great falls to kalispell montana

We decided that we had better get a very early start today as the waitress last night told us it would take 4 hours to drive to Glacier National Park and then 4 hours to travel across the road to the sun if we stopped at the places we ought to stop. She was pretty close to the mark (it took us 3 hours to get to the entrance to the park). We travelled from Great Falls up to St. Mary along hwy. 89 through the last of the Montana Plains. It was interesting to see the change in the landscape as we drove along—on the one side we could see for miles on the wide open prairie and looking out the other side we had the mountains and the evergreens. At St. Mary we entered the park and drove for 50 miles along the going-to-the-sun road. This was a beautiful drive through the heart of the Glacier National Park and up the steep slopes of the Continental Divide and over Logan Pass (6,646 feet). We were happy that we were driving from the east to the west as we hugged the mountain side and not the steep drop-off. We found a pretty spot to sit and enjoy our lunch at a little creek surrounded by wildflowers. The road is narrow and in some places they are doing repairs to areas that have been damaged by rockslides, severe weather and heavy traffic. It took us a good three hours to traverse this road and stop to walk or look at the scenery—by the time we reached the bottom we were in scenery overload from all the glacier carved peaks, deep blue lakes and lush forests. We took numerous photos that do not begin to do justice to this spectacular scenery. Again we were most fortunate with the weather and the smoke from the fires was not evident in the park—we are seeing some tonight in the village of Kalispell. Kalispell is in the Flathead Valley between the Swan and Kootenai ranges of the Rocky mountains. It is noted for the production of sweet cherries and huckleberries—we found some cherries along the way and also some huckleberries. We bought the cherries and had every intention of having some huckleberry sourcream pie for dinner tonight but we were just too full—these American dinners are meant for two. We found a historic hotel in downtown Kalispell that has been recently restored. In 1912 the hotel charged travellers $2.00 per night—not so now but it is a lovely location right downtown with interesting stores and good food nearby—cookies and tea in the lobby so Mr. Ron is a happy camper. The sunsets are interesting in this area right now as they are seen thru the smoke haze. We have missed the worst of the smoke all along this time in Montana—we will leave the state tomorrow and likely get to Washington and closer to home.