Day 12: Going to the Sun Road

We chose to spend this day traversing Glacier National Park the easy way: on the free shuttle!  We boarded a large van to drive westward from St. Mary's Visitor's Center to Logan's Pass, which is close to the geographic center of the park.  The 52-mile Going to the Sun Road is an amazing feat of engineering.  Built in 1933, the narrow road runs along some treacherous terrain.  Approaching Logan's Pass, riders have an amazing view of the heart of the park- the deepest and most magnificent valley carved out by glaciers long ago.  Every June the park's workers use heavy machinery to locate and clear the road beneath many, many feet of snow.  In fact, the shuttle only operates from July through Labor Day due to weather.

We were happy to see a variety of wild life in the Logan's Pass area.  We saw several mountain goats from a distance and about 6 big-horned sheep, which were loitering in the parking lot!!  We watched a short ranger program about What constitutes a glacier?  She explained how the layers build up over time, and how the pressure actually changes the structure of the molecules via glacial crystalization. She also explained that some melting on the bottom causes glaciers to move (slowly), carrying bits of the ground.  A large portion of her lecture involved some astonishing "then vs. now" photographs of glaciers in the park.

We boarded yet another shuttle to travel to the extreme western side of the park, the Apgar Station.  There we saw the beautiful Lake McDonald and did a bit of shopping.  Huckleberry ice cream was a must!  On the return shuttle we were lucky enough to see an elusive black bear.  This huge fellow was munching on some berries roadside, and wasn't the least bit spooked by the shuttle bus.

The return trip eastward took longer than we wanted it to.  We were freezing cold in our shorts & sandals, and we just wanted to be back at the camper to eat the leftover steak from the night before.  While eating these leftovers, we observed two Ranger Cars zooming out of St. Mary's Visitor's Center with their lights flashing.  We speculated that perhaps there was an accident, a bear mauling, etc.  The next day we read the newspaper and found out that two fugitives (one escaped convict and his fiancee from Arizona) were spotted at a St. Mary's restaurant at the exact time that we saw the squad cars speed off.  How cool is that to know that a nation-wide manhunt was literally a mile away from us, and we were oblivious.

We drove for a few hours towards home in the evening and decided to boon dock at a Walmart in Great Falls since it was so late.  This was one camper-friendly Walmart with 21 other R.V.s  in the lot that night (yes, we counted).  It was so strange to see people sitting in lawn chairs and walking their dogs around the Walmart Parking Lot.  Not my cup of tea... but who knew?