Allison Cafe

Part 2: The real road trip begins, as my parents fly back to southern California and Steve, Hayley and I begin our journey in the RV through Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and back to southern California. On the first day of our trip we drove about 5 hours from Divide, MT to Whitefish, MT. We arrived rather late, after 8pm, so we stayed at the Whitefish RV Park behind the Cheap Sleep Motel on Highway 93 South. I have to say, from the road we were concerned about our decision, but once we drove into the RV park, it was actually pretty quiet and clean. The nice thing about an RV park versus a regular campground is that you usually have the ability to plug into shore power, water and emptying of your gray and holding tanks. The price is usually higher than a campground, in this case $35 for the night. But when living in an RV, you often have to stop at one of these parks every 3 or 4 days to replenish water and empty tanks, oh and take a real shower. The shower in the RV is nice, but imagine showering in an airplane bathroom, not a lot of space. We did find campgrounds along the way the provided the water and dumping services, which made for a nicer campsite with the services we needed, but more on that later.

The next day we treated ourselves to a Cafe Au Lait from a local coffee shop, and explored downtown Whitefish before heading into Glacier National Park through the West Glacier park entrance. Now, before I begin our detailed journey through one of the most spectacular places on earth, I have to stop to share with you a favorite treat of mine best experienced at the West Glacier Restaurant just before the park entrance. This diner style restaurant has an old fashioned soda counter with “a slice of heaven” scooped to order. For only $2.50 you can enjoy heaping scoop of huckleberry ice cream in a waffle cone, which is so good that it completely dictated our route for entering the park. Huckleberries are similar to blueberries, only a little smaller and not as sweet. They grow wild in Montana, and are a favorite treat of the grizzly bears as well. So even though you may be tempted by the plethora of huckleberry scented beauty products in Montana, don’t wear them in bear country!

Ok, so after my guilty pleasure of huckleberry ice cream, which I can still taste and wish I had more of, we entered the park. Glacier National Park was one of our country’s first national parks, it was established in 1910 and will celebrate its one hundredth anniversary next year in 2010. (Click here for a map of the park) We drove a few miles into the park and camped the first night at Avalanche Lake campground. This was a great campground with semi-private sites, only $20/night and has easy access to the surrounding trails. Like all campgrounds in the park, you have to keep a clean site, we were in bear country. Bears spend their day forging for food and when they discover an easy source, like food left at a picnic table, they will come back again looking for more. So it was important that every camper comply with the park rules, keep a clean site, and lock up any food items in a hard sided vehicle or the bear boxes available.

There is a great 2 mile or so easy hike from the campground to the Trail of the Cedars, Avalanche Gorge and Avalanche Lake. The Trail of the Cedars is a short half mile walk along a paved path, and has stunning views of Avalanche Gorge. It is a must see even if you are just passing through. We did experience the fresh rainfall in Glacier on this portion of the trip. There is something intoxicating about the smell of fresh rain. Especially in the great outdoors, it smells so fresh and clean.

After our first night in the park we awoke the next morning and continued our journey on the Going to the Sun Highway. The highway is a stunning ride through Glacier as you climb in elevation along a winding 2 lane road to the highest point at Logan Pass. We parked the GuyLin at the visitor center at Logan Pass, with Hayley inside since dogs are not allowed on the trails, and did a short 2 mile hike to Hidden Lake. Along the hike we saw Ptarmigan (birds) and Mountain Goats. As we made our way back down the trail to the visitor center, the temperature dropped even lower, probably in the low 30s and it began to snow. It was so beautiful to watch the snow falling on the tall peaks and the wild flowers at their base. When we got back to the RV we took Hayley out to experience the snow, she was not a fan! (see the slide show above)

We left Logan Pass and continued our drive through the park, passing many beautiful scenic turnouts along the way. We didn’t have a lot of time to spare though since it was already early afternoon and we needed to make our way to Two Medicine campground, near East Glacier, to secure a campsite for the night. Two Medicine was a beautiful campground, with stunning views of the mountain peaks and Two Medicine lake. This campsite has a great general store nearby, a ranger station and most importantly water and a dumping station for the RV. This was our final stop in Glacier, the next day we begin the drive south towards Yellowstone National Park, the second stop on our National Park tour. Stay tuned for more photos!