entertainment. Water is from a common area spigot. It is also close enough to the water spigot that I can run about 120' of hose and fill the tanks.
Headed to Many Glacier tomorrow.
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