Day 54 – Tuesday 8/30/2011

Missoula, MT to Mackay, ID – 250 Miles

Interstate Highways are an excellent and efficient way of getting from Point A to Point B in the quickest possible manner, short of jumping on an airplane and flying. Mandated by the Eisenhower administration back in the 1950’s, they comprise one of the world’s great ground transportation systems. One must remember, however, that these were conceived in the height of the Cold War, and the purpose of these broad, minimum four-lanes wide highways was not only for the efficient movement of civilian commerce but for rapidly transporting military goods from one part of the country to another. In fact, I read somewhere that the design specifications for the Interstate Highways originally required at least one mile of straight, level pavement for every X number of overall miles of roadway; the purpose for which was to provide emergency runways for military aircraft. But somewhere along the way between then and now, as the tentacles of the Interstate Highway stretched from coast to coast and border to border, the character of America was bypassed, just as these speedy, limited access autobahns bypassed the hundreds of small towns that made our country unique. No other nation this large, while sharing a common language and system of government, retained the infinite variety of subcultures that each small town and village represented as one drove across the country on the old Route 66, for example. Because of the Interstate Highways, some of this uniqueness has been lost. Now we have an endless stretch of parallel ribbons of asphalt, punctuated by the same fast food restaurants, the same gasoline chains, the same Walmarts – even the same signage from one end of the country to another. We drive four, five, or maybe even six hundred miles a day at 75 miles per hour, barely noticing the scenery around us. The movie Cars did a better job of illustrating this sad fact than I could ever hope to describe.

So what’s the point of this philosophical tirade? Only to explain why we, in our travels, try to avoid the Interstates and stick to the “blue highways,” as William Least Heat Moon called them in his excellent book by that name back in the 1960s. And this is why we came to choose US 93 rather than Interstate 90 as we left Missoula this morning. It wasn’t exactly by chance that we chose this route; we had planned to come this way two years ago after our Pacific Northwest jaunt, but by the time we reached Missoula that year we were anxious to get home and gave in to the speed and efficiency of the Interstate. (There was actually a bit of serendipity that resulted from that choice as well, but that’s a story for another time.) But this time we were determined to take the back road – maybe we’re just trying to prolong the special experience of this journey and delay our return to the humdrum routine of life back in the big city as long as possible.

At any rate, we pulled out onto US 93 as we headed south from Missoula. On the map, Highway 93 is lined with those little green dots that signify a “scenic route,” and believe me, it turned out to be. Maybe not as scenic as some of the wonderful highways we’ve experienced along the way on this journey, but nevertheless stunning in the variety of terrain we passed through in the 250 miles of today’s drive. The first 30 or 40 miles is a wide, four-lane road that passes through several small towns – suburbs of Missoula I guess you could call them. Except for one stretch of major construction that lasted for at least 15, maybe 20 miles, it was a pleasant drive as the highway followed the Bitterroot River up through the mountains that share the same name. The air was brown and hazy from the forest fires that are burning off to the west and southwest. At one point we could even smell the unmistakable odor of wood smoke in the air. The construction zone was worse than the worst highways we encountered throughout Alaska and Canada – bumpy, muddy gravel surfacing with several stops for flaggers at one-lane segments. But like everything else, it eventually came to an end.

Shortly thereafter, the road narrowed down to two lanes and began a steep, curving ascent through the Bitterroot National Forest up to Lost Trail Pass, elevation 6995 feet, at the Montana-Idaho border. A small ski resort is located right at this pass on the west side of the road. Then, just as steeply but not quite as curvy, the road descends down toward the town of Salmon, Idaho, and follows the Salmon River slowly upstream though a beautiful valley dotted here and there with classic western ranches. At the town of Challis, the highway leaves the Salmon River and begins a long, slow ascent through what I’d call high mountain desert – brown grass and sagebrush covering a rolling valley between two fingers of mountains. The climb was barely noticeable, but as I watched the GPS the altimeter slowly rolled upward from 3500 feet to 4500, 5500, 6500 feet, finally topping out at the Willow Creek Summit, elevation 7160 feet. From there it starts descending again, perhaps a little steeper than the ascent, but not much. The character of the terrain and vegetation is very similar to Middle Park, Colorado, up above Kremmling. This time, the road descends into the Big Lost River drainage. On the east side of the highway are the mountains of the Lost River Range, home to seven of Idaho’s ten tallest peaks. The tallest, Borah Peak, tops out at 12,662 feet, and is only one of a chain of several 12K peaks in the long chain that parallels the road. Twelve thousand feet may not seem to be exceptionally high to those of us from a state with 54 fouteeners, but these peaks rise rapidly from a valley floor more than six thousand feet below. No, they don’t have the massive, sheer vertical faces we saw along the Icefield Parkway in Canada or the peaks in Glacier National Park, but they are steep – definitely not walk-ups like many of the Colorado 14-ers where the actual climb is barely two or three thousand feet.

On the southern shoulder of this range we found our stopping point for the night, the Joe T. Fellini Campground, a BLM facility on the shores of Mackay Reservoir just west of the town of Mackay, Idaho. This campground looks for all the world like the campground at Woolford Mountain Reservoir just outside Kremmling, Colorado, a site which has some significance in the journey we’ve been on for the past 54 days. More on that later.

Day 53 – Monday 8/29/2011

Glacier National Park to Missoula, MT – 139 Miles

For the first time in several days it was not crystal clear as we woke up. While it wasn’t 100 percent cloud cover, it seemed very dark in the thick stand of trees where we were camped. It never really rained on us, but as we drove south toward Missoula we went through a couple of light sprinkles. However, we did hear that it had rained quite a bit more in Missoula and even in some of the area we drove through coming down. But fortunately for us we missed it.

Our goal for today was to get to Missoula to have dinner with my friend Ed Nesselroad, whom I had known for several years in Denver until his job with the Forest Service transferred him up to Missoula. I had only seen him briefly a couple of times since his move, so I was anxious to catch up with what had been happening in his life over the past few years. I called him as we passed through West Glacier, the town at the west entrance to Glacier National Park and he suggested that we take Montana State Highway 50, a scenic road on the east side of Flathead Lake, rather than the main highway, US 93, that followed the western shore of this extremely large lake. It was a good suggestion, as it was a very scenic, back road sort of drive.

We stopped for lunch at the small town of Ronan, MT, which is about halfway between West Glacier and Missoula. Jeanette had seen a sign advertising the Ronan Café and Bakery, which sounded like a good home-cooking type place – and it was. It’s a typical small-town Main Street café on a broad street with angled parking along the curb. It is run by a Mennonite family, and is a very cheery place, obviously popular with the locals since it was crowded with real cowboys who were discussing the morning’s rain. We had a delicious crispy chicken sandwich on a homemade bun and a slice of chocolate cream pie that could have fed a party of four (but we ate it all, just the two of us). Plus, we bought two luscious looking cinnamon rolls – one for us and one for Ed and Cindy.

We arrived in Missoula about 2:30, and since the directions to Ed’s house were rather complicated, he met us out on the highway and we followed him in to his house, a very nice two-story home on a five-acre lot on the western outskirts of town. After a quick tour of the house, we all unwound with a glass of cold beer. While Ed did a few chores and Jeanette rested, I took advantage of his wi-fi to do my usual e-mail and to upload the blog posts for the past couple of days. Then we all went into town for dinner at a local eatery, where we were joined by Ed’s wife, Cindy, who was just getting off work. Afterwards, we returned to their house for a longer visit before retiring for the night.

Day 52 – Sunday 8/28/2011

Glacier National Park

Wouldn’t you know it – after weeks of rainy, cloudy weather, just as we’re almost home we’ve had four days of fantastic, clear, sunny weather. We’ve woken up each of the last four mornings, looked outside, and seen nothing but blue sky above. Oh well, be thankful for what we have and make the most of it.

After breaking camp – not much to that: turn off the water heater pilot, stow the front window shades, and put away the single leveling block we needed at this site – we drove back down toward Babb for Mass at St Mary’s Church. Along the way we stopped at the Many Glacier Hotel and took a couple of pictures of this historic structure as well as a few of the gorgeous backdrop of a sky-blue lake and the mountains beyond. This is such a beautiful place; we’re already talking about coming back and spending more time here.

We got down to Babb with about ten minutes to spare. We were greeted at the door of the church by a deacon, who was to lead the Communion Service. Again, as in so many of the small towns here and in Alaska, there was no priest and thus no Mass. This deacon was a very humble man of obvious Native American descent, which is quite natural given that the town of Babb and the larger surrounding area east of the park is part of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. (Side note: The tribal lands stretch across the U.S./Canadian border. On the Canadian side the tribe calls themselves the Blackfoot, but on the U.S. side they call themselves the Blackfeet.)

After mass we drove down to the town of St Mary for lunch before starting up the Going to the Sun Road. As mentioned previously, this is a narrow, winding road the crosses the park, going over Logan Pass, and dropping down into the McDonald River valley on the west side of the pass. Driving up the east side, I began to wonder why they have such strict size limitations for vehicles. Sure, it was somewhat narrow and had some sharp curves, but nothing really out of the ordinary for typical mountain roads. There were several viewpoints and overlooks along the way, and we stopped and took our share of photos. By the way, I’m nearing the maximum on my second 16-gig card on my Nikon DSLR, and have just about filled up an 8-gig card on my backup Canon G10. That’s a lot of photos, even considering the large file sizes these two cameras create. I’ll probably finish the second 16-gig card and be into my final card for the DSLR tomorrow. Plus Jeanette is into her second card for her little Canon point-and-shoot camera. We’ll be busy sorting photos for months when we get home.

But back to the Going to the Sun Road…There’s a lot of road repair and reconstruction going on as you near Logan Pass and beyond on the west side. It’s not too bad on the east side – there are a few short constricted sections, but even with all the two-way traffic it’s not too bad. The west side is another story, but I’ll get to that in a minute. There is a Visitor Center with a large parking lot at Logan Pass, just like that on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The parking lot was totally full, so we circled around the lot for a couple of times until we finally found someone pulling out that didn’t already have another car waiting to snag the spot. As we walked up to the Visitor Center, everyone was looking at a couple of Bighorn sheep up on the hillside across the road.

The Logan Pass Visitor Center, and the pass itself, are right at the transition between the sub-alpine and the alpine vegetation zones, what some call the Krumholz zone. The elevation is approximately 6800 feet, or roughly 5000 feet below where the same zone occurs in Colorado and 3000 to 3500 feet above where it occurs in most of southern Alaska. There are several trails leading up into the tundra from the Visitor Center, but since we’ve experienced a lot of tundra hikes, we passed on going up any higher. The wildflowers were in full bloom around the Visitor Center, however, including a couple we hadn’t seen before, Sugarbowl (a gentian), and pink one we haven’t identified yet.

Westbound from the Visitor Center the road immediately drops down along the side of the long ridge that forms the central spine of the park, which is known as the Garden Wall Divide. This is where the road gets, ahem, interesting – especially if you’re driving a vehicle that’s on the cusp of the size limit. All of a sudden you’re driving along an extremely narrow shelf road, with near vertical cliffs towering above on one side and near vertical cliffs plunging a thousand feet or more on the other. The pavement is barely 16 to 18 feet wide at most, with cut rock on the inside and a low stone wall on the outside, which leaves no room for error. Throw in a few construction zones and it really gets interesting. Thank goodness the Tiger’s mirrors retract, otherwise they would have been scraping the rock on one side or hitting oncoming vehicles on the other. Plus, all this is on a curving, seven to eight percent downgrade, and it goes on like this for at least twelve miles before finally making a sharp switchback and leveling out a bit. It’s a gear-down, both hands on the wheel segment for sure. It would be great fun if we still had our Miata and there was no traffic, but we were in an almost eight-foot wide motorhome and it was Sunday afternoon on one of the most popular drives in one of the most popular National Parks. Now I know why they won’t let larger vehicles on the Going to the Sun Road.

Once down off the side of the mountain, the road levels out and follows the McDonald River for several miles. We stopped at a campground for the night so the report of the rest of the road will have to wait until tomorrow.

Our campground is called Avalanche Creek Campground, a typical NPS dry campground similar to the Many Glacier Campground where we stayed last night. It sits in the middle of a towering forest of Western Red Cedar and Hemlock trees. The sites, at least on this loop, are all short drive-through types, which make it convenient for RV’ers, especially those towing trailers. We chilled for an hour or so to unwind from the drive before fixing dinner, then went for a nice walk along the “Trail of Cedars,” an eight-tenths of a mile loop through the old-growth Cedar forest that starts just outside the campground. This trail follows Avalanche Creek up to the steep gorge where it flows in a roaring cascade out of the base of the mountain behind our campground. The trail then crosses the creek on a well-built wooden bridge, and continues on an elevated boardwalk above the forest floor for another half-mile to the road. It then turns and loops back to a small parking area just outside the campground. It’s a magical stroll through a mystical environment, although it’s nowhere near the equal to the Ancient Forest trail we took through the rainforest of giant cedars between Prince George and Mt Logan Provincial Park a week ago.

I’d like to close tonight with a prayer of thanks that Russell and Carol made it through the hurricane with no serious damage to their home in Alexandria. We’re still anxious over their boat, which they keep in a marina on Chesapeake Bay, but will know nothing until they get over to check on it (and we get back into cell phone range).

Day 51 – Saturday 8/27/2011

Glacier National Park

Today was a no-travel, or at least very limited travel day. We only moved 20 miles or so from the commercial campground at St Mary to the Many Glacier Campground a little farther north and approximately 12 miles up the Swiftcurrent River valley. This is a large Park Service Campground with over a hundred dry campsites, set in the trees alongside the river at the end of the road. Besides the campground, there is a ranger station, a lodge of sorts with a small store and restaurants, and, just downstream, the historic Many Glacier Hotel. Perhaps we’ll stop by the hotel tomorrow on our way out and check it out.

We were uncertain if we were going to come up to Many Glaciers today or tomorrow; it would depend on whether our Tiger would be within the vehicle size restrictions for the Going to the Sun Road, a narrow, winding road that crosses the park from east to west by traversing Logan Pass on the Continental Divide. So our first order of business was to go down to the St Mary Park Entrance and verify that we could drive over the road. The ranger at the entrance gate asked how long it is and if we were over eight feet wide. Since we’re 19 feet long, which is under the 21-foot length limit, and do not exceed eight feet wide, he said we’re OK. If we were not to be allowed, we would take one of the tour buses today and go to Many Glacier tomorrow. But because we will be able to drive the Tiger over, we’ll wait until tomorrow. This will get us over to the west side of the park which will be closer to our next destination, Missoula.

So we rushed up to Many Glacier to secure a campsite before they totally filled up with the weekend crowd. The access road is a narrow, two-lane ribbon of asphalt. Overall, it’s a fairly decent road, but is generally a bit bumpy and there are two or three pretty rough patched areas, so the driving is slow. We averaged about 35 mph overall. It was around 10:00 or 10:30 when we arrived, and to our dismay the sign at the campground entrance said “Full.” We drove in anyway, and stopped at the campground host’s trailer to ask if it was really full or if there were any sites still available. He was unaware of the Full sign, and said yes, there are a few sites still open. It’s a first-come, first served, no reservation campground, so any site that was not physically occupied or obviously occupied with camping gear in sight, and which did not have a fee ticket on the number post, was available for the taking. We quickly found a site and got ourselves registered.

Because we hadn’t done any real hiking since Denali Park several weeks ago, we were anxious to get our boots on a trail. Several trails of varying lengths and degrees of difficulty radiate out from the campground, and we chose an easy one since we’ve let ourselves get somewhat out of shape with all the driving we’ve been doing. Our chosen trail was the Swiftcurrent Trail, which follows the river up the valley all the way to Swiftcurrent Pass, another pass over the Continental Divide. To go all the way to the pass is a hike of 6.6 miles each way, with an elevation gain of 2300 feet. We didn’t feel like we were up for the whole distance, so we elected just to hike up to Redrocks Lake and Falls, about two miles each way and a much more modest couple of hundred feet of elevation gain. That was perfect for our current level of conditioning. We actually added another half mile or so because one of our cameras’ memory cards filled up as we were photographing flowers just a short way up the trail. This meant returning to the motorhome to get another memory card. That gave us a good excuse to eat lunch and change into shorts before restarting the hike.

The trail is well-maintained the entire way. It starts from a large parking lot right outside the campground and almost immediately crosses a small creek on a sturdy wooden bridge. About a quarter mile up the trail is a side trail down to Fishercap Lake, a small lake from which there are some nice views of the surrounding mountains. For the most part the trail continues in the shade of the fir and spruce trees that make up the overstory vegetation in this valley. Just before reaching Redrocks Lake, there is a small waterfall pouring over the edge of a steep cliff up a side valley. I never found out the name of that waterfall.

Redrocks Lake is a beautiful alpine lake about a quarter of a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide. It sits at the foot of Grinnell Point, a long ridge that extends from Mount Grinnell, and Mount Wilbur. Redrocks Falls is a series of cataracts at the head of the lake, dropping in three or four stages for a total distance I’d estimate to be forty feet, fed by the snowfields on the pass high above. Again, this is a beautiful setting, with forested slopes leading up to sheer cliffs of jagged rock reminiscent of those that lined the Icefield Parkway through which we passed a few days ago.

Our hike lasted probably twice as long as it should have because we kept stopping to take photos of the scenery and particularly the flowers and berries along the way. It’s getting late in the season for flowers, but there were two or three that we hadn’t seen before so Jeanette was busy with her flower books, trying to get them ID’ed. However, the berries are starting to come out in force, and this presents a whole new challenge. Ever since our Denali hike with all the different berries, identifying berries has become a new passion for Jeanette. The neat thing was, on the way back down the trail we ran into the camp hosts, and Mrs. Host was busy picking berries for a mixed berry pie she planned to bake. Being therefore something of a berry expert, we spent the rest of the way down with her picking her brain on all the berries along the trail – what kind were they, were they edible or poisonous, which made the best pies or jellies. It was quite an education.

It was about 2:30 or 3:00 when we got back to the campground. Off came our boots and out came the comfortable folding chairs. We spent the rest of the afternoon just chilling in the shade, catching up on our reading. We did wander over to the ranger station around 4:30 pm, where we learned of two programs for the evening. One, an astronomy program was to be held up at Logan Pass. That would have been interesting, but it meant a 35 or 40 mile drive each way, with the drive back being after midnight. And because parking up at the Logan Pass Visitor Center is limited, it would be necessary to drive all the way in to St Mary just to get one of the limited number of tickets to access the program. So instead we just stayed here in the campground and listened to one of the rangers give a short, but interesting presentation on plants and animals in the alpine zone of the park.

Tomorrow our plan is to go to 11:00 Mass at the little Catholic Church in the small village of Babb, where the Many Glaciers Road joins the highway, then take the drive over the Going to the Sun Road. We’ll camp over on the west side of the park tomorrow night and head to Missoula on Monday.

Day 50 – Friday 8/26/2011

Green Ford Provincial Park, AB to St Mary, MT – 185 Miles

We’re back in the U.S. of A. for good; we made our final border crossing this afternoon at the Chief Mountain Port of Entry, just outside the boundaries of Waterton Lakes National Park and Glacier National Park.

The day dawned crystal clear, with not a cloud in the sky. We had a brief shower late yesterday afternoon – not much rain but a lot of thunder – and that really cleared the air. But it doesn’t take much to clear the air up in these parts; I can’t remember seeing even a faint trace of air pollution since we first crossed into Canada seven weeks ago. Haze from moisture in the air, yes; but man-made pollution, no. We were the only ones in this small little Provincial campground last night, so it was almost like boondocking. There was an inn right next to the park, a bed and breakfast sort of place, and yesterday evening as we took a walk after dinner there was a couple from the inn walking along the river behind our camp. They told us there was going to be a charity trail ride there this weekend, and sure enough, as we were eating breakfast this morning the first of the weekend campers rolled in. As we left the campground and drove down to the highway intersection at Longview, a distance of maybe fifteen miles, we passed five or six trucks pulling horse trailers coming in the opposite direction, which we assumed were riders coming up for the charity ride.

At the small village of Longview we turned south on Highway 22 and drove through some of the most beautiful, rolling range land you can imagine – large pastures bounded by strips of aspen and pine forest. The road ran between a range of low hills to the east which were dotted with sharply defined motts of aspens similar to the landscape in South Park, Colorado. To the west was a long line of hogback-type ridges covered with pine, and beyond that the foothills of the higher Rockies. Occasionally there would be a break in the hogback and a valley leading up into the mountains allowing us to see the higher peaks in the distance. The final ten or fifteen miles of this drive took us up on a flat plateau, where there were several big wind generator farms in the distance. We came to a tee-intersection and turned east for four or five miles before turning south again, this time on Highway 6, which leads down to Waterton Lakes National Park, the Canadian part of the twin Peace Parks. I’ve been calling it Waterton National Park in previous posts, but the name is really Waterton Lakes National Park. Just after making this turn back to the south is the small town of Pincher Creek. We had been out of wi-fi range for the past several days, so we stopped at the town library to check our e-mail and upload the previous four days’ worth of blog posts. Many of the campgrounds up here don’t have wi-fi, especially the Provincial and Government campgrounds, but almost every town or village has at least a small library, and these libraries almost universally have free wi-fi. We’ve been staying in a lot of Government and Provincial campgrounds because they’re an inexpensive alternative to commercial RV parks, plus they usually have more natural setting with lovely views, and are much more private and quiet, with campsites that are usually separated by natural landscaping. The downside is that they are almost always dry camps, with no utility hookups at all. Some may have a waste dump, but even those do not always have potable water.

Our plan was to spend one more night in Canada at Waterton Lakes before crossing the border into the U.S. This park is much smaller than Glacier National Park on the U.S. side of the border, and has only three campgrounds suitable for RVs. Two are dry camps, and one has full hookups. We wanted to stay in the full hookup campground because we were running short on water, but for the first time on this entire trip we found the campground full. We hadn’t worried about making a reservation because we haven’t had a problem finding a campsite anywhere for the entire trip. The only exception was at Denali National Park, where I did make an online reservation the night before we arrived. We could have stayed in one of the two dry campgrounds at the park, but we decided instead to go ahead and cross the border and stay in a commercial campground in St Mary, the gateway town to Glacier National Park. Besides needing water, we had almost a week’s worth of laundry to do. When you travel like we are in a small RV, it’s hard to take more than a weeks’ worth of underwear and socks, plus two or three days’ worth of outer garments, so finding a campground with laundry facilities or a laundromat at least once a week is essential.

It looks like we’ll spend at least a couple of days here in Glacier National Park, then head for Missoula where we hope to meet with my friend Ed, who moved up to Montana from Denver about ten years ago. After that, the big decision will be whether or not we want to try to beat all the Labor Day weekend traffic and make a dash for home by the end of next week, or to find some quiet spot and wait out the crowds.