Day 8 - Going to the Sun Road

Day 8 –

The rain comes down for the first time in the trip in the early morning, and liz and I awake to stare at the tent roof. The thunderheads are utterly majestic in their volume, and I don’t know how we could have slept if we wanted to. Eventually it ceases and we emerge to find a soggy world around us. I hang a wire along a few trees and we hang most everything that was in the rain while we make breakfast. We have Greg and Jen over from next door to help us obliterate the remaining breakfast items that we have yet to consume, and a good time is had by all.


Sacrificing our bath towels to wipe the dirt, rain, and pollen off of all of our hanging gear, it gets stowed and we set off for our last day in the park. We decide to trek all the way back around to the main entrance again and make our way up the Going to the Sun Road as far as they will allow us. The drive up along Lake McDonald and the swollen torrent of McDonald “creek” is a calm affair, until you begin to climb the first few hundred feet of the crags ahead. You soon find yourself along the side of an amazing canyon wall, looking across to thousands of feet of rock and air, punctuated by large, slow moving mists and large, fast moving streams falling down the cliff faces. It is easy to see why this roadway is the pinnacle of the park, and we’re sad to discover that the entire drive will be opened up in its entirety the next day – once we are gone. Later on we read that this was the latest road opening for the summer since 1943, and then it was due to a lack of labor force from troops being gone to fight in WW2.


The road stops at the Weeping wall, and we get out to munch sandwiches and watch a small pack of big horns move across the grass ahead of us. One little guy gets incredibly close to the pack of us silly humans, until a small child in a bright orange shirt dashes across the cliff line and convinces the ram to move away. This once again proves my theory: kids ruin everything.


We drive back down into the park and out the front gate bound for Whitefish, incredibly grateful for the time we’ve been able to spend in such breathtaking surroundings. We bounce into whitefish and find the lodge we’re staying at the for the night (the Hidden Moose Lodge) and take showers for the first time in 5 days. Dinner is enjoyed at Ciao Mambo’s downtown, and we sleep incredibly well in clean sheets stuffed, happy, and perfectly content to celebrate our 2 year anniversary in the Montana wilderness.

Shots from the day can be found over here, and the whole trip's pics are found here. Again, click on the 'all sizes' button to see larger sizes.