Western Adventure #28: Apgar Campground

Day 28–8/30/2024

We woke up and got ready to move to Apgar for a couple of nights. We hooked up the Jeep in the parking lot of Bear Grass. Then we left for Glacier. 

We got to Apgar at the west entrance of Glacier about an hour before check in. We decided to park at the Visitor Center to unhook the Jeep. I would then drive to our campsite to check to see if it was empty. Of course, there was no parking for the RVs because cars had taken our sites. 😖 But we stuck to the plan. Vince just parked as out of the way as he could. It wasn’t that far away, and I made it back to let him know that we could go. There was no ranger at the campground ranger station when we got to our camping loop. We got parked and situated, then we rode our bikes up to the ranger office to check in because by the time we did all that, the ranger was back from lunch. Here are a couple of pictures of our campsite. By the way, we have no hookups here, and it's a little too shady for our solar panels. But we can run our generator if need be.

This is the street-side view of our campsite.

This is our campsite from our door side. We have quite a bit of "yard" with a picnic table and a fire pit.

We rode our bikes all over Apgar Village. We parked and looked at lovely Lake McDonald. We got on the bike trail and rode all the way to the entrance station. On the way, we stopped at Oxbow Bend. It was so pretty there! We enjoyed the many vistas of the bend in the river. 

Lovely Lake McDonald

I bet you're wondering about the Canadian flag. The US and Canada share this park. The one in Canada is called Waterton. The sister parks are peace parks, signifying peace between our two countries.

These are scenes from the Oxbow Bend where we stopped on our bike ride to the entrance station.

                                                                Isn't it pretty?

After we got back to the camper, we ate dinner and decided to go to the evening Ranger program at the amphitheater. It was about wolverines. We learned many facts about wolverines such as how far they travel, that they are in the weasel family, and that they are very shy. So it will be unlikely that we would see one. Afterwards, we got to go up to examine the wolverine pelt and skull and to ask questions. Very cool!

Western Adventure #26 & #27: A Birthday, Flathead Lake, and a Rodeo

Day 26–8/28/2024 

We woke to cloudy, rainy skies. It is Gloria’s birthday. They went to pick up David’s daughter, Emily, while the Crafts went shopping. We stayed around the camper waiting for the weather to clear. But it took a long time. Laurie and I went grocery shopping at Super 1 Foods. 

After dinner, we went over to the Roth’s camper to celebrate Gloria’s birthday. Linda Craft made her cake.

Day 27–8/29/2024

We rode with Ron and Laurie over to Flathead Lake to see what we could see. We paid to come into one of the state parks. That covered us for any other state parks we went to. We drove around looking at the picnic areas and the campgrounds. We also stopped at a marina and enjoyed the boats moored there and the clear water of Flathead Lake. 

We went into the little town of Dayton. School was going on, and businesses were open. It was a quaint little place. I saw some ducks swimming in a stream.

When we got finished with looking around there, we went back to the campground to get ready for the rodeo.

We went to the rodeo. It was quite the spectacle. It was a typical rodeo with a near-death experience and children riding bucking "broncos."  It was cold outside by my standards. Yet there were young girls dressed so scantily! I wanted to put a coat on them. We left early because we got tired after two hours of sitting, and it was getting too hard to see. Here's a video of one of the children riding.

Western Adventure #25 Going-to-the-Sun Road

Day 25–8/27/2024

We drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road (aka the Sun Road) today. All day. We left in the morning with our lunch packed. We drove up to Lake McDonald Lodge and walked around there. I felt it was fortunate that we got a parking spot there. It’s a beautiful old lodge with a Swiss chalet look to it. The lobby was gorgeous, and we enjoyed looking through the gift shops. 

Lake McDonald Lodge

Pretty flowers at the Lodge

The back of the Lodge

                                    POV: the golden eagle looks down from his permanent perch

There's a funny story about this raven. We had just been in one of the gift shops at Lake McDonald Lodge. When we came out to go back to the Jeep, this raven was eating dead bugs off the grills of the cars in the parking lot. Silly raven! 😂

Our next stop was lunch. We ate in a pullout on the side of the river. It was a beautiful spot, and we enjoyed the peaceful water. After lunch, we got to talking with another tourist. We also saw a couple of deer that came out of the woods on the other side of the river and crossed over to our side of the river but further downstream.

Some pictures of our lunch stop

                                                Some pretty flowers at our lunch stop

We made another stop, and as we were hanging out there, the Buskirks drove up and parked behind us. We met a couple who had just gotten married and were honeymooning in Glacier. We congratulated them and moved on down the road because a certain red Jeep Gladiator just passed us!

    If you squint, you can see the Going-to-the-Sun Road close to the top of this mountain.

After we got past Avalanche Creek, which was a zoo, we started climbing up the road. The road is narrow and curvy. Every now and then we would stop and catch up with each other. Then we’d move on. 

We passed the Loop, the Weeping Wall, the Three Arches, and some waterfalls visible from the road. We also stopped at the tunnel that has a couple of windows. We parked and walked into the tunnel. The windows are great overlooks from where we took pictures. 

        

Perhaps you can see a certain red Jeep Gladiator in this picture.

        

                                                              Tunnel pictures

It’s pretty crowded today, so it wasn’t surprising that there was no parking at Logan Pass. So we moved on. We made it to the end of the Sun Road at St Mary’s Lake, a beautiful, but choppy lake. The wind had really picked up! We got our passport stamped at the St Mary's Visitor Center. 

                                                                St Mary's Lake

We parted ways with our two groups. They went around the outside of the park to get back. We opted to go back through the Sun Road. We were only about 15 minutes behind them technically. We did stop at Logan Pass Visitor Center for a stamp. And we got stuck in some traffic. On our way back, it started raining. Later, we found out that it snowed in Logan Pass and in the mountains. The Park Service had to close the road the next day for part of the day. We made one more swing through Apgar Campground to check out our site. We are confident we can get in it.

            Logan's Pass Visitor Center and parking lot. The weather had turned rotten.

                                 Going-to-the-Rain Road (aka Going-to-the-Snow Road)

We got back to the camper and ate dinner. We got to bed at a decent time.