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