Day 14, July 23: Spokane to Glacier

I am writing this while at Glacier Park Lodge, but will not be able to post it for a few days. Details follow.

We left Spokane on US Highway 2 headed for Glacier National Park today. As I said, the area around Spokane is relatively flat. As we headed north and east we got more into the foot hills of the Rockies and the terrain became much hillier. The road was pretty good though mostly 2 lane with occasional passing lanes on climbs. It followed rivers that flowed out of the mountains and remained relatively straight with just a slight upgrade for the most part. We did hit one part where it appears they are widening the road to 4 lanes. We had to sit about 15 or 20 minutes waiting to get through the construction area. Once we got going, it was stop and go as we had to yield to construction equipment at various points. The roadway was mostly packed dirt and the construction zone went on for about 2 miles. Fortunately, Sheila was driving, so I just relaxed and "enjoyed" the ride.

As we got closer to the park, the mountains got more rugged and the vistas were fantastic. As can be expected there were areas where we drove along the edge of a mountain and could look down into a valley very far below us. Other places we went along mountain lakes that were mirror smooth. I took some pictures out the windows of the car and we stopped at a couple of places.

When we got to the area along the southern boundary of the park, we saw a huge cloud of smoke ahead of us. It was obviously a forest fire. The area south of the park is a national forest, and the fire was somewhere in there. We got close enough that we could smell the smoke. We all agreed that was as close as we wanted to be.

We arrived at Glacier Park Lodge around 4:30 pm MDT. The lodge is exactly as we expected. We had seen the lodge on a PBS program about the great lodges of the national parks. The lodge was built on the Blackfeet Reservation in 1914 by the Great Northern Railway. Large trees were used as the main supports in the lobby colonnade. There are 60 Douglas firs and cedars, 36 to 42 inches in diameter and 40 feet long that provide support in the lobby and for the verandahs. They estimate the trees were 500 to 800 years old when they were cut. The lodge now has an annex and has 161 rooms for about 500 people. There is no TV, no air conditioning, no internet access, limited cell phone service and one ice machine for the whole place. It's great! It is a bit hot but the humidity is low. I think the day time highs are in the mid 80s. It suppossed to get down to low to mid 60s at night, so we'll see how it goes.

After we ate dinner in the restaurant in the lodge (I had bison stew), we went for a bit of a drive on the road that runs up the east side of the park (Looking Glass Hill Road). It went up to about 6000 feet and was a classic mountain road. We pulled over a several times to take pictures and got some great shots of the sunset behind the mountains. We only drove about 8 miles (mostly at about 25 - 30 mph) then turned around and headed back. On the way back we saw a black bear. Mary saw it first. It was just ambling along the road, then suddenly took off at full speed up the hill side. Everyone was quite excited. We drove around a bit more as it started to get darker, but did not see anymore wildlife other than chipmunks and one rabbit.

Tomorrow we go on a bus tour up to Prince of Wales Lodge in the Canadian portion of the park. Hopefully we will see more wildlife during the day. That's it for today.