Post by Low Light Mike on Sept 2, 2012 18:49:26 GMT -8
Day 9
Start: Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta
End: Coeur D'Alene, Idaho
-----------------
Day 9 was a Monday, and we sadly left Waterton, pausing near the Prince of Wales hotel for some final in-morning-sun photographs.
We drove out of the park and onto the Chief Mountain Border Crossing highway. A short while later, we were at that border crossing, which is only open during the summer months and only for limited hours.
On the Montana side, we encountered a herd of cattle on the highway, in no hurry to move. The highway drove down into a river valley which we then followed on our way to East Glacier, and the start of our trip on the Going-to-the-Sun highway in Glacier National Park.
Near the entrance to the park were a few of the "Red Jammer" buses, waiting for their day tours. We paid our park fee, and started on the Sun road. The fee is $25 for a car, and is good for 1 week in the entire park. But for us, it was essentially a road-toll, and was well worth the money.
- My photos of this road and the Red-Jammer buses are included in the "assorted photography" thread on this forum.
The road starts at St. Mary Lake, and no we were not on Salt Spring Island. The road has many viewpoints, and most are spectacular. The road climbs to Logan Pass, which is pretty high up, with snow patches year-round. The road is only open from late June or early July to early September, each year, depending on the snow.
There are 2 tunnels, one on either side of the Logan Pass. Logan Pass has a visitor center (washrooms, gift shop, etc) and is trail-head for some day hikes. We saw a small herd of mountain-goats near this center.
This highway route through Logan Pass is not the same as the Great Northern (now BNSF) rail route. The rail route, and US Hwy 2 taken the lower Marias Pass route, a bit south of this Sun-road route.
After we left the Logan Pass visitors center, we followed a Red-Jammer bus all the way down the west-side of the highway. That was great fun, and Mrs. Horn was busy snapping photos through our windshield of the ever changing scenes.
Then a crazy lady passed us on the road, and ended up between us and the Red-Jammer bus. I call her crazy because most other drivers realized that this high narrow steep road is a take it slow, not in a rush, see the scenery type of road. And some places were "take it really slow" and there were a few 10-20 minute delays for construction; so people just looked out their windows and enjoyed the location. But this crazy lady was trying to pass people on the road. Haha, not the road for passing. If she wanted to go fast, she should have taken Hwy-2.
After the long downhill, we enjoyed the road as it ran alongside McDonald Lake, and then we arrived at Belton, also known as West Glacier. I stopped at the AmTrak station there, to take some photos of the old station building.
From then on, I had my note-paper with highway route junctions scribbled down, and we had a few junctions to negotiate correctly. Our route was to go through Kalsipell MT (where we bought some good American gasoline) and then followed the road as it hugged the shore of Flathead Lake, through Polson and down to St. Ignatius. Then we turned west and followed a couple secondary highways to St. Regis, where we joined Interstate-90. The secondary highways were beautiful, and we followed the Clark Fork River for part of it.
I-90 was a boring freeway in the wilderness. We crossed into Idaho at Lookout Pass, and shortly thereafter a truck flung a rock into our windshield, causing a nice crack (crack resulted in windshield replacement, once we returned home - $200 deductible cost of driving that highway ;D).
We arrived at Coeur D'Alene just in time for a summer thunderstorm, and the rain was warm as the temperatures were mid-30's Celsius. For dinner, we found a sandwich franchise similar to Subway called "San Francisco Sourdough" and they had good sandwiches, which is our style of travel dining.
We didn't see much of Coeur D'Alene; we were road weary and the heat & rain kept us inside.
If we had to do it all over again, we'd have shortened our route to end up at Sandpoint Idaho instead, via Hwy 2 and 200.
Start: Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta
End: Coeur D'Alene, Idaho
-----------------
Day 9 was a Monday, and we sadly left Waterton, pausing near the Prince of Wales hotel for some final in-morning-sun photographs.
We drove out of the park and onto the Chief Mountain Border Crossing highway. A short while later, we were at that border crossing, which is only open during the summer months and only for limited hours.
On the Montana side, we encountered a herd of cattle on the highway, in no hurry to move. The highway drove down into a river valley which we then followed on our way to East Glacier, and the start of our trip on the Going-to-the-Sun highway in Glacier National Park.
Near the entrance to the park were a few of the "Red Jammer" buses, waiting for their day tours. We paid our park fee, and started on the Sun road. The fee is $25 for a car, and is good for 1 week in the entire park. But for us, it was essentially a road-toll, and was well worth the money.
- My photos of this road and the Red-Jammer buses are included in the "assorted photography" thread on this forum.
The road starts at St. Mary Lake, and no we were not on Salt Spring Island. The road has many viewpoints, and most are spectacular. The road climbs to Logan Pass, which is pretty high up, with snow patches year-round. The road is only open from late June or early July to early September, each year, depending on the snow.
There are 2 tunnels, one on either side of the Logan Pass. Logan Pass has a visitor center (washrooms, gift shop, etc) and is trail-head for some day hikes. We saw a small herd of mountain-goats near this center.
This highway route through Logan Pass is not the same as the Great Northern (now BNSF) rail route. The rail route, and US Hwy 2 taken the lower Marias Pass route, a bit south of this Sun-road route.
After we left the Logan Pass visitors center, we followed a Red-Jammer bus all the way down the west-side of the highway. That was great fun, and Mrs. Horn was busy snapping photos through our windshield of the ever changing scenes.
Then a crazy lady passed us on the road, and ended up between us and the Red-Jammer bus. I call her crazy because most other drivers realized that this high narrow steep road is a take it slow, not in a rush, see the scenery type of road. And some places were "take it really slow" and there were a few 10-20 minute delays for construction; so people just looked out their windows and enjoyed the location. But this crazy lady was trying to pass people on the road. Haha, not the road for passing. If she wanted to go fast, she should have taken Hwy-2.
After the long downhill, we enjoyed the road as it ran alongside McDonald Lake, and then we arrived at Belton, also known as West Glacier. I stopped at the AmTrak station there, to take some photos of the old station building.
From then on, I had my note-paper with highway route junctions scribbled down, and we had a few junctions to negotiate correctly. Our route was to go through Kalsipell MT (where we bought some good American gasoline) and then followed the road as it hugged the shore of Flathead Lake, through Polson and down to St. Ignatius. Then we turned west and followed a couple secondary highways to St. Regis, where we joined Interstate-90. The secondary highways were beautiful, and we followed the Clark Fork River for part of it.
I-90 was a boring freeway in the wilderness. We crossed into Idaho at Lookout Pass, and shortly thereafter a truck flung a rock into our windshield, causing a nice crack (crack resulted in windshield replacement, once we returned home - $200 deductible cost of driving that highway ;D).
We arrived at Coeur D'Alene just in time for a summer thunderstorm, and the rain was warm as the temperatures were mid-30's Celsius. For dinner, we found a sandwich franchise similar to Subway called "San Francisco Sourdough" and they had good sandwiches, which is our style of travel dining.
We didn't see much of Coeur D'Alene; we were road weary and the heat & rain kept us inside.
If we had to do it all over again, we'd have shortened our route to end up at Sandpoint Idaho instead, via Hwy 2 and 200.