Glacier National Park

Day 26, miles 5582, states 15

Glacier National Park

We have now hit the westernmost (Eureka, CA) and northernmost (Glacier National Park) points of our trip.  From here, we will be plotting a generally southeasterly course toward home.  We got somewhat of a late start leaving Spokane yesterday due to a prolonged stop at the Walmart Supercenter for some resupply and bicycle repackaging.  We had bought five new Townie bicycles and a fancy 5-bike carrier for our trip before we left.  The Townies are great bikes, but we began having problems with the carrier almost immediately.  One of the struts started to bend under the load, and the bikes began to slide and rub together, causing lots of scratches on our new bikes.  The worst part was that the whole thing looked like it was going to break off and cause a highway catastrophe.  So I swapped out the fancy but failing 5-bike carrier for a 4-bike model from Walmart that was 1/5 the price.  I also bought some straps to secure the fifth bike to the ladder and bumper on the rear of the RV.  The new arrangement is much more secure and makes loading and unloading the bikes surprisingly easier.

After squaring the bikes away, we drove through a slice of Idaho and then entered Montana and took a scenic route up to Kalispell, where we found a nice RV park on the river.  We discovered from the people at the RV park that most of Glacier National Park was still closed due to snow.  This was hard to believe because the weather we'd encountered in Montana to that point was some of the warmest we'd had since leaving Nevada.  But they told us that the southern portion of the park was open, so we decided to drive up and do some biking and horseback riding.  The journey to Glacier this morning was an easy 45-minute drive from our RV park.  We parked our RV at the horse stables and took the bikes for a ride along some of the trails before having lunch at Apgar Village and heading back to the stables to get on the horses for our trail ride.  We didn't get to see much of Glacier, but what we did see was striking.  And we have two more full days to see more of Montana before we head to Yellowstone.