Day 28 – Glacier National Park (Day 2)

Bird Woman Falls

Today was our last day at Glacier and we drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road through the park and exited on the eastern side of the park. It is a 53-mile drive through some of the best mountain scenery going. It is also an old road (finished in 1932) and therefore is very narrow, has a lot of switchbacks and almost no guardrails to speak of. I read that it gets so much snowfall, over 80 feet at the summit at Logan Pass, that avalanches keep destroying the guardrails, especially on the eastern side of the park. Needless to say the driver (me) didn’t do much sightseeing until he could pull over. Logan Pass at the summit marks the continental divide.

Going-To-The-Sun Road

We started in the valley that you can see in the second picture, climbed to 6,646 feet at Logan Pass and then all the way back down the eastern side of the park.

Home-made Razzleberry Pie

The weather was good again today, sunny but with a few more clouds. After spotting a bear and some deer yesterday and not having our camera handy, today we were super ready and of course saw no animals (except for some cows wandering free on the road outside the park). Isn’t that how it always is? After exiting the park, we stopped at the Park Café to have a piece of home-made pie based on Bill’s recommendations. Yum. It was enough to tide us over until dinner. Jeanne had peach and I had Razzleberry (a combination of raspberries and blackberries). And speaking of berries, I should give a shout out to the Huckleberry. It is apparently a Glacier National Park local favorite and we had it a couple of times. Last night we split a Huckleberry milk shake and for breakfast the hotel had Huckleberry scones (one of Jeanne’s favorites) and also fresh huckleberries. They look similar to blueberries but smaller in size and more tart.

Harvested Wheat Fields (Somewhere West of Havre, MT)

After the park, we drove east through upper Montana for about 180 miles to Havre. This part of Montana is extremely flat with vast wheat fields, some of which were being harvested as we passed. We could see mountains to the distant north across the plains but we think they were in Canada as the border is only about 25 miles away. Havre is definitely a railroad town as we can hear trains running almost constantly outside our window. Might be a long night.