Day 21-August 1st

 Photos from Day 21

Comments about Day 20

We left  our dispersed campsite outside Missoula at 6:45 AM and we headed north toward the western entrance to Glacier National Park where we arrived around 9:30 AM, only to be denied entrance into the park since we did not have an “entry pass”. These can only be purchased online 48 hours before your visit and are as hard as Beatles’ tickets to acquire.  They usually sell out within minutes after becoming available.  Many of the national parks are restricting the number of daily visitors this summer due to overcrowding, but it was not obvious on Glacier’s website that this was happening.  Fortunately we learned from ranger that visitors did not need an entry pass if they enter the park between 5 pm and 6 am.  So we changed our plans and moved on.

We headed into Whitefish, which is 30 miles from the entrance to Glacier, did our laundry, had lunch, and checked into our campsite.  Then around 2 pm we headed toward the eastern entrance to the park which was a 120 mile drive.  

The drive was gorgeous, and actually passed in and out of the periphery of the park, and crosses the Continental Divide at Marias Pass along US 2.  Marias Pass was discovered in 1889  by John Stevens, who was an engineer for the Great Northern railroad.  The pass had been used for centuries by Native Americans, but was unknown to the invaders!  The railroad began running trains over the pass in 1893,  

The 56 miles of US 2 were not completed over the pass until 1930, so prior to that time, automobiles were loaded onto the rail cars and carried over the pass.  

We arrived at the eastern entrance to Glacier around 5:15 and began our 50 mile trip on the "Road to the Sun" across the park.  Twenty minutes later we encountered a traffic jam, which like the moose sitings in the fall in NH, usually means there is some wildlife near the road, and sure enough it was a grizzly!  

After 20 minutes of grizzly gawking, whose photographs are reminiscent of those I’ve taken on whale watches, i.e., “that black spot is a whale”, we continued our drive, stopping frequently for photos.  The wildfires in the west have almost completely masked the blue in Big Sky country, but never the less it was scenery was still breathtaking.

We stopped at Logan Pass, which is the highest point in the park accessible by autos.  There’s a visitors’ center at the pass, but it was too crowded so we didn’t go in.  Waiting in line to go in a gift shop is just beyond my level of patience or logic.

The descent from Logan Pass was very similar to the mountain routes in the Pyrenees and the Alps, narrow, windy, and certain death if you’re not careful.  Once the white knuckle part of the route was completed we stop along McDonald Lake, Glacier’s largest, where we watched the sunset and had a picnic dinner of eggs, bacon, and toast.

Having driven over 350 miles on the day we arrived  in Whitefish around 10 PM, with just enough daylight to find our campsite.