Since the Apgar Campground is rather generic, we bicycled over to Fish Creek, the campground on the other side of the lake, to see if it would be worth moving there tomorrow. It was about a 6-mile round-trip ride with a hill in the middle. We took the bike path out (through the woods, mostly unpaved) and the road back. It is a bit hilly over there, but some of the sites overlook Lake McDonald or Fish Creek.
The campground is one of only two in the park where reservations can be made in advance and must be made at least two days in advance—on-line. One can arrive sans reservation and if there is a site available, take it and keep it, if it is not reserved on the following days, but this can only be done on the day of arrival. We'd have to come back tomorrow, if we wanted to try to get a site then.
Since being at Apgar is like being in a small city, we decided we may as really be in one, so we went off to Whitefish. We needed to do some grocery shopping and it seemed that a real supermarket could be found there. Whitefish is a pretty neat town. It has a railroad station and a real downtown. It seems to be primarily a ski town as the mountain overlooking the town is filled with lifts and trails (not currently in use, however). Downtown was still pretty busy. There were several streets of shops, restaurants and lots of coffee choices.
As we were looking at Great Northern Cycles, a combination bike shop/coffee bar (whose logo inexplicably had the slogan "Fast like Pancakes"), we met a fellow with BMW R1200 GS who was outside fishing equipment store next door and chatted with him for a while about bikes and riding. Ellen was looking for a sporting goods store that might have a camera/binocular harness to use with her new camera. He was able to point us in the correct direction.
As it was lunch time and there was a surfeit of choices, we also got a recommendation for a lunch place. We tried it, but as we were tarrying looking at the menu, a stream of people arrived and the line became quite long—there was no one else there when we walked in. We decided to wander further down the street and ended up at Montana Coffee Roasters, where we had a couple of Bocadillos, which were sort of like burrito panini, and a piece of pretty good blueberry-strawberry pie. I also had a good cafe latte, of course.
After lunch, it was off to the supermarket and gas station. There were two to choose from on the road out of town, so we went with the Safeway. The cupboards restocked and Speedy refilled, we looked in the local sports store, but didn't find what we were looking for.
It was time to head back to the National Park. We stopped at the KOA "kampground" just outside the park for showers. Strangely, this side of the park has two big campgrounds, but the concessionaires have no showers available for campers. Both Rising Sun and Many Glacier had pay showers available.
We figured this would be our last chance for a couple of days (unless we wanted to dampen the inside of Speedy), as we had decided that we would head out to Bowman Lake, one of the outlying small campgrounds, tomorrow. It is 30 miles away, 20 of that is on unpaved roads.
In preparing for that, we had today's challenge. We wanted to fill up with water and empty the holding tanks before we left. In emptying the tanks, a hasp that holds the drain hose in place came of the pipe it was attached to. Two pop-rivets that held the fitting onto a plastic pipe pulled out. The problem was, without the hasp, we wold be dragging 20 feet of 4" drain hose down the road, not a pleasant scenario.
We were up to the challenge. I cleaned up the pipe, attached the hasp by tapping the rivets back into there holes and bound it on with, what else, duct tape. I wasn't confident that just the tape would hold on the unpaved roads, so we headed off to the nearby village of West Glacier, where there is a gas station, where I hoped to find some hose clamps. They didn't have any 6" clamps, but were able to supply some smaller ones, which I joined together and clamped the hasp on tightly. It is probably on more securely than ever.
Finally it was time to head back to the campsite, have a nice dinner and write this.
Tomorrow, off to the woods. We might even try some fishing—no license required in the park.
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