St Mary, MT ~ Eastern side of Glacier National Park

Left Cut Bank around 9am for Glacier NP. Weather was partly cloudy and soon became sunny. Temperature was at first 49 degrees cool! I looked at my GPS for elevation and we were at 3850 feet. No wonder it was cool.

Arrived in St Mary’s with the sun shining and the temp went up to mid-50’s It was a day like April/May back home. Cool wind warm sun. The visitor center at the ranger station said that the “Road to the Sun” had just opened for the season yesterday. This is the famous Logan Pass (elevation 6646) that runs east to west across the mountains to West Glacier Village. It was a road that I wanted to run, but my truck camper wasn’t aloud to access because of outcroppings and a tunnel. Oh well, like I always say," We are like a canoe without a paddle. Let's see where the current takes us for another adventure."

View from our campground

The advice from a lot of people is to get a camp site early in the NP (Nationl Park) system. We did at St Mary NP campground. Our senior pass got us into the NP free and the pass got us a campsite for half price $11.50. Next on our agenda for today was to travel up the Road to the Sun for 12 miles of the 50 miles. That brought us to another campground, the end of the road for us, the views up there were great. The one disappointment was that we missed seeing a Grizzly Bear just ¾ of a mile up the road. We happened to be talking to a couple of female park rangers when they got the call of a bear jam in the road. That means cars are blocking the traffic not bears.

Swift Current River view

Our next adventure was to take us to road called Many Glaciers/Swift Current. Bingo, this road was super in every way. First a big black bear was feeding about a hundred fifty feet off the highway, I did get a few pictures but the bear jam was already starting to pile up. Our next sighting was moose who was stalking a couple of kayaks’ close to shore. Mountain goats were next. Did I mention the unbelievable  views of the river, lakes and glacial mountains. I am now sitting here writing this at 8:15 pm and the sun is still warming my back out on the picnic table. No bugs yet, a perfect day, I wish you all could experience this moment.

One of many fine hotels on the lakes!

It was a good photo day!