Fish Creek and Fresh Food

It rained most of the night at Rising Sun, with more than a few thunderclaps, but by morning it was just misty and damp. Once again we were happy to be in a campervan rather than a soggy tent. We were heading over Logan Pass on the Going-To-The-Sun Road, not that any sun was to be seen. As we were having coffee, we noticed a steady stream of bicyclists heading up the road in the drizzle. We'd see them again.

Another Roadtrek 190 Popular (Speedy's brand and model, but newer) pulled into the campsite next to us last evening. It was sort of deja-vu, since it was the site we occupied last year with another Roadtrek in our site. They were a couple from Wisconsin, traveling with two large English Labrador Retrievers. They kept them in the front part of the van at night with baby gates, but two big wet dogs in a such a small space ... been there. They were also off to the other side of the park today, then up to Canada to Banff and Jasper. We'll be going in the opposite direction in a few days.

The trip over Logan Pass was a bit slow, the road was wet and we had to carefully pass all those cyclists, who were strung out and often two-abreast on a very narrow and twisty road. We think they might have been part of a supported bicycle tour since they were various ages, travelling at different speeds and weren't dressed like competitive cyclists. They weren't fully loaded with panniers, either. We've seen lots of touring cyclists in the park.

Once we got over Logan Pass, the road became more narrow and twisty, but the weather also was improving and the road was getting dryer. The biggest delay was at a section, about halfway down, where they are rebuilding the road. Only one lane is open and we had to wait about 15 minutes before the uphill traffic came through. It was several miles of single-lane gravel, in convoy, before we were back on the pavement, dry by now. A sign said "Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution" which was an understatement. Heading down that steep road and hitting wet mud and gravel in the corners didn't look like fun.

We cruised on to the west end of the park and up to the Fish Creek Campground. Fish Creek is one of the two at Glacier that accept online reservations, so only a few sites are available each day for drive-in campers. They usually fill up first thing in the morning, but we were early enough to get a site for one night, all we wanted anyway. We lucked into a drive-through level site surrounded by 100-foot tall pines and a through-the-trees view of Lake McDonald—and Fish Creek Campground comes with free showers.

We posted our tag on the site and headed off to the town of Whitefish about 30 miles west of the park for some needed re-provisioning at the local Safeway. An in-town lunch at Montana Coffee Roasters, a stop at the used outdoor equipment store, where Ellen unloaded the too-big boots she bought at the REI garage sale, and we were off, returning to Fish Creek and their hot showers.

After setting up camp, we took a walk along the shore of the lake, up to a nearby point, Rocky Point. Perhaps it should be called Artist's Point as there were four of them, situated with different orientations around the point, all doing small oil paintings. Class, collective, some random occurrence, who knows?

Tomorrow we are off to Bowman Lake, a much more primitive campground about 25 miles north, with about ten miles of unpaved road on the way. More importantly, the Polebridge Mercantile is five miles before the campground and they bake a huckleberry bear claw to die for, and innumerable other great pastries—in the middle of nowhere!