Day 16 - Glacier National Park

We departed Great Falls, MT this morning after driving back one exit from the RV park to fill up with diesel fuel - at $4.39/gallon. In West Yellowstone, it had been about $4.79/gallon. We had been told to make sure you left the Great Falls area with enough fuel to get us there and back!!!! They were right. When we arrived in St. Mary, MT (east entrance to the park), diesel was $4.99/gallon!

Anyway, the drive was through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. I'm going to be honest. I really could not tell much difference between the Indian Reservation and the plains of Montana which we had driven through on other days. However, after having listened to the abridged Ambrose book, Undaunted Courage, on CD last week, we did know that Meriwether Lewis had a run in with Blackfeet Indians on his way back to St. Louis from the Pacific.

Getting to St. Mary was non-eventful. Just rolling hills running parallel to the mountains. The real mountains. High, rocky and snowy Rocky Mountains. Again, quite awe inspiring to see the mountains rise up from the plains where you see farmers raising wheat and cattlemen raising cattle - all to ensure we are fed. Some of those dummies in Washington need to come to Montana and South Dakota and see the impact fuel prices are having on these folks. Believe it or not - they do not have mass transit!!! An electric car would not get a child to school - it would run out of juice!!! I commented to Jimmy today that being rural mail delivery person would be a really expensive job in this area of the country.

Anyway, we arrive in St. Mary at the KOA and get settled in. The mountains of Glacier National Park are visible out the front window of the RV. Not as much snow as I expected, but spectacular nonetheless!!! Oh - by the way - it is in the high 80's here - but no humidity.

After getting the RV set up and the cats settled, Jimmy and I head to the park. At the east entrance visitor's center, an osprey has built a nest on top of a telephone pole. The rangers have a scope on the osprey so that you can see them up close and personal. We find that the Going to the Sun Road is not open all the way. From the east side, we can go about 12 miles and then walk about 2 more. So - off we go up the mountain. No snow. Not a lot of cars. Not anything like Yellowstone. What we have read indicates that this park gets about 1/3 the number of visitors each year that Yellowstone gets. I guess I can understand that. It is much further north. It does not have the development around or in it that Yellowstone has. Where Yellowstone has well developed roads within the park for tourists, Glacier has one road across the park (about 50 miles), and it is closed right now.

Anyway, we get to the point where the road is closed and walk about 1 miles up the road. That is where we decided that the air was too thin and the temperature too high for us to go any farther. It is a good thing that we turned around then, because the rangers were coming down from the actual point where the snowplows and heavy equipment were working to open the rest of the road and telling everyone to go back down. We were told that the problem is not snow on the highway right now. It is damage to the road done by avalanches and slides. One ranger told us that there was one point where the road just isn't!!! Personally, I would prefer to wait until the road IS before we go up there. They do hope to have the road open by this Thursday. We will keep our fingers crossed that we get to make the trip across the park before we have to leave to come home.

Anyway, that is about all we did today. There are pictures in the blog page on Glacier National Park pictures. We are considering taking a boat tour of one or two of the lakes. We hope to get up into Canada to see the park further north. Plus, we will make a trip around to the west side of the park and go as far on the Going to the Sun Road as possible just in case they don't get the entire road open while we are here.

More tomorrow.