SATURDAY - At 132-miles, today's drive was just a little bit longer than yesterday's 121-miles. Both travel days are very close to our average of a 116-mile travel day.
Tonight we will be camping on the shoreline of the Missouri River, the longest river in the United States. Yes it's longer than the Mississippi River, but just by a little bit. Some measure it to be just 1-mile longer!
A couple of boaters out enjoying the water in one of the many lakes we passed today.
That doesn't look like the "partly cloudy" day that the forecast called for. There goes my hopes to collect a little solar power during the drive today.
We've been trying to catch up to the front of this train for the last few miles. It had three engines in the front, two in the middle and one more pushing from the rear.
Just like us, that train is also headed for The Continental Divide. We crossed over it at McDonald Pass (elev. 6312).
From the top of McDonald Pass there is an 11-mile stretch of road with up to an 8% grade. I'm sure glad we going downhill, it was less steep getting to the top from the west.
We briefly drove through the west side of the capitol city of Helena before heading further east to our destination on the Missouri River.
We got a preview of the campground from the road high above the campground.
Soon we were turning into the entrance of the Bureau of Land Management campground.
We arrived at the campground just like we planned, right at noon, with the check-out time being 11:00AM. I know we were early, but the official check-in time of 1:00PM is so they have 2-hours to clean up the campsite from the occupants last night, which they rarely ever do.
When we first approached our campsite I noticed there was a small cargo trailer with an ATV on it. We just continued on by our site and headed for the exit when we saw someone riding around on an ATV with garbage cans and brooms in the back, obviously someone who works here.
I flagged him down and told him the situation and he said he'd "look into it". We were already too far outside of the campground to just turn around and go back in, so we went back up to the highway where the overview of the campground photo was taken to trun around.
By the time we got back to within sight of our campsite I noticed a black pickup truck backed up to the cargo trailer and hooking up to it. We parked just out of sight at the boat ramp area and watched from afar as he vacated our site.
When he was gone we pulled in and got set up. This was about 20-minutes after we drove by the first time. Turns out he only took the cargo trailer a couple sites away and then squeezed it onto what was apparently his site. The campsite post clearly had a reservation card on it showing that our site was reserved yesterday, today and tommorow, so I don't know how long he felt he could leave his overflow on our site.
Once the cargo trailer was out of the way we quickly backed into our extra wide site.
This is a "no frills" type of campsite, no electric and no water, but plenty of sunshine.
The only thing separating us from the river is a pedestrian walkway.
Once we finished lunch and setting up the Starlink dish, we sat back and relaxed while watching the nonstop aquatic show going on right behind our campsite.
All types of watercraft pass by us on the river, some fast, some slow and some just right.
Now that's something I didn't expect to see on the water today.
It took awhile to figure out what this guy was doing. The next video will make it all clear.
No rope attached to him or the board, just "surfing the wake".
Tired of watching the boats? We can always shift our attention to the very vocal gulls next door.
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FRIDAY - We finally managed to extricate ourselves from Glacier National Park this morning at around 7:30AM.
After a day of filtered sun through the heavy tree cover on our site, followed by two complete days of next to no sun at all, our lithium batteries were suffering.
We needed to get THE POD out from under all these trees and into the open, otherwise we were going to have to start up our Honda 2000 generator for the first time in several years.
We stopped at the grocery store in Columbia Falls, about 17-miles outside of the park, and purchased nearly $250 worth of food. We should be good to go now for several weeks.
This photo shows why we weren't collecting very much solar, even with all 10 panels plugged in.
I'm sure glad that when we installed out solar equipment several years ago that we also installed a 30amp DC-2-DC charger that allows ROVER's alternator to charge the lithium trailer batteries just by driving down the road.
After several hours of driving, and several hours out from under the trees, we managed to recharge the batteries enough that we'll be able to keep the refrigerator running tonight, charge our laptops and cell phones, use all the lights we want and still have enough left over to run the furnance tonight if we need to.
The furnance heat comes from burning propane, but the big fan blower runs off the batteries.
The drive today wasn't all that exciting, even the cows seemed bored with the scenery.
It wasn't long before we had arrivied at our 51st visited National Forest.
We're here for 1-night and the driveway is plenty long to leave ROVER and THE POD attached.
We had to disconnect afterall, the front end was so low we never would have fallen asleep. I guess we could have slept in the bed backwards to keep the blood from rushing to our heads. Oh well, it's not that big a deal to reconnect in the morning.
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TUESDAY - As I mentioned in the previous post, we had reached the northermost point in our 2025 travels.
Today we'll be retracing the 100+ miles we took to get to St. Mary's Campground and will be landing on the opposite shore of Lake McDonald from Apgar Campground. Fish Creek Campground is the 2nd largest campground in the park, behind Apgar Campground, but it's oh so much quieter.
Apgar is at the entrance to the Going-To-The-Sun Road, which let's face it, is the main attraction of the park. Apgar Village is also the place to go for restaurants, souvenirs, kayak rentals and overnight accommodations in the lodge for those non-camper visitors of the park. The Apgar Visitor Center is where you go to pickup the FREE Shuttle Bus and the starting point for all the Red Bus Tours on the west side of the park.
Putting it simply, the Apgar Visitor Center, Apgar Village and Apgar Campground is where all the people are. Just a few miles up the road is where the Lake McDonald Lodge and boat tours on the lake launch from.
But just 1-mile across Lake McDonald it's a whole different experience. There is virtually no reason to come to this side of the lake unless you're camping on one of the Fish Creek campsites.
We missed a couple of interesting sightseeing opportunites on the way north to St. Mary last week, so we'll make sure to stop and visit them on our way south today.
TRAVEL DAY SCENERY
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Just outside the town of St. Mary on Hwy. 89 you'll find the Blackfeet Indian Memorial.
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This art installation must be new because this location is just a blank field on Google Maps.
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Along with the roadside horse and indian statue there are two tipis down a short path.
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Looking skyward from inside the first tipi.
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The second tipi is on the ridge that looks down into the St. Mary Valley.
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That's an interesting perspective to view the mountains of Glacier National Park.
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Before getting back on the road Tricia took one more photo of St. Mary Lake.
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Somewhere between the towns of St. Mary and Browning we ran across a jail break. Two "official looking" trucks were herding the cows down the road, hopefully towards a gate somewhere and back to safety.
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The landscape heading east along Highway 89 towards Browning, MT.
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The landscape on Highway 2 heading west out of Browning, MT.
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This art installation is on Highway 2 just south of East Glacier Park, MT.
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It's identified on Google Maps as Blackfeet Nation Sculpture (Southwest).
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Eventually we arrived at our campsite in Fish Creek Campground.
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As you can see it was a pretty tight fit getting into the campsite. It's going to be even tougher to get out of here without scratching up THE POD.
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With zero cell service and too many trees for a good Starlink connection, it's going to be a challenge to get this blogpost written and posted before leaving the site.
For those of you reading this, who also rely on Starlink to keep you connected to the outside world, this will all make sense.
This is a screen shot from the Starlink app on my cell phone, it shows exactly how obstructed the view of the sky is for the satellite dish, still I'm getting a 69% success rate when uploading data.
Yes, it is a bit frustrating when the signal drops in the middle of uploading a photo, but as soon as it reconnects it starts right where it left off, so no need to start from scratch every time there's an interuption.
The other data the app tells me is that I've experienced 17 disconnects greater than 2 seconds in the last fifteen minutes. That just means I'll be able to post this blog, but it's going to take a lot longer to get it done.
WEDNESDAY - Today we got moving early and went over to Apgar Village to eat breakfast at Eddie's Cafe. We arrived at 7:00AM, only to find out that the cafe doesn't open until 7:30AM.
With a little time on our hands we walked around the village and were surprised to find the gift shop had been open since 6:00AM serving coffee. We checked out the rather large gift shop, but thankfully found nothing we couldn't live without.
We then went over to the lakeshore to take a few morning photos before being seated first at Eddie's Cafe when they opened.
After breakfast we headed next door to the Apgar Visitor Center where we will board another Red Bus at 9:00AM and experience the Western Alpine Tour this time.
THE RED BUS "WESTERN" ALPINE TOUR
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When you get up early and head down to the lake you never know what you just might see.
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With a backdrop like this it's no wonder why they wanted their wedding photos shot here.
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1:45-minutes later the scene had all changed, but still just as stunning.
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Our first stop on the Red Bus tour was the Lake McDonald Lodge. This view is of the "original front door" of the lodge facing the lake.
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In those early days everyone arrived here by boat, the road wasn't built yet.
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The lodge has a very welcoming front porch, don't ya think?
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Here's our ride for the day, Red Bus #84, today it's driven by Russ.
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Looking GOOD! Just like it did brand new back in the mid-1930s.
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I'm hoping some of these lower clouds burn off or we won't have much to see on this tour.
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It sure looks like it's trying to clear up for us.
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Even so, it still makes for some pretty interesting photos.
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That ridge up there is nicknamed The Garden Wall.
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Here we are pulled to the side of the road before entering the West Tunnel entrance. This tunnel has windows, but we are on the wrong side for photos. We'll get our chance for photos later when we return back through the tunnel.
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That's the Going-To-The-Sun Road down there along McDonald Creek.
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It's easy to see why every spring there are so many boulders on the roadway. With the deep winter freezes and the eventual thawing, the rocks loosen and fall to the road.
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Up ahead is one of the longer waterfalls in the park.
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With a video you get a much greater appreciation for how big it really is.
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The round bowl shape is evidence that a glacier was once there.
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Another look down at the McDonald Creek as it flows towards Lake McDonald.
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Looks like we still have some climbing to do before we reach Logan Pass.
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I'm going to share today's photo of the waterfall at the Big Bend location.
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Here is the same photo from a week ago. No waterfall, but plenty of snow back then.
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Logan Pass is just up ahead as we gander at Logan Creek flowing down the valley.
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This next section of the road has a clever nickname, it's called Triple Arches.
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It's hard to determine where the road construction ends and Mother Nature begins.
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For some unexplainable reason this just speaks to me.
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It's not difficult to figure out where the water rolls off that mounatin on the right.
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To the right of the mountain are three named glaciers atop the next mountain. We believe them to be Vulture, Two Ocean and Rainbow glacier on the far right.
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Those hikers are on the Highline Trail that begins at Logan Pass.
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This little Columbian Ground Squirrel was right in the middle of lunch.
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I'm glad to see this guy eating natural food because other squirrels near the Visitor Center have no problem running right up to you for food.
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If it's between 7:00AM and 7:00PM the Apgar Visitor Center parking lot will be full.
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Again, I'm glad the Red Buses have reserved parking for at least 10 at a time.
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Tricia got back on the bus early and took a photo of Rows 2 through 4.
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This is what the front of the bus interior looks like.
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Another view of Haystack Creek as we begin our descent back to the Apgar Visitor Center.
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Here's one of the tunnel windows I told you about...
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...and here's the other one.
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A tornado? No, just the sun playing tricks with the clouds.
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Rut Roh! (as Scooby would say), this can't be good.
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A one car accident, that's what happens when the driver tries to do some sightseeing too.
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The water in McDonald Creek as it makes it way to Lake McDonald.
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That's Russ, our expert driver for the day. Russ has been driving the Red Bus Tours for over 20-years and now has the responsibility to train all the new rookie drivers each season.
You may recall I mentioned in the last post that Ursula, our driver on the Eastern Alpine Red Bus Tour, and I were both born in the same town, albeit more than a decade apart.
Well now, Russ (our driver for the Western Alpine Red Bus Tour) and I lived in the same town together for more than 20-years and lived only a little over 4-miles from each other, that was until I moved in with Tricia over 15-years ago.
If that isn't enough, the lady who checked us in for our Red Bus Tour, also has the last name of Kelley, "spelled the right way", her words, not mine.
I promise, we have finally completed our visit of Glacier National Park. Tomorrow we'll be on the road heading south to a new location in a Montana National Forest. We don't want to go too far south, or too soon, and end up in all those record setting heat temperatures found all around the southern states.
We do have a can't miss date in New Mexico for the first week in October, so we can't dilly dally too much.
Before the year is complete, we should have three more new National Parks under our belts and two others that deserve to be revisited.
Looking for our Visited States Map and Data? How about our State by State Bucket Lists or Visited Campgrounds List? If so, click on the sign below to be taken to our other website.
