Finally, The Mountains

After our bison encounter, it was time to exit the badlands and the plains. We continued west towards Glacier National Park on the other side of Montana. Time to get out of the hot and dusty plains and on to the cool mountains.

But first we had to get out of North Dakota, the ride north to Watford City and then west and north towards Williston was one of heavy traffic, mostly big trucks, bulk haulers and oil tankers. Who knew that oil exploration required so much extra dirt. We were in oil country until we reached Fort Union and the Montana line.

We took a little detour to stop at the Fort Union National Historic Site on the Missouri River. As we drove up and saw the fort and the teepees set up outside, we realized that we'd been here before—last year in fact. Then, we had taken a small detour from Williston to see it. It hadn't changed, except that it was quieter. We were the only visitors. It was at least a good lunch stop.

From there we entered Montana. Have we mentioned that Montana is a big state? Once we reached US 2, it was due west for 300 miles until we reached Harve around 7 pm (and we still were only half way across the state). The two campgrounds in the town are right next to the railroad tracks and BNSF runs long freights through on a very regular schedule. We saw three or four an hour on the way to Harve. So we continued on and found a reasonable campground, the Evergreen Campground, a few miles outside of town and settled down for dinner and showers before we looked at the route to the Rising Sun campground at Glacier NP. It was another three hours of driving and over the past week, according to the Glacier website, the campground filled around 10 AM. Uh-oh! We probably should have had another cup of coffee in Harve and continued on for a couple of more hours.

The new plan, get up at 5:30 AM, pull out of Harve, go non-stop to Rising Sun and cross our fingers. We were off at 6:01 AM and Speedy lived up to its name and flew across the prairie, hardly noticing the endless fields of wheat and the many trains of grain and freight. We arrived at Rising Sun at about 9:30 AM and snagged one of the last open campsites. Half an hour later and we would have missed out. Once we staked our claim (and paid the fee), we headed back to the visitor center and St. Mary. They are trying to make Glacier a "Dark Skies" park and had an astronomy volunteer there. Being mid-day, the only visible extra-terrestrial object was the sun, so a solar telescope was set up. Yup, it is active up there, lots of solar flares were visible and sunspot as well.

After picking up a few groceries at the mis-named St. Mary Supermarket, it was back to camp to decompress, watch a few birds while sitting in the Kermit chairs and read the park newspaper. After a good old-fashioned steak and potatoes dinner, it was off to see the singing ranger talk....and here we are,finally, the mountains.

First photos from Glacier - The Beaver Pond walk