Last night the weather put on another dazzling Montana display. During most of the daylight hours, the skies were clear but a couple hours before dark the clouds started clumping up and soon the wind, lightning, thunder and rain commenced. Brilliant flashes of light followed by loud cracks and rumbles as the weather system moves through the pass are spectacular. The steep mountains and narrow valleys make for some nifty prolonged echoes.
Regrettably, today we had to leave the Hungry Horse and Glacier National Park areas since we were ignorant and did not schedule enough time here. We stowed our gear, disconnected from the utilities and departed Hungry Horse westbound on US-2. With the exception of Kalispell and Libby, US-2 is one lane each way and there are some lumpy and narrow sections but, taken as a whole, the drive is great and passes through stunning scenery of lakes, rivers and mountains.
After a couple hours we pulled into Libby, MT, and passed most of the way through town before pulling into Woodland RV Park. The entrance is right near US-2 but, due to the way the park is configured, we do not hear the traffic on the highway. We were directed to a spot between some large Douglas Fir trees with grass between the RV spaces. The park has full hookups, cable TV with 66 channels and wi-fi along with the usual laundry and restroom/shower complexes for those traveling without their own crappers and showers. There is a pretty stream running around the perimeter of the park.
Most of the spots are quite spacious with ample room to maneuver trailers but we were still granted the pleasure of watching the park attendant help our neighbor across the street to back his very fancy new motor home right over some park improvements followed by assertions that his RV radiator was just fine despite having a short fence post jabbed into it. We acted like we were not looking after it occurred. We had to go inside to laugh. After all, if the owner/expert can’t get you into your spot without squishing his costly improvements, who can?

Again we were unencumbered by pesky and inconvenient things we needed to do so we got to spend the day exploring. This time we chose to skirt the south boundary of Glacier National Park by taking US-2 from West Glacier to Marias Pass, the next pass south of Logan Pass along the Continental Divide. Fortunately, this road follows the middle fork of the Flathead River. It would be impossible to state which fork of the Flathead River passes through the most magnificent scenery. They are all fabulous. It is very difficult to describe the feelings of awe and serenity we get from looking at these fast-moving rivers of crystal-clear water passing through almost vertical mountains of abundantly colored rock.
All along the middle fork of the Flathead, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway has a gradually climbing set of tracks that follow the river’s course up to a place called Goat Lick. They had to do some tunneling along the way because the terrain is very jagged and sometimes making a hole through the earth was the only way considering the maximum climb slope, long turning radius and limited traction of million pound trains. BNSF has also built quite a few trestles that skirt the nasty rock peninsulas and cross over the streams feeding the Flathead. There are long sections of snow sheds at the bottoms of some tall slopes to divert avalanches over the rails and allow trains to run year-round. The best part about all this is that BNSF did all their work without making the valley ugly.
Goat Lick is named for a section of rock along the Flathead where mountain goats, usually denizens of higher altitudes, descend to lick salt compounds occurring naturally on the steep rock surfaces. They follow this pattern each spring but are rarely seen at other times of the year. At Goat Lick the Flathead turns south but the road and the railway turn east up Bear Creek all the way to Marias Pass at about 5200′ elevation. The railway came through here because Marias Pass is the lowest in the Rockies range between the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the Pacific Northwest.
We continued up, now following Bear Creek, to the pass and pulled out at the monument they have there to a railroad engineer who built the line through here and, strangely, an obelisk dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt. Right across the road and the railroad tracks is an enormous section of upthrust earth topped with about 500 feet of strata that came here from 50 miles southwest during what must have been a whopper of an earthquake. The ridge has a big row of mountains with elevations of 7200 to 8800 feet. The top of this upthrust section is quite jagged and, so far, nobody has been able to build a road over this terrain. From the monument we could not see either end of this formation; it runs horizon to horizon.
We turned around at the pass and headed back toward home. Not being encumbered with nasty scheduling constraints, we did pull into almost all the river access roads and turnouts along US-2 so we could get out and gawk at the gorgeous mountains, dazzling turquoise and light green river, engineering marvels installed by BNSF and enormous forests. We have not found a bad road to drive here in the area of Glacier National Park. This place is stunning.
There are some pix we took during today’s drive and you can give ’em a sniff if you click here

Today we took another day exploring the Glacier National Park area. Since we took the main drag, Going to the Sun Road, yesterday, we elected to try the roads that stretch up the west side of the park. These roads start at the tourist trap village of Apgar just inside the west entrance to the park and run mostly north along the north fork of the Flathead River. There is a pair of roads; the Inside North Fork Road and the Outside North Fork Road.
We initially tried the Inside North Fork Road but were turned around pretty quickly by a nice government sign stating that the road was not passable beyond a waterway called Camas Creek a few miles ahead of where we found the sign. The road was a poorly maintained and narrow track through the brush with no possibility of turning around or passing oncoming traffic so we chickened out and drove back to Apgar and instead turned north on an initially paved road called Camas Road. This road passes through what must have been an enormous and terrible fire not too many years back which scalped all the vegetation from almost everywhere we could see. There is an abundant and very vigorous re-growth going on where the fire cleared the ground and, fortunately, it makes it easy to see all the spectacular mountains which form the 360 degree horizon.
At the end of Camas Road and the pavement, we turned north on Outside North Fork Road and followed the north fork of the Flathead River about 10 or 15 miles on what turned out to be a very good dirt and gravel highway all the way to a tiny village called Polebridge. In Polebridge, there is a general store/ice cream parlor, a huckleberry and cherry stand and some houses but we did not see any incoming power lines to this remote hamlet. We did spot quite a few photovoltaic arrays so it seems pretty clear the folks here make do with solar power and gas or diesel generators for their electrical needs. This place is quite pretty now, in the summer, but I think most of the residents make sure they are elsewhere in the winter. No electric utility, very little sun for power generation and 30 degrees below zero temperatures probably run off all but the most hardy maniacs during the winter months.
We turned back south from Polebridge and followed the Flathead back to Camas Road. There we decided to take the road west to Columbia Falls. This road was also dirt and gravel and initially was very nice but a bit dusty. It skirts the lower section of the north fork of the Flathead and it is beautiful. There is nothing nasty upstream here so the water in the river is an almost turquoise color in the middle depths, light green in the really deep sections and absolutely crystal-clear in the riffles. In shallow places, you can plainly see the features of the bottom of the river since the water hides nothing.
Soon we turned south away from the river and the road surface went to doo-doo with several miles of unrelenting washboard dotted with some giant potholes. We were eventually saved by a maintenance gang fixing the road but they had started on the Columbia Falls end. Behind them the road was very nice and shortly we got back onto asphalt pavement for the remainder of the trip into Columbia Falls. We turned east on US-2 here and found our way back over the 10 or 15 miles to Hungry Horse. Even though a horrible fire ravaged this area a while back, the drive still offers astounding scenery. The mountains surrounding the valleys, the sparkling waters of the Flathead River and the abundant flowers and wildlife make for a great, slow ride.
Once we arrived in Hungry Horse, we decided we had more time to fool around so we took another side trip to the south of town driving atop the Hungry Horse Dam and along the west shore of the Flathead River. The dam visitor center has some signs indicating the dam height is some 550 feet, enough to hold back the substantial Hungry Horse Reservoir extending about 15 miles to the south. More beautiful Flathead River scenery is available here and it is pretty spiffy scenery. After about 15 miles of very slow driving, we decided to turn around and head back home to the Crooked Tree Motel and RV Park where our beloved Barbarian Invader is parked.
We got a few pictures of all this wonderfulness and you can see some of them if you click here

We started out the day with some fortified coffee, spuds, ham and eggs before hopping into Charlotte for a spin up Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. Peggy and I passed through Glacier in 1980 but, due to our advanced age, we only remember certain parts. The park west entrance is about 10 miles from our current RV spot but, due to our decided lack of speed getting going this morning, we did not make it to the gate until just after noon. There was a big line of cars in front of us at the fee station but after all the traffic-halting bozos finished asking the attendant whether they were at Glacier or querying why they have to pay to enter, we passed through easily because we used our access pass and avoided the $30 entrance fee.
Two miles past the fee station, the road starts following the south shore of McDonald Lake which is quite beautiful, particularly because it is located between enormous, jagged mountains on all sides. There are crystal-clear creeks and rivers running alongside the highway between the lake and the terrifying part of the road. The elevation at the road along the lake is about 3100′ but after passing the lake, it starts climbing very steadily crossing an enormous rock cliff called the Garden Wall. The Wall sticks up about 6000′ above the road at the bottom. This is where the challenging part of Going to the Sun Road begins. It is just barely wide enough for our F-250 most of the way up the cliff face. It is narrower than that in some spots and not encroaching into the oncoming lanes requires either nerves of steel or plain idiocy.
We continued along the cliff for about 20 miles (the Garden Wall is enormous) passing waterfalls, brilliant assortments of flowers and magnificent scenes of the Rockies for the passengers but not for the drivers. Taking your eyes off the road here will be almost instantly fatal as the drop over the edge averages about 2500′. It is spectacular.
After much staring at the approaching pavement, I pulled over at the Logan Pass visitor center. The parking lot there was clogged with many cars, some driven by inconsiderate assholes who will back up the abundant traffic while waiting for some pedestrian to walk the considerable distance to his vehicle and pull out of his valuable parking space. We had spent enough time in the parking lot to discern that if we really wanted to be part of the solution instead of the problem, we should leave. There are a few visitor centers in Glacier and we certainly did not need to visit this specific unit. We were able to muddle our way through the morons clogging all roads in the lot and finally found the exit. We headed back down Going to the Sun Road, getting the wonderful opposite view of what we had seen on the way up. We also got to drive on the bank side instead of the awful cliff side of the road and were relieved of our obligation to be as careful since we would not be the ones plunging to the distant bottom of the precipice should we have made a driving error.
We pulled out at many turnouts on the way down both the Wall and the river. The river’s water is absolutely clear but it appears to be turquoise-colored when it finds a deep, calm spot along it’s route. The rocks on the river’s bottom are plainly visible and multi-colored.
Once we got back near the park west entrance, we pulled over and parked in the lot for the Apgar visitor center late in the afternoon. The crowds die down later in the day and I was able to shop and check out without any problem. Glacier NP is an amazing national treasure and we will happily make another trip into this place tomorrow.
There are some pictures of this gorgeous place you can see if you click here

Today we departed from Missoula and headed north on US-93 toward Hungry Horse, MT, and Glacier National Park. Almost immediately upon leaving Jim and Mary’s RV Park the highway starts climbing a long but not particularly steep hill that takes drivers from about 3500′ to 5000′ elevation. The road closely follows the Clark Fork River and passes through some beautiful country. We passed through many tiny towns with non-Native American names like Arlee, Ravalli, St. Ignatius, Ronan and Pablo all located within the giant reservation for the Salish and Kootenai Tribes, collectively called the Flathead. We did not notice any people with irregularly shaped heads. We continued on 93 until we reached Polson where we turned onto MT-35 which skirts the east side of enormous Flathead Lake.
This road is not very wide but the scenery along the shore was pretty great. There is a sign in Polson that suggests trucks (and morons towing long, bulky fifth wheel trailers) stay on 93 and travel up the west side of the lake but we ignored it and found the road to be perfectly satisfactory although we were glad we did not encounter any oncoming traffic using more than their share of the pavement. Near Kalispell, we turned north on MT-206 which is shown in our road atlas as being not RV-friendly but was a good road anyway. After about 6 or 7 miles, we turned onto US-2 east and drove the remaining miles into the small town of Hungry Horse where we exited the road at the Crooked Tree Motel and RV Park. We could spot the motel easily from the road but the RV park portion was invisible until we pulled up at the office where we could see RVs parked behind the motel. This park has less than 30 spaces but it is located in a nice grove of mixed conifer and hardwood trees, offers an indoor pool, ice, wi-fi and full hookups. Despite the park being located at the bottom of a valley with very steep walls, even our satellite receiver works here. They also have what they called “Continental Breakfast” each morning consisting of doughnuts, fruit and coffee from 5:30 AM until the pastry runs out each day. Go early if you want a good selection.
After much spastic maneuvering and near damage of the trailer by me, we slipped the Barbarian Invader into our spot and got everything hooked up just before it started to rain. The rain was not particularly heavy but it was coupled with some very noisy and impressive thunder that snarled away at us for a couple hours. It was great.
We did not do anything for the rest of the day after our drive except I took a nice nap and Peggy performed some of her quilt wizardry on the sewing machine. The quilt is looking better each day after she fiddles with it and the nap was superb.
We got a few pix on the road today and you can get a glimpse of them if you click here

We were very lazy today. We woke up late, drank vast quantities of fortified coffee, had a leisurely breakfast and sat down to watch the news for a while. Last night some Tunisian drove a truck through Nice, France, squashing many Frogs and maybe two Americans. It was disgusting.
We did make a short trip to Albertson’s to buy some cheese, bananas and a pencil sharpener. It was quite dull. You do not want to read about it.

Today we went on an exploratory mission into Missoula. We had no idea what to look for so we started by heading to the old Fort Missoula Historical Museum right after we stopped for breakfast at Paul’s Pancake Parlor right down the street from the old fort. As usual, I had the chicken fried steak breakfast because I am on a pointless endeavor to find the best CFS in the USA. Paul’s had okay chicken fried steak and great hash browns. Peggy had a western omelette and stated that it was great. Prices were good – $22 for both of us to eat.
From Paul’s we found our way to the museum which is located in the middle of a pretty park. There are old military officer’s houses here that are very nice along with outdoor exhibits of logging stuff, a fire observation tower, an antique train station, an enormous underground root cellar equipped with military-grade ventilator stacks extending up through the parade ground and a very interesting train with a locomotive that was built by the Willamette Iron Works in Portland, Oregon. It has a drive mechanism that I have never seen in a locomotive previously; all the power stuff is on one side of the boiler and uses shafts and pinions to turn the wheels. Since all the power stuff is on one side, the boiler is offset from the centerline of the locomotive frame. It is a gorgeous example of mechanical engineering from a bygone era.
The indoor part of the museum houses exhibits about the fort in one wing and displays of Missoula artifacts in the other wing. It costs $3 a head for ancients like us to get in but it was worth the money. The lady at the front desk was quite sharp about the museum’s contents and the city of Missoula and was able to answer all our stupid questions about the exhibits and the area.
After quite a bit of malingering in the museum, we took a spin around this old military installation and scoped out the great architecture used in construction of some of the buildings. There is also a building they used for housing of POW Italian sailors caught within US waters during WWII. They also interned thousands of Japanese-American US citizens here during the war despite the fact that not even one US citizen of Japanese descent was ever charged with anything other than not being white. There were no German-American internment camps although there were many US citizens of German descent working for the Nazis during WWII. We seem to have a whitey problem in this country.
After leaving the fort and museum complex, we took a roundabout drive through downtown Missoula which is an attractive city of some 70,000 residents. There are many ornate and classic old residential buildings and the downtown area looks like what you would expect from Pretty Anytown, USA. The streets are wide, the Clark Fork River runs right through the middle of downtown, there seem to be ample parks for the citizens to enjoy and the surrounding hills and mountains are very attractive.
We found a real liquor store and were able to stock up on Irish Cream which is very expensive in Washington, the next state where we will stay after visiting Glacier National Park north of here. Peggy also found a good beer store and was able to acquire two six packs of Black Butte Porter, one of our favorite beverages.
On the way home we stopped at the nearby Flying J truck stop to see if we could find the dump station suggested by the park owner at our current digs at Jim and Mary’s RV Park. After circling the entire complex a couple times, we were stopped by a guy coming from whatever was at the end of the road we had erroneously taken in our dump station quest. He got us plumbed up and we now know where our recent sewage will soon find a home.
We took some pictures of some good stuff today and you can see them if you click here

We pulled out of Lincoln Road RV Park this morning and wandered through some back roads and Helena city streets before picking up US-12 west. As soon as we turned onto US-12, it started to climb from about 4000′ elevation and, after some serious uphill grades, crossed McDonald Pass at around 6300′ elevation. All the climbing occurs in about 6 miles so poor Charlotte had to snort some to get our 12,000 pound Barbarian Invader up the hill. At one time we were actually in third gear (of six) so we settled on proceeding up the nasty sections at about 35 mph.
This section of road was originally built by a French guy who charged a toll to cross over the pass. He acquired a wife who ran a hostel in Ellison, part way down the west side of the pass, and charged $2 a night for rooms and $1 per meal, a princely sum in pre-1900 dollars. Between the toll for the road and being charged for sleeping indoors instead of freezing to death outdoors, folks back then probably wished they had taken an alternate route west. Somebody may have been dissatisfied with the rates charged because the French woman was robbed of $6000 in gold dust and murdered. Nobody was ever charged with the robbery or the murder although some suspect the French man because he had moved on to places unknown.
We glided down the west side of the pass through gorgeous mountain scenes until we connected with I-90 west, headed for Missoula. A little over an hour later we passed through Missoula. When I was attempting to make a reservation for an RV space a few weeks ago, there were no available spaces anywhere near Missoula but I left a message on the voice mail for Jim and Mary’s RV Park and they called back to tell me they had one of very few spots within their park that did not have a hookup for sewer. I eagerly snapped it up so today we drove the 5 miles west of Missoula and pulled into their park. The place is beautiful with very pretty landscaping, little streetlights reminiscent of old gaslights throughout the park, a meeting complex and almost all the spaces have sewer hookups, except ours. Fortunately, there is a free RV dump station at the truck stop about half a mile away. The $40 dollar a night charge is slightly higher than other RV parks nearby but is worth it because this park is very pretty. The only drawback is a nearby railroad track that has a hill and a curve not far from the park and considerable high-pitched squealing and keening noises can be heard in the daytime. However, we did not hear any obnoxious railway noises at night. Maybe the trains here don’t run at night.

Today was an administrative day because our list of future reservations for RV parks was getting pretty short. Fortunately, we were able to complete phone calls or file reservation requests online to parks in western Montana and Washington so we are plumbed up for the next 30 days. Gotta love having internet access.
We finished our admin stuff and then went shopping for some RV items and some Caesar salads at Costco. Our electrical umbilical has a male end that is looking funky so we purchased a new fitting which I will use to replace the offending unit. We also purchased a new fresh water hose for the trailer because the current unit, which we have been using steadily since 2014, makes a funny noise and squirts water from the end fitting. It just recently started this behavior. The hose itself does not leak but in the past I have had only marginal success replacing end fittings on hoses and chose this time to just replace the hose.
We then popped into Costco for some grub at the food kiosk for immediate consumption and packed away two of their excellent Caesar salads for our food cache at the trailer. We were now free to do a bit of exploring.
Our trailer is parked in the Lincoln Road RV Park north of Helena. We elected to follow Lincoln Road (also MT-279) west. This road runs through about 10 miles of rolling ranch land before sneaking up a beautiful canyon into the surrounding mountains. MT-279 ultimately winds it’s way up a twisty route to Flesher Pass at about 6100′ before diving down the other side of the Continental Divide into western Montana. We turned around at the pass and headed back down the highway past some very nice estates built on nice knolls and in the bottom lands next to what turned out to be Canyon Creek. Canyon Creek crosses back and forth under the road so both driver and passengers can admire the beauty of the crystal-clear water running through the pines.
Once we emerged from the mountainy part on to the prairie below, we noted there was a single railroad track or spur that ran all the way to Helena. This spur was not empty, however. We noted there were rail cars that look like they are used for cargo containers like you see on container ships. They ran in an almost uninterrupted line all the way across the prairie part of the drive or not less than 10 miles. We finally turned away from the track but could see the rail cars parked on the spur running most of the way to Helena. The railroad must store these specialized cars here. They are all empty now but if they were full, there isn’t a series of locomotives that could be assembled to pull a 15 mile long train. Strange.
There are a few pix we got during today’s drive and you can see them if you click here

Today was an exploring day. We had breakfast at home and then piled into the truck for some wandering around in Helena, capitol city of Montana. Downtown or old Helena is filled with all kinds of interesting buildings but they are pretty hard to get to if you are not a local because the streets are layed out in a chaotic, hellish, Byzantine arrangement. You may be able to see the place you seek but you may not be able to drive to them.
We started out by driving to a nifty cathedral in the older part of town. It is very spiffy with lots of stained glass windows, marble columns and a really great interior paint job. They even had piped-in Gregorian chanting for our listening pleasure. The stained glass window that would be behind the clergy when viewed from the pews was particularly colorful and Peggy snuck back there to get a picture. While we were sitting inside the church the wind was raging outside and I soon noted the massive, ornate chandeliers were swinging despite not being windy inside. We soon departed.
After driving a course that seemed to only have right turns, we ended up on the west or left side of town in the Mansion District. Back in the mid-1800s, gold was found in a portion of Helena called Last Chance Gulch and not too long after that, elaborate and gorgeous masonry apartment building sized house began to spring up west of the tortured downtown maze of buildings and streets. Some of the mansions are built on lots where they are the only house on the block. The architecture of these enormous structures is quite beautiful.
After quite a bit of aimless wandering and picture taking, we departed the land of the affluent and drove up to Mt. Helena Park which was a gravel parking lot with a great view of about one third of downtown Helena. Not overly impressed with the view from the parking lot, we chose to drive south down Grizzly Gulch to the neighborhood of Unionville where there is ample evidence there was mining in this area. You can see quite a few old mining mills, charcoal ovens (I think), sheds and shacks left over from the 19th century. It is a very pretty road as soon as you leave downtown Helena, transforming instantly into a tree-lined curvy highway through a steep-walled canyon.
Having made it to our destination, we turned around when the road turned to dirt and subjected ourselves to another confusing passage through old Helena to reach I-15. We went north on the interstate for about 25 miles to a place called Gates of the Mountains where there is a giant lake being fed by the Missouri River which seems to emanate from a giant slice through solid rock. Most all of the surrounding area is covered with green but the Gates (craggy bluffs on both sides of the river) are pure grey rock and very majestic. We wandered around this area and soon found an interpretive display consisting of a short loop path overlooking some gorgeous ranch acreage. It seems two families ran cattle and sheep on these ranches and descendants still run them today. The families were savvy enough to engage in conservation agreements with the BLM, a Montana Conservancy and the families to keep these places just like they are. The display indicated that the only difference between now and the time when Meriwether Lewis walked through here in 1806 was an increase in the numbers of conifers that have encroached on this prime prairie pasture land. Apparently, vigorous fire-suppression in more recent years have allowed the pines to get a foothold.
We read all the display’s signs and headed back south on I-15 until we turned east on Lincoln Road toward the tiny burg of York, about ten miles distant. We found a superb federal campground near Hauser Lake called Devil’s Elbow which we will mostly shut up about because we would like to stay there. They have big, no hookup spots right alongside the Missouri River as it passes through the area east of Helena. With our federal access pass, there is no park entry fee and camping costs $7.50 per night.
Past the campground, the road crosses a bridge over the Missouri and continues up a narrow, steep-sided crack between the rock cliffs with a beautiful stream crossing back and forth under the road until we reached York which is mostly an intersection with a big bar on the corner. We did a bit of exploring on the roads leading out of York. East is a nice, two-lane blacktop running through gorgeous country. After 5 or 10 miles on this road, we reversed course and drove back to York where we turned south to a place called York Gulch. Not far down this dirt road the surface conditions turned to a narrow strip with big mud holes so we chickened out and went back to York. We found our way back down the rocky canyon, over the Missouri, past the good campground and finally back to our beloved Barbarian Invader.
We did get some photos today and you can see some of ’em if you click here