Road Trip: Glacier National Park

DAY 1: Arrival
Today, we left lovely Spokane, WA and set out on a short weekend trek to Glacier National Park in Montana accross three states: Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Now, having never been to the area, Laura and I chose to drive a more “scenic” route. After a wonderful sushi lunch in Coeur D’Alene [who’da thunk they’d have GREAT sushi in Idaho, eh?] in a restaurant called Bonzai Bistro, we left town and headed north.

The next town on our path was Sandpoint, ID – voted one of the best small towns in the country. I’d have to say I agree. We stopped in to a small wine bar [yes, again: population 2,000 or so and a very trendy wine bar] to have a cappucino. It’s quite a nice town and I would not mind having a summer home there. I think we’ll have to go back one day.

After leaving Sandpoint, we had a run-in with the law: I was not paying attention to my speed and got pulled over and ticketed. Well, at least it’s not much of a fine, but I’m still disappointed that I wasn’t more careful. That puts us $62 over budget for this trip now. I guess I have to skip a couple of meals… 😦

After Sandpoint, we continued north [at this point, I was afraid we’d accidently drive up into Canada, we are so far north] through Bonners Ferry and then finally turned east. This part of the journey was even more beautiful, if that is possible. Northern Idaho is stunning, but it’s not quite up to the Montana standard.

Passing into Montana was uneventful since we could not see much besides the tree-lined road. And what a windey road it was: 70mph speed limit felt a bit too generous. Once we were on the downside of the pass through the mountains, we came close to Kalispell, MT. That’s where the view began to change. The trees faded back and the mountains opened up to a wide valley in which was the city. We didn’t go into the city, but skirted it’s northern edge on our way to the cabins.

Having not been up here before, we made the newbie’s mistake of forgetting about the time zone change. We are now in Mountain time which is an hour later. I had planned to be at the lodge to check in by the 8PM closing time, but since I forgot about the time zone change, it was after 8:30PM before we arrived to check in. The owners were very nice and understanding, however, and let us have our room and a place to sleep.

We’re here now and I’m somewhat astounded that there’s high-speed wireless Internet service at the hotel/lodge. So, I’m using it. We’ll let you know more when we start our day tomorrow as we travel into the park.

Good night, all!