Days 35-36 - Glacier

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If you are afraid of heights, Glacier is probably not the park for you. I now understand why they call the one road that runs through the park Going-to-the-Sun Road. And it's not because the road runs east to west like I thought.


The first evening, instead of reaching for the skies, we stayed low by Lake McDonald for sunset. It was lovely except for one thing. 


Unfortunately they are doing road construction all along that ten mile stretch where they turned it into a temporary dirt road. We found out the next morning that they wet it in the mornings, but apparently not in the evenings.


 That foggy looking substance you see over the lake is actual dust from all the cars driving on the nearby road.


Pretty. But also, yuck.

Fortunately, things were much clearer the next morning and thus began our assent up Going-to-the-Sun Road.

I don't love heights, but I can tolerate them enough to enjoy the rush of not falling while imagining what it would be like if I did. This road however was a test of my limits.


There was more than one time when I needed to look away from the heights and instead focus my attention on the wildflowers growing on the side of the road.


And the wildflowers did not disappoint. What a great trip this has been for seeing wildflowers. It seemed like we timed viewing their blooms at all the various parks almost perfectly.


We were staying just outside the west entrance of the park so our destination was a hike by St. Mary's lake near the east entrance.


It was quite pretty.


A great way to calm our nerves and get our adrenaline levels back down before heading back up Going-to-the-Sun Road.





Here's a little Glacier video playlist showing the lake, the heights, and one of the waterfalls on our hike.

We originally planned to stay in Glacier for three nights, but we ended up staying for just two. After experiencing the super dusty dirt road a second time and knowing we still had to drive back across the country, we didn't want Sparky to have to do it a third time. Plus, the parking situation was not ideal at Glacier. It sounds like they have way more people visiting the park than ever before and they are still figuring out how to deal with it. But we did the road and got in a beautiful hike so we consider it a great success.

It turned out to be a very good decision because it meant that what would have been a 9 hour day starting our journey home could be turned into two 4.5 hour days. That gave us time to do important tasks like laundry, dishes, and getting good food to get us through the middle of the country. Also, it gave us some much needed time to relax and catch you all up on our travels.

Instead of taking six days to get home from Glacier it will now take seven. We've got some long days ahead of us without any sightseeing (unless you count Tesla superchargers) so I think I'm just going to do one more post after this one with a summary of our journey home.

States traveled
  • Montana

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Halfway

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After leaving Olympic and heading south along the Oregon coast, it's really starting to feel like we've finished the trip to the Pacific. We've seen a lot of the coast the last couple days. It's rocky and beautiful and windy . But also we've been on the road for about 3 weeks, visited four of the six national parks we're going to see, and driven through 14 states. Soon we'll turn around, spending the next three weeks first up in Portland, then Seattle, then Glacier, and then driving east for a week. Route 20, which starts in Kenmore sq. Boston is the longest road in the US at 3,365 miles, and we've spent a lot of time driving parallel to it (on rt 90, the longest interstate highway in the US). In fact, our cabin by Yellowstone Lake was right off of 20, near where the road originally ended before they extended it all the way to the west coast. Yesterday was July 4th, which time-wise will be almost exactly the halfway point of our trip. Depending on when w...
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Day 1 - Syracuse, NY

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  We left Somerville this morning and are ending our day today in Syracuse, NY. We were on the road for about 6 hours and made tacos for dinner - delicious, tacos never disappoint. The audio highlight of the day was listening to the latest This American Life episode, Must Be Rats on the Brain  - it's us against them. And the visual highlight of the day was crossing the Hudson River - an impressively big river. Our destination tomorrow is Cleveland, OH which will be a similar amount of time on the road, but we don't have to worry about cleaning and packing up so it will be a piece of cake. States traveled Massachusetts New York
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Day 3 - Chicago, IL

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We started our day in Cleveland and are ending it in Chicago. We did some pretty standardly touristy Chicago things like walking along Lake Michigan and checking out Cloud Gate and Buckingham Fountain. But our absolute favorite was Lurie Garden . We chatted with a local who showed us a video he took of the family of foxes that live there! A true urban oasis.  While we usually prefer to look at plants, we did manage to appreciate some architecture as well. We were on the road for about another 6 hours again today. Yesterday's vineyards in New York today turned into corn fields in Ohio and Indiana, patiently awaiting their moment in the sun. The weather was again beautiful for driving, very similar to yesterday. For dinner we ate pizza along the river as we watched tour boats and kayakers traverse the waters.  We entered a new time zone at some point in Indiana. Now we are tired and are going to go to bed early in an attempt to stick to our East coast schedule as long as possibl...
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