June 28 - Going to the Sun Road

On Saturday morning, we rose very early and managed to get to the entrance to the Going To the Sun Road at 7:05.

We drove the road, stopping along the way a few times. It was a normal mountain road until we got to the higher elevations. At that point, the road had no shoulder on either side. One side was solid rock and the other side was a low stone wall. It was twisty and turny and heart-stopping at points. We reached the high point of the road, Logan Pass by 8:30. I wanted to get my passport book stamped so we waited for 30 minutes, milling around until opening at 9. It was really busy at the information center and there wasn't any new information there, so we quickly got the stamp and then continued on. It was quite chilly up at Logan Pass at 6,600 feet. We had great views throughout the entire drive. Here is a photo dump of our drive:

We came across a beautiful river early on our drive.

The rocks in the river were very colorful.

I couldn't get enough of the beautiful blues and greens in this river.

There was no room for error on this road - Leon did a great job maneuvering through the entire road.

We drove all the way to the other side of the park to St. Mary, the east entrance to Glacier NP. We looked for a lunch place there, but the "town" was extremely small and choices were poor. Instead, we decided to hold until we returned to Apgar. We made our own picnic lunch by the lake at a nice picnic area with clean restrooms. 

Just as we were about to pull out of the picnic area, Leon spotted a grizzly bear just across the road from us! We were able to get a quick pic - we were very excited! There were knowledgeable people there who scared the bear back into the woods.

After that, we returned to our campsite, and it started raining. Since we didn't feel up to hiking yet, we decided to hit the road towards Yellowstone a day early. We decided it would be good to get as close as we could since it was at least 6 hours away.

As Leon drove, I looked for a hotel outside of Yellowstone. We charged in Missoula, and had pizza by the slice at a hip pizza place. We reached Butte to stay at a convention hotel that was quite nice. We realized quickly that the closer you get to Yellowstone, the price of hotels rose, so Butte was as close as could bear to pay. After showers, we got to bed by 10, ready to drive into Yellowstone the next day. We were both still ailing from the illness we had shared - mostly with coughing and congestion. I was very glad to be in a real bed to get a good night's sleep!