cancer – day 803

I went for a little Jeep ride in the Couer d’Alene National Forest, but it was so much like home that I decided to leave earlier in the day than planned, which was good because the drive to Glacier is all on slow roads and the whole way I was worried about low bridges, power lines, and tight turns. The drive was fine though, just slow. It took me something like seven or eight hours to get to West Glacier, and then all the campgrounds were full! So I decided to go on along the bottom of Glacier National Park over to East Glacier.

I’d say that was a big mistake, except that it turned out well in the long, long run.

East Glacier is on the eastern border of Glacier National Park, but in reality the mountains end a good 20-30 minutes before you get to East Glacier, which is nothing like West Glacier and its beautiful forested setting. I stopped and studied the map for a while (there’s no cell signal here, and therefore no GPS, since my GPS is on my blackberry). I had three options: go back to West Glacier (where I already knew it was beautiful, but I also knew I would have a very hard time finding a campsite), go on east to the freeway and head towards Helena (where I had also seen some nice secluded campgrounds online, and then I’d have an easier drive home when it’s time to leave Montana), or go 10 miles further east and then cut back and north to a little town at the park entrance called St. Mary (which would involve a lot of driving out of my way because the most direct route had a vehicle length restriction of 21 feet). After mulling it over a bit, I decided to make for St. Mary and see if I could find a campsite there.

The drive, once I got back in the forest, was beautiful but nerve-wracking. Very tight turns, steep slopes, and those 30 miles took me like an hour and a half to drive.

Get this, my cell phone doesn’t work here, but my internet satellite mapped itself up to the satellites very quickly and its working like a charm. How wicked cool is that?

So I get to St. Mary, and I go to the KOA campground (where I have VIP status because I stay at their campgrounds a lot), only to find out they have no campsites available. If I wanted, I could have paid them to let me park in their overflow area where there aren’t any hookups, and which would have meant disconnecting the Jeep and having to back the RV into a slot and then I could use my generator until 10:30PM but after that it was quiet hours. Given that it was already down to 55 degrees and I’ve gotten really cold during the night everywhere on this trip except the Back Hills, I decided to try my luck elsewhere. Worst case, I could head back the way I’d come and park it in a turnout just to have a place to sleep with the generator running for the heater.

I went across the road and up the hill to this other campground, and luckily for me, someone had decided to leave a day early, so the guy had just that one space available. And it was only available for one night, but I was hoping to stay in St. Mary for two nights and go exploring inside Glacier National Park tomorrow.

But lo and behold, the guy did have a different RV space opening up for tomorrow night, so I could stay two nights but I’d have to move my RV to this new site in the morning. I jumped on it and said absolutely, I’ll take it, and up the hill I went. It’s very pretty out my front window, which is directly facing a forest, no RVs. And since it was level when I parked, I didn’t have to mess with the blocks and I was able to put out the slideout right away and was completely settled in a few minutes. I heated up some leftovers for dinner, put in a movie, and had a nice quiet evening with the cats.