Going to the Sun Road

One of the legendary motorcycle roads of North America is the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park. And they say BMW is the "legendary motorcycle of Germany." See the connection?   We just had to go...so we did.

 

Glacier is the U.S. portion of a much larger piece of protected wilderness, the Waterton-Glacier National Peace Park, a World Heritage Site. The park represents a vision international cooperation and hope. After all, Canada and the U.S. have been at peace since they whooped us in the Canadian version of the War of 1812.

Glacier is wild.There are a lot of bears, wolves, lynx,  trumpeter swans and other animals eradicated from many other parts of North America. Okay. So, there are bears and wolves in Michigan, but how about the long-toed salamander?

Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed in 1932, and it is the only road that crosses the park, going over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. A fleet of 1930s red tour buses called "jammers", rebuilt in 2001 to run on propane or gas, offer tours on the road. The road, a National Historic and Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, spans 53 miles (85 km) across the width of the the park.

The road is one of the most difficult roads to keep plowed of snow in North America in the spring. Up to 80 feet (24 m) of snow can lie on top of Logan Pass, and more just east of the pass where the deepest snowfield has long been referred to as "Big Drift." The road takes about ten weeks to plow, even with equipment that can move 4000 tons of snow in an hour. The snowplow crew can clear as little as 500 feet (150 m) of the road per day. On the east side of the continental divide, there are few guardrails due to heavy snows and the resultant late winter avalanches that have repeatedly 

Jim waiting our turn, Going to the Sun Road closure

destroyed every protective barrier ever constructed. The road was scheduled to close on Monday, September 17th at 6 AM. We crossed it on Sunday the 16th and descended the western slope of the Rockies to Kalispell, MT where we visited with Jim's niece and her family and took a well-deserved respite in a luxurious hotel.

Glacier National Park
 


The Flathead River valley was a warm and sunny relief from the frost we had encountered in the mountains. A brief visit with


Western slope of the Rockies

friends Mike and Susan Blair gave us a chance to absorb some of the grandeur of alpine mountains on two horizons-- for the sunrise as well as the sunset, a wandering river at times visited by elk and grizzlies, and a 40-mile long lake just to the south.

Flathead River from Mike & Susan Blair's deck, outside Big Fork, MT



View from Mike Blair's Bug-Eye Sprite
parked in his home workshop



Susan Blair's greenhouse of rare succulents



Downtown Spokane, WA





Washington camping, Banks Lake, formed by the Grand Coulee Dam

Stayin' on Rte 2

Route 2 west took us through the tidy city of Spokane and then many miles of wheat, high desert range land, and lush irrigated fruit orchards. Our lunch stop was a factory tour of the small 
enterprise that has been making "Applets" and "Cotlets", sweet fruit confections that are my mother-in-law's favorite. Of course, a box was shipped home. Off to the Cascade Mountains, the termination of Route 2 at the Puget Sound docks of Everett, WA, and Seattle for seafood and a splurge meal.