~*~ Going to the Sun Road
~*~
“Tourons on
Parade!”
Date: August
6, 2007
Another
campground morning and hot cup of coffee before heading out of Many Glacier and
back to St. Mary’s where we would start our trip to
Kalispell via the Going to the Sun Road. This morning wasn’t quite as blue and
beautiful as yesterday which was another sign that it’s better to hold off on
doing Floral Park until later in the week.
My
designated duty in the car is to pull out his license and National Park Pass
when we get to any park entrance. Otherwise, I have no responsibilities here
whatsoever. I’m just a useless passenger that insists on pulling off the side
of the road at any given moment so I can take a picture like all the rest of
the tourists.
The
Going to the Sun Road starts off relatively flat as it follows around the
northern shore of St. Mary’s Lake. Once you pass Rising Sun, there’s a
curve in the road with a turn out and an absolutely amazing view of St. Mary’s 
Lake, and Wild Goose Island. It is literally a picture perfect
location…so we stopped. Of course, while we were waiting for to motorcycle
riders to snap token pictures of each other in front of the view, a jammer (red tourist shuttle buses that carry loads and
loads of people up and down the Eastern side of GTTS Road to Logan Pass all day long) showed up loaded to the
hilt with tourists. If that wasn’t bad enough, probably 5-6 more cars stopped
as well. By the time I got around to taking a picture, there had to be 30
people milling around all jockeying for the same position to get the same
picture. Brad informed me that this view is typical Montana and you’ll see this photo all over the
place. He’s right, it’s on the cover of my National
Geographic Topo map for GNP. Go figure…
Silver Dollar Beach jets out into the water on the southern side, it would be a great place to hike into at some point.
It sits in the shadows of Red Eagle Mountain which I was simply fascinated by. The
immensity of it astounded me as it seemed to run the entire length of St. Mary’s Lake. I’m still surprised at the diversity of
the mountains in this area. Some of them are sharp peaks and others seem to
have giant flat summits that go on for miles. No matter what their size or
shape, the one thing they have in common is my desire to want to climb every 
single one of them!
We
left quickly from there and moved around the lake to another little spot to
pull over and snap a couple of pictures. Brad is more used to this scenery than I am
which is apparent as I gape and gawk around every corner while he casually
drives like this is no big deal. While I know that he loves the park and finds
it as appealing as I do, I am clearly the newcomer to this park. GTTS Road winds around sharp turns and seems to
teeter on the edge of every mountain side. I can’t imagine what it was like
constructing this road…or what it is like to have to clear it at the end of the
winter. Approaching Logan
Pass, Heavy Runner Mountain and Reynolds Mountain stand tall to the south. Brad is amazing at being able to tell me
exactly which mountain is which. I don’t know if I will ever really learn them!
We
decided to not stop at Logan
Pass and the Continental Divide as we will be
back on Thursday morning to begin our hike of Floral Park. It is for the best, as there seem to be
tons of tourists all over the place. Beyond that, there are cars 
stopped everywhere trying to take pictures
of the mountain goats that have no problem roaming around the parking lot,
boardwalk, and road. They are incredibly tame creatures who are probably fed
well by the tourists.
Once
over the divide and on the West side of the park and Logan Pass, the GTTS Road becomes that much more
crazy. At this point, I have no idea how they actually managed to
construct a road along the side of the mountain and it seems as though we are
inches from just taking a nose dive to the left. One wrong move and you are
going to die. That’s reassuring. As we drove over the Triple Arches and past
the Weeping Wall (which was slowed to a few tears), I recognized Heavens Peak in the distance. We had to stop around
that point because there is construction going on just above The Loop which
means a one lane road. For 10 minutes or so, we sat in the car and just took it
all in. We drove past the construction and I thought it would be an amazing
place to work – what a great jobsite! At The Loop (the only hairpin turn along
the entire road), we stopped to use the rest room and stretch our legs a little
bit. From there, the road continues on down and eventually comes to Lake McDonald and the Lodge.
Again, we stopped to check out the lodge
and the lake. By this time, the smoke cover from the fires was becoming a
little thicker and the visibility at the lake was not great. It didn’t make
much of a difference to me as we sat on the shoreline in the rocks and just
relaxed. I wanted to skip some rocks but it seems that must be a popular past
time here because there was nary a good rock to skip!
After
a bit, we departed from Lake McDonald and headed for Kalispell. Thankfully I
didn’t blink in West Glacier or I would have missed it completely. We passed
through Coram, Hungry Horse and Columbia Falls en route to Kali. I was enjoying finally
seeing the towns and the area that Brad had told me so much about. Finally I will
be able to picture these places in my head when he tells me a story. About 30
minutes later, we made our grand entrance into Kalispell, Montana. I can’t tell you exactly what I was
feeling other than a lot of happiness. It’s a beautiful area, not too big but
not so small that you have to drive forever to get to just a grocery store.
Pulling on to Brad’s street, I looked at the street sign
with the “WN” address and laughed. So it really is “WN” and not “NW”…I thought
for sure he’d been messing with me, even though I had addressed a few 
things as such and they all arrived at his
house without incident.
We
unpacked the car, throwing everything all over the place (as neatly as
possible, of course) and went to QDoba to get a
couple of the biggest burritos I have ever seen in my entire life. They
reminded me a little of Erwin Burrito in TN only these, I think, were actually
better…if that is even possible. While we were sitting outside eating, Jason (Brad’s roommate), came home. Ten minutes later
we were all drinking beer and competing in a little bit of a foosball challenge
in the basement. Yeah, I don’t think there will be a problem with anyone
getting along around here. Three smart ass sarcastic
competitive adults with a taste for good beer. We’ll be fine. Montana was feeling more and more like home every
day. I am not in the least worried at this point about finding my niche in this
northwest corner of MT.
All pictures
from GTTS
Road
and touron fun.
Jewel Basin Dayhike
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