Log for Friday, July 11, 2003

Glacier National Park

I left my campsite at 7 a.m. I was pretty sad to be leaving Rising Sun. I picked up my brother and his son and we drove to Logan Pass. There we were stopped by a park ranger who said that the Going-to-the-Sun road was closed up ahead for a bridge repair and would not be passable for 45 minutes. We parked at the Logan Pass Visitor Center, and as we had wanted to hike here anyway we headed up the Hidden Lake trail which starts behind the Visitor Center. The trail started out with fairly wide boardwalks and ended up on the snow. The sun was warm and it was strange walking in snow in July. This was only the second time in my nephew Joel's life that he had seen snow up close.

We made our way back down to the Visitor Center just as the oing-to-the-Sun road opened up again. I drove down mostly in second gear and stopped occasionally for photos.

After saying our goodbyes to Lake MacDonald we sadly left Glacier National Park and drove towards Kalispell, Montana. We stopped and had breakfast at a Perkins Pancake House and picked up some supplies at a sporting goods store next to it in Kalispell. I drove south on Route 93 out of Kalispell and headed back towards Flathead Lake. It was slow going as it is a two-lane highway and there were many slow trucks on this particular day. I had much better luck going north on this road a few days earlier. Going south back to I-90 took quite a while. It ended up being a 7 hour drive from the time we left the park to the time we actually hooked back up with Route 90 near Missoula, Montana.

As we neared I-90 we saw fighter jets in the skies over Missoula flying very fast and very low. This was a strange site after being in the wild.

My brother David took over the driving and drove through Idaho while I rested. I picked back up in Washington State and we drove to Tacoma, Washington to my brother Bob's house.

It was a truly beautiful sight seeing the Columbia River in Washington. The landscape around the Columbia River was pretty empty with stark rolling hills.

We arrived in Tacoma at my brother Bob's house around 10:00 p.m. having gained an hour in the Pacific Time zone.