June 23, 2016 Glacier National Park

We arrived here in West Glacier on Tuesday, June 21, 2016  without incident.  We set up the RV and rested the rest of the day.  It took 7 1/2 hours to drive here from West Yellowstone, which is more than I like to travel pulling the RV.  Makes me tired and grumpy.  I know this is a surprise to some of you!  On the next day, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 we went to Kalispell, MT only about 30 miles from here to get some truck work done and pick up medications at the Walgreen's there.  I had to have Firestone Air Bag Suspensions put under the truck to raise it up when I put the RV on because it was setting to low when attached.  Some of you remember last year and the RR tracks where I did about $8,000 damage to the RV going across.  Well, I do not want that to happen again.  Now the rearend sticks up a little more than it did and should take care of the problem.  It sticks up because I have 50 lbs of air in them.  We will try this first before adding more.

Ok, so now we are caught up.  Yesterday, we went for a drive on the "Going to the Sun Road", which is the most popular drive in the Glacier National Park.  We entered on the West side of the Glaciers and drove to the East Side.  This is the only route through the Glaciers center and it only goes East or West.  The road is about 48 to 50 miles long (depends on which documentation you read) and it is of course winding.  It takes about 5 to 8 hours to get through here depending on how many times you stop and time spent at each stop.  It took us 8 1/2 hours to complete the trip but we had a side trip to the Middle Glacier which is about 8 to 10 miles from St. Mary's on the east side.  St. Mary's in near or on the Blackfoot Reservation.  The Blackfoot sold the land to the government back in the 1800's for 1.5 million.  The Blackfoot Indians had had hard times in 1883 and 1884 so some saw the money as a source to keep them from starving.  Of course, there is controversy about what was sold.  The Indians claim that only the mining rights were sold, not the land itself but the government found a way to get everything.

Here is a photo of Lake McDonald.  This lake was created by the Glaciers over the years.  The Lake was created by these Glaciers about 20,000 years ago.

These are photos of the loop section of the road.  Here you meet yourself coming around the corner.

Here are the water falls.  we started taking them at the base of the mountains not knowing that the road was going to carry us above them before it was through

My DW

This is one of the tunnels that you have to go through on the road.  Very narrow and you have to be careful in a dully

The above photo is at Logan Pass, which is at the very top of the Glaciers National Park.  There is a visitor center where this photo was made.  Behind us and out of range are skiers on a small hill.

This is a photo of the lake at Middle Glacier.  The water is green and it is clear as a bell.  There was a damn with a small water fall at the lake as it appears below