Road to the Sun

The famed Going-to -the Sun Road begins in West Yellowstone and heads diagonally NE across Glacier Park. It has a number of notable areas to stop and walk or hike. It is really a hikers place as trails spread out through the park in all directions. Going-to -the Sun Road is the only road that actually makes it all the way through the interior of the park and only one real glacier, the Jackson Glacier is visiable from the road. We hit the park around noon and made a quick stop in the Lake McDonald Lodge for lunch. And what a lunch it was. An elk, bison, venison sausage appetizer with three sauces, all terrific. Dana had soup and sandwich and I had a chief's salad. All great. We then walked to the Mcdonald Falls and headed out. The Logan Pass area of the road has to be one of the most spectacular roads in the country. The road was built in 1932 and just hangs off the walls of the cliffs and canyons. Breathtaking. The Park service and hotels run shuttle services and "Touring Cars" which are open air vehicles, and encourage people to use them because Glacier Park's infrastructure is woefully inadequate. At the areas of interest, parking is almost nonexistant. Rest room facilities are also short. (Yellowstone must get the lion's share of the park systems capital budgets. ) As we continued through the park, we were unable to stop at any other areas for lack of parking. It was Sunday, so we attributed it to the weekend. The road ends in St. Mary's and we exited south down Rt 89 to Rt 49 to East Glacier and the intersection with Rt. 2. Route 2 follows the park boundaries, and we observed the Skylands fire along the side of the road. Dry weather, heat and wind have made fire control impossible, and the air quality in some areas is Code Orange, whatever that means. (Rt. 2 was closed the next am as they started backfires to clear the edges of the road.) The ride home was long and we got back around 6 pm.