Bigfork, Glacier & Yellowstone National parks trip (part two)

The road to Glacier National Park.

We weren't sure where we were going after Bigfork, but decided we'd give Glacier National Park a try.

The west side visitor center was closed.

The Going to the Sun road was closed at the lodge. The Lodge and all of the other buildings were closed😥 but there were alot of workers scurrying around preparing for the opening of the season. Many cars were parked in the lot. Bikers are allowed to bike up the road as they are still clearing the pass for the cars.

So we drove back down the road and did our "touristing" along Lake McDonald.

The reflections were amazing.

I loved all of the different colored rocks in the lake.

A scenic branch along the lake shore.

We thought it was the perfect perch for our memory photos.

 

We decided to checkout the Apgar campground area. We were in luck, a campground that was open early season (we didn't stay there though) and a gift/grocery store that was open! We found a picnic table and enjoyed the view of the lake for our lunch break.

We decided to drive to the east side of Glacier Park via hwy 2. We drove over Marias Pass and the Continental Divide.

 We turned to go north at the junction of hwy 2 and hwy 49. The east Glacier park village was looking pretty closed and sad as we drove through it. We got about 5 miles up hwy 49 and there was a barricade in the road saying that the road was closed. Wow, wouldn't it have been nice if they had put a sign that stated that at the junction!? Anyway, we turned around and got back on hwy 2 and drove east until we got to Browning and turned north on hwy 89. There was a sign that said you may want to use an alternate route as there was road work on hwy 89. We continued driving on 89 and skipped the alternate route. Hmmm looking back at that decision maybe we should have taken the alternate route. Oh well, we had many miles of this in front of us. It really wasn't too bad.

We had made it to the east side of Glacier National Park! 

This is where the Going to the Sun road from the west side ends.

We finally found our destination for the night
St. Mary campground. We had looked at the map and thought we'd take a chance that it would be open. It turned out that it was about the only thing open. 

Lucky us!

 We were the only ones in the campground when we arrived and had the pick of the sites. We chose one with a full view of the Rocky Mountains.

Definitely in bear country! This is the sign on the bear proof latched dumpster.

Also, another reminder on our picnic table.

We set up our shelter and enjoyed the view while we ate dinner. A few campers arrived at the campground so we had some company for the night.

What a view to wake up to!

We drove a bit farther up the road and did some sign reading before heading out of the park.

The east side visitor center was closed, but workers were scurrying around getting it ready.

Just as we were leaving we saw a large Coyote walking along the St. Mary river. Even though there were many notices we saw no bear in Glacier National park.

Bigfork, Glacier & Yellowstone National parks trip (part one)

The road to Bigfork, Montana
We began our journey May 1st with only two things on our itinerary, 1 - the Montana Spartan race and 2 - to be home May 13th to pick up our mail.

We decided to head over the North Cascades hwy and try to get a campground for the night before it got too late. We stopped for the night at the Alta Lake campground. We found a high perch site with a great view of the lake. It worked fine for us in May but I bet it's a hot one in the summer as there were no shade trees in this upper loop.

The view around our loop.

Beautiful Balsam-root flowers in bloom everywhere.

We sleep in our van and set up the canopy for privacy and protection from the weather. It has drop roll up panels with plastic windows if we want a view from inside the canopy. The plastic window will come in very handy later on in the trip as you'll find out in a later post on this trip. When we woke in the morning we saw a ranger truck driving on the service road behind our loop, later a person came up and asked us if we'd seen a bear as one had been reported being seen in our loop earlier that morning. We hadn't seen one, too bad.

We drove through the Pend Oreille area hoping to find a campground. None was to be seen that allowed tenters, we aren't technically called an RV even though we sleep in our van, while we car camp. We found out that the Montana Spartan race is held just a week or so early for most of the Forest service campgrounds to be open. Anyway after a long day of driving we found a spot in Noxon, Montana on hwy 200.

What a beautiful campground, a welcome sight to travel weary folks. Since it was early season there were plenty of sites to pick from.

I loved their laundry building's art.

We had a section of road work to get through as we traveled along the Clark Fork river, but just after we went through it we spotted some Elk near the road. We stopped and enjoyed the view for awhile before our turn onto hwy 28.

A view of Flathead lake, at our hwy 93 turnoff. I always start getting excited at this point of the trip, because the race venue is near here.

Driving on hwy 82 we can see the area towards Glacier National park.

Our turn to Bigfork is at the shuttle parking area for the race, it's always fun to see the event signs!

We arrived at our camp at Outback Montana RV and camp early enough to pack our things for the event the next day and to relax abit before going to sleep.

You can read about our Montana Spartan weekend HERE.

It was a great two days!

We both earned our Trifecta for this year at this event.