Day 9 – Sunday, 10/10

Cold and Rainy. Low 40’s.. Excellent day for the Park! No worries. We’ll see what we can see. Internet still out. Relaxed. Showered. A little work on the blog. I can work on the narrative off line, and move all the days pics into one folder, but most of the stuff requires that interweb thingy..

Headed out about 10a. Wx abated a bit. Rain was more like a mist and it looked like the sun was trying to peek. We came this far by golly.  We’re going through this park.  Went down the road a few miles to the park entrance. More cars queued up than I thought would be especially with the weather. I pulled out my senior unlimited national park pass. I had the presence of mind to buy I don’t know when for $10. Not sure what the rate is, but worth it if you’re going to visit a national park once or twice a year.

We turned on the ‘Going to the Sun Road’. Still no sun.  Narrow, steep, winding. Did I mention narrow, steep, winding? Even with limited visibility, a great drive. Lots of places to turn off. Mountain tops were in the clouds. Never the less, absolutely spectacular.

On the way up to the pass the road was extremely narrow. I mean narrow. The Expedition took up its fair share of the lane. As did the other vehicles on the way down. At a few points the shoulder was literally a meager 1’ to 2’ with no side rail or rocks. It just went down. I’m going to guess maybe a couple thousand feet. That was on our side. The downhill side was up against the rock face. No shoulder there either. Too far to the right and easy to scrape your vehicle. The take away here is stay in your lane. Don’t look at the scenery. Very, very tight curves. To add to this it was snowing. A mile later it was starting to accumulate. I asked Irena if she wanted to drive. She didn’t even answer. I took that as a no.  I tried.  As a matter of fact I do not remember her saying one word on this portion.

When we got to the pass, the fog / clouds had visibility reduced to maybe 50’. I could not see the truck ahead of me. And it was snowing pretty good. There is a parking lot at the top of the pass. We pulled over and I was trying to figure out how to get the rental into rain / snow drive mode. A Park Ranger pulled up and let us know they were shutting down the pass. Weather was deteriorating. Go either east or west. Just go. Don’t delay too long. I grasped quickly what he meant. Figured out the drive mode thingy. No idea if it does anything more than light up something on the dash. Headed down the mountain.

Exited the park on the east side. We did not find the sun on the Road to the Sun.  That;’s ok.  I would do it again.  Sun or no sun.

Total drive took about 3 or 4 hours. We needed to get back over the mountain. Since going back the way we came was not an option, we headed east about 30 miles to pick up US 2 in Browning. Then another 80-90 miles back to Hungry Horse. Sunny on the east side of the mountains but windy. We stopped at a local store and got gas. While pumping, wind caught me off guard and caught the door while opening. I caught it but it was one of those ‘oh crap’ moments. Then almost got pushed over when I wasn’t paying attention to my footing.. Nice drive back. Kept speed down to about 10mph below the limit because of the rain and wind. At least no snow.  I

It took about 2 hours to get back to Hungry Horse.  On the way into town we stopped at local distillery and had a flight of their spirits.  Picked up a few to Home.

Quick stop at the room, then found a local place for dinner.  Sunday night and the place was hopping.

Back to the room and the sun was beginning to set.  It was a good day.  A couple of reminders, that winter is on the way and mountain weather comes in quick.

LIfe is good.