Driving to Glacier

The road ahead

2019-09-10 Tuesday (slow upload--photos to follow)

I’m planning for this to be a very short blog today. For one thing, all we did was drive. For another, I can’t upload it, because we are camped in Glacier National Park, and there is no phone service or wifi service.

We left Great Falls this morning at around 11:00, as usual. Joe usually is awake early, but I tend to be up late blogging, and sleep later in the mornings. Also, Joe was not happy with the electrical system in the RV again, and he was investigating various things to see why the “house batteries” were not charging properly. We actually drove for about 20 minutes today with both the generator and the Jeep turned on to charge things up.

However, other than worries about electricity, we drove all day on US 89 from just north of Great Falls, all the way to St. Mary, Montana, which is one of the gateways to Glacier NP. We didn’t take a lot of photos, although the rolling ranch land and herds of cattle we passed were beautiful. There were several stunning vistas ahead--unfortunately I was driving at that point, and Joe is not good at getting the camera out fast for a photo. He did take a couple, though, and I’m hoping to get a chance to add them to this.

US 89 passed through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation through much of our trip, including the town of Browning, which was large enough to have a community college. The town is also the seat of tribal government. We were happy to be able to buy gasoline as well. Then we turned north toward Glacier, and that was when things got hairy.

There is a lot of construction on US 89 between Browning and St. Mary. And when I say construction, it’s not like you’d see anywhere else. We drove on dirt roads that were barely wide enough for two cars, with lots of bumps and potholes (are they potholes on dirt roads? Or just holes?) It went on for miles, and there was just the lightest misty rain at the time, so it was muddy as well. Also, although there were orange cones lining the roads in some places, in many places it was just a dirt road with no people actively working on it (it was early afternoon on a weekday.) We passed machinery and supplies, but no workmen. I also wondered where the workmen might come from-- if they didn’t live on the reservation, they’d have to drive at least an hour from the nearest town--which was nothing at all, just a few dozen buildings. Life out here is just so DIFFERENT than the east or midwest. So much empty space, and a US highway is dirt for miles.

US 89 under construction

About 10 or so miles from St. Mary, the road finally went back to being paved, and we descended a long road to the valley and the park entrance. The campground I wanted (St. Mary Campground) still was not full, so I stopped to talk briefly to a ranger at the Visitor Center (it was surprisingly busy--a lot of people coming in and out!) and then we headed for the campground. The sites here are a bit closer together than we would prefer, but we did have a choice, and found one level enough so that we would not have to use our levelling blocks. We detached the Jeep, and then drove the RV around to the campground entrance again to use the dump and fill the water tank. And then we drove back and rearranged our vehicles yet again.

We have paid for 3 nights here, meaning we will have all day Wednesday and Thursday in the park. The weather for the next two days is not too bad (of course, it’s raining on us now, but that is no surprise, frankly.) I’m a bit worried about being cold, though-- I probably should have packed a couple of fall jackets, but all I brought was sweatshirts. It was hard to imagine being COLD during that miserable spell of 100 degrees in mid-August when we left home. I hope it’s nice anyway... we had really miserable weather last time we were here, in 1980, and that’s one reason we haven’t been back. It was not our favorite park. We’re hoping for better this time--we will be doing a lot of driving, and we don’t want to be doing it in the rain.

Views of St Mary Lake

Anyway, our plans are to go to Canada tomorrow, and the Going-to-the-Sun Road on Thursday (the best predicted weather.) Glacier’s full name is Glacier-Waterton Peace Park, and it is actually an international park. We’ve never been to the Waterton part of the park, and that would be fun. We just have to find out about what the requirements are for bringing Cassie. We have all her paperwork, but we need to be sure. We’ll ask at the Visitor Center before we drive the hour up to the border. We’ll be gone all day, and don’t want to leave her that long. I guess we’ll find all this stuff out tomorrow. For now, we’re eating dinner early for us (7:00 pm) and then I’ll relax, read my book, and go to bed early!