2022 Charleston Trailer Tripping ~ Canada and Alaska: Day 12

The next 8 days of our trip, we will be visiting the sights in Boise, Idaho, then two overnighters in Grangeville, ID and Missoula, MT and a long stay at Glacier National Park.

Day 12 - 14 ~ IDAHO

June 23rd: After 179 miles and 3 hours, we arrived at Hi Valley RV Park. This is an excellent RV park. We’ve stayed here a few times before and found it to be very satisfying. The sites are bit close together. More so if you are between two huge big-rig RV’s. Which we were. We never saw any of our neighbors and it was very quiet at night. At our site we had cable TV and weak WiFi. Strong enough to download pictures to my BLOG, but not strong enough to do any streaming.

There is a large dog park, play equipment for kids and a nice pool. The rec hall has a kitchen, dining table and comfy couch with a large screen TV. And 3 bookshelves full of books to exchange. I was able to exchange 4 books. There were several James Patterson books, but I’ve read them all. Now there are more James Patterson as that is what I exchanged. Also in the rec hall are games and puzzles and a pop corn machine with free pop corn. The comfort stations are large with 5 separate rooms with showers. The separate rooms are small but clean. They even have a stack of cloth floor mats stacked on the sink counter for your use in the shower.

The RV park is in Eagle, ID; about 6 miles from downtown Boise. We are spending two nights in this area.

June 24th: We revisited Zoo Boise. This is a very nice zoo. We were able to use our San Francisco Zoo membership and got ½ off on our entrance fee. We always ask because most zoos will honor other zoo memberships if it is a big enough zoo. San Francisco is on most zoo’s lists.

Zoo Boise: This was a good day at the zoo. Most animals were out and very photogenic. Most of the animals were up close and personal which made for some excellent photo opportunities! Zoo Boise is located in Julia Davis Park which is near the capital building. Mosaic Hyena h

Mosaic Flamingo h

African Wild Dog h

Amur Tiger (more white than other species)

Mosaic Meerkat h

Also located in the park is the Boise Art Museum and The Idaho State Historical Museum. We visited both.

Boise Art Museum: Not as big as the De Young in San Francisco. But there was some interesting art work. No pictures were allowed. Very frustrating as I saw some stuff I really wanted to take pictures of. I was able to sneak in a few.

"Untitled". "The way you experience the artwork is unique to this space. the arrangement of the artwork is as intentional and symbolic as the replenishment of the candies, mindful and meditative." It is intended to "restore public engagement", after the Museum's long absence due to Covid. By taking a piece of candy from "Untitled". "Your participation creates the work's ultimate meaning and shared sense of community". There were two other rooms that had a pile of this candy in the corner. I took 2 pieces of candy from one of the piles.

Idaho State Historical Museum:
The story of Idaho from prehistoric time through pioneer settlement. The layout was kind of chaotic; partitioned areas with life size store fronts. There was not a good flow to navigating through it all. But it was not boring.

This exhibit was fascinating, inspiring. Wonderful photographs! I would certainly call these men and women heroes.

We spent two hours in each place. A long day with a lunch break. There is so much else to see in Boise, but we did not plan a long stay here, so we could not see it all. We’ve visited this city before and it was worth coming back for a re-visit.

June 25th: We continued north on Highway 95 through Hells Canyon following the Salmon River. Beautiful country with wild rapids in the river. We passed several rafters and people fishing.

After 189 miles and 3.5 hours we arrived at BearDen RV Resort in Grangeville, ID. This is an overnight stop. We did unhook the trailer as we needed to go into town to get gas. We stopped and had a late lunch/early dinner at Trails Restaurant and Lounge.

BearDen RV Resort is a small park with about 45 sites. The sites are spacious, with grass on both sides, trees for shade and a picnic table. Our site #26 has three trees. There is a rec hall with couch and giant screen TV. And a book case for exchanging books! There are four showers for the whole park. They are in private rooms that include a toilet and sink. The shower is huge.

Day 15 - 19 ~ MONTANA

June 26th: We drove north east on highway 12 into Missoula. After 180 miles and 3.5 hours we arrived at Jim & Mary’s RV Park. This is a small park with about 70 sites. It’s a family run place that is beautifully landscaped with grass, shady trees and lots of flowers. In fact there is a plant and flower nursery on the property.

Throughout the site rows are small flower gardens with flower pots, statues, wrought iron, bark, etc. The grounds of this park are very inviting, peaceful and relaxing. I am very impressed with this place. I would give this place a perfect 5 but for a few downside issues. No cable TV, but we can get a few channels on the antenna. The WiFi is very weak. And the park is near train tracks. The train was running all night with horns blowing.

One of many mini gardens throughout the park. This one got my attention. I hid one of my Traveling Turtle rocks on the day we left. The next day a young girl found it and her father posted a picture on Facebook. Check out the facebook group "Traveling Turtle Peace Rocks".

I thought this was creative. A good use for old hub caps.

June 27th: We drove north on highway 93 through the Flathead Reservation; home to the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreilles tribes. Most of the signs along this route were in English and the Flathead nation language (Salish). It’s an interesting language when written; letters, upside down letters and symbols. For example ʔn̩ɬáɬəˀmqe is “a little black bear”. We continued driving north along the west side of Flathead Lake, hugging the shore line. Such beautiful country.

After 117 miles and 2 hours, we arrived at Glacier Peaks RV Park in Columbia Falls, MT. We are about 30 minutes from Glacier National Park. We will be spending 4 nights in this area, relaxing and exploring Glacier National Park.

Glacier Peaks RV park is a small park with about 60 sites. There is also tent camping as well as cabins. This is an ok rv park. Sites are long, but narrow; too close to neighbors. But ours was quiet. The interior roads are dirt and gravel, sites have grass, shade trees and a picnic table. No fire rings.

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park now requires a car pass to travel the more popular roads in the park. This is due to Covid causing staff shortages. There is a limit of 600 passes a day. You get this pass online, but you must request it at 8:00am the day before you enter the park. We got online on the day we left Missoula at 7:59am and got locked out with the message, “no more passes are available today”. WTF….. The next morning we were finally able to get a pass for the following morning. It’s good for 3 days.

After we set up camp, we drove the 15+ miles into the west entrance of Glacier NP to Lake McDonald. This is one of the roads that you need a pass for, but not after 4pm. We got there around 5pm. In this area of the country and this time of year, it does not get dark until 10pm. So we had plenty of light to see the views.

Covid has also caused staff shortages in the lodges, restaurants and stores that are inside the park. We always have a nice meal in the dining room of the main lodge at each park we visit (if they have one). Today only some of them are open for dinner only, but it is a buffet dinner due to shortage of waiters. On this trip, we are finding that these dining rooms are only open to registered guests. Very disappointing, but it is what it is.

We could not eat in the dining room at the Lake McDonald lodge (registered guests only), but we relaxed in the bar with some drinks. I had a huckleberry margarita. Yummm

Lake McDonald
Just outside the park in West Glacier, we found a place to have dinner. For dessert we shared a slice of warm huckleberry pie with huckleberry ice cream. It's was a huckleberry kind of day.

June 28th: Today we drove north on the Outside North Fork Road (outside of the NP) to the one building town of Polebridge. This is a must see if you visit Glacier National Park. The one building is the Polebridge Mercantile. The road turns to gravel as you get closer to this location. This place grows each time we visit. Now there are two eating places next to the Mercantile; The Northern Light Salon, and a food truck called Sasquatch Grill. The bathrooms are no longer porta potties. Wow, progress. But the Mercantile still has the best bakery in the area. We always get a loaf of huckleberry bread when we visit.

Dave waiting in line to buy huckleberry bread.
We also got a fruit fritter and cinnamon roll to enjoy later.

Had a nice lunch at this food truck.
You can continue on this dirt road into the park to Bowman Lake, but you need a car pass to continue. Our car pass is only good for the "Going-to-the-Sun road" and starts tomorrow. As we were leaving, it started to rain. And that night we had some thunder roll it. This did cool down the weather as it had been hot, into the high 80’s.

June 29th: While we are in the area we decided to go into Alberta, Canada for the day to visit Waterton National Park. This park is a continuation of Glacier NP, but it belongs to Canada. Waterton Lake does flow into US, but the main part of the lake is in Canada. To get there from Columbia Falls (where we are staying), you have to drive south, then east, then north; hugging the outside of Glacier NP. It is a two-hour drive to and then back. Well, we’ve got all day to do it.

When we got to the US-Canada border, to our horror, it was closed. We kicked and yelled at ourselves for not checking online first. With our years of traveling, we know better!! This border crossing has been closed for two years during the pandemic and has remained closed. Canada does a health check to all entering Canada so they kept some of the borders closed due to shortage of staff and the time it takes for this process. We are not sure of the details involved in this, but we will find out in two days.

We traveled on the Chief Mountain International Highway to get to the border. This is Chief Mountain above and below. At least we had nice scenery on this drive.

Since we are on the east side of Glaicer NP, we made use of our time here by exploring the park using the Many Glacier and St. Mary’s entrances. You do not need a car pass to drive these roads.

The Many Glacier entrance is a short road but very scenic.

Swiftcurrent Lake with Many Glacier Lodge far left. h

At St. Mary’s entrance, we drove the “Going to the Sun” road to Logan Pass but the road is closed at Jackson Glacier Overlook. We have visited this park about 4 times and have never been able to drive this road all the way through. We’ve always visited too early in the year. But today, this road is plowed through and is passable, but will not open to the public until July 4^th. We leave the area on July 1^st. Four days short. So close… Sadly, I don’t think we will be visiting here again in this life. I will have to wait for my next life.

Jackson Glacier Overlook

St. Mary's Lake

This day is a beautiful day but cooler and cloudy and very windy. So windy that at times it is difficult to get the car door open to get out. But the day was perfect for some very nice views and for picture taking.

June 30th: On our last day at Glacier NP we returned to the west entrance of the park and drove as far as we could on the “Going-to-the-Sun” road. We took in the views along the way and at Avalanche Creek, where the road block was, we did a .09 mile loop hike.

Unnamed falls along Going-to-the Sun Road

Going-to-the-Sun Road is closed at Avalanche Creek

Nearby the closure is Trail of Cedars. It's a short loop hike. At the top of the look is a longer trail to Avalanche Lake. We just did the loop trail.