Trip to Glacier National Park - Part 5 (GoingToTheSun Road)

The best experience in the trip was driving “Going To The Sun road”. This road was completed in 1932 and goes over the continental divide at Logan pass. The road, 53 miles long, is a National Historic landmark and Historic Civil Engineering landmark.

The road is one of the most difficult roads in North America to snowplow in the spring. Up to 80 feet (24 m) of snow can lie on top of Logan Pass, and more just east of the pass where the deepest snowfield has long been referred to as Big Drift. The road takes about ten weeks to plow, even with equipment that can move 4000 tons of snow in an hour. The snowplow crew can clear as little as 500 feet (150 m) of the road per day. On the east side of the continental divide, there are few guardrails due to heavy snows and the resultant late winter avalanches that have repeatedly destroyed every protective barrier ever constructed. The road is generally open from early June to mid October, with its latest ever opening on 13 July (in 2011).
Lake McDonald is approximately 10 miles (16 km) long, and over a mile (1.6 km) wide and 472 feet (130 m) deep with a surface area of 6,823 acres (27.6 km²).

 Views from both sides of the road

 

 

Trip to Glacier National Park - Part 4 (Lake McDonald lodge and around)

Lake McDonald lodge is located next to Lake McDonald in Glacier national park. Some pictures from around that area.
The Lake McDonald Lodge, built in 1895, is a historic lodge located within Glacier National Park, on the southeast shore of Lake McDonald. The lodge is a 3-1/2-story structure built in a Swiss chalet style based on Kirtland Cutter's design. The foundation and first floor walls are built of stone, with a wood-frame superstructure. The lobby is a large, open space that extends to the third story. It has a massive fireplace and a concrete floor scored in a flagstone pattern, with messages in several Indian languages inscribed into it. The rustic lodge is a National Historic Landmark. (Info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_McDonald_Lodge).

The lodge

 Bear grass flower

One of our friends had promised to take us in their Canoe. They lost everything in the “Waldo Canyon Fire”. We were talking about them when we saw a family canoeing in the lake. When we met the family later, we told our friend’s story. To our surprise, they were also from Colorado Springs and had lost their rental property in the same fire. It became a bigger surprise, when my daughter pointed out that, their daughter and mine kindergarten classmates. What a small world we live in! Next day we had a blast when they allowed us to borrow their canoe.

The Red tour buses