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