August 14 - 17, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

1,400 Miles of Plains

We got up on Tuesday, had breakfast with Mike and Jill, then started up the road towards Glacier National Park, where we would be spending the rest of the day. We drove through Kalispell and into the mountains, hitting only a small patch of traffic at the entrance station before parking at the Apgar Visitor Center to see what was there. The answer: not much. We had backpacking reservations for the night, so we went to a ranger station to get it. A short educational video is included in your backcountry permit that features ~10 minutes on what you’re supposed to do when you see a bear. It was a fairly intense video that left little to the imagination and clearly is intended to make people pay attention and be bear aware. After signing the permits in the proper boxes, we headed a short way down the road to Lake McDonald, the largest of the many glacier-carved lakes in the park. We hung out for a while there and poked through the many colored stones that make up the shore. One of the primary attractions in the park is the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a narrow road that winds its way up to and over Logan Pass and down onto the other side of the park and provides spectacular views of the mountains the entire way. We started up the road and decided to not stop until we got up to the pass. Once there, we found ourselves amidst a sea of humanity along with countless cars milling about the parking lot and waiting for a spot to open up. We soon gave up and elected to head down towards St. Mary lake on the other side of the park. A friend had recommended we do the Virginia Falls trail, so we made our way down to the closest parking spot we could get to the trailhead: about one mile down the road. We hiked along the shore of St. Mary Lake to St. Mary Falls then around the backside of the lake and up to Virginia Falls. Both falls were very cool in their own way, but only the first was suited to swimming. So, we took a brief pause to cliff jump down into the large pools beneath St. Mary Falls and watch others do the same as we dried in the afternoon sun. The walk back was quick, and we soon found ourselves driving back across Logan Pass to where we were going to park for the night. We had backcountry permits, but we had elected to not actually hike due to Faith’s feet and knee still being in pain and getting into Glacier a day later than we had planned to. So, we drove down a long gravel road to get close to the trailhead before finding a lovely pull off to stay at. The area was secluded and clearly sparsely-traveled. I spent the next hour-ish poking around the woods nearby while Faith got ready for bed. The skeeters were pretty ferocious, so I quickly climbed in and passed into a deep sleep.

I thought that was the end of my day, but not quite. A few hours later, I was startled awake by Faith gasping, sitting suddenly upright, and shaking violently. I didn’t know what was going on, and she wasn’t immediately responding to my questions, so I turned on my flashlight to see if there was something in the car. She calmed down and informed that she was just in a dream where she saw a bear outside the window but woke up from that dream into another dream where the bear had broken its head through the window and was just above our faces. As you might imagine, that was pretty frightening and prompted her to awake back into reality and sit up suddenly. As we fell back asleep, she informed me that the sound the bear was making in her dream(s) was actually just my snoring; I tried to sleep on my side for the rest of the night to prevent further incident.

The next morning, we got up and drove up to Logan Pass early in the morning to hopefully beat the crowd… we didn’t. The parking lot was already packed by 7 AM, so we decided to cut our losses and just keep going. We drove out the east side of the park and back into the Great Plains. We stopped in Browning, MT to get some groceries before heading into central Montana to the town of Fort Benton, a rural town that Mike had recommended to us. We stopped at the visitor center for the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument before poking around through the rest of the small town. We saw the old Fort Benton (the actual fort) along with some other historic buildings before snacking on some monkey tails and hitting the road again. We continued on into central then eastern Montana past countless wheat fields, buttes, coulees, and small mountain ranges rising from and dipping back into the plains. Montana is a very wide state, so we didn’t quite make it out before night fell. We found a pull off with a good view and passed out for an uneventful night of rest.

The next morning, we hit the road again through the rest of Montana to Bismarck, ND via a more scenic route through the north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The park protects the Little Missouri Badlands, which are similar to the White River badlands of Badlands NP in SD but much prettier in my opinion. They are much more rounded and covered in trees as opposed to being jagged and treeless. We drove through the main road in the park and spent a solid 15 minutes waiting for a herd of bison to let us pass before getting back out to the highway. We finished our drive to Bismarck and had some time to kill before our evening plans. I worked from the van while Faith drove us around to a couple thrift stores (surprise, surprise) and found some items she had to have. Dinner rolled around, and we met up with Brooklyn and Nate, Faith’s cousin and fiance, for a lovely meal together. I had barely met Brooklyn at the wedding, and neither of us had met Nate, so it was a great opportunity to get to know them better. After dinner, we parted ways and once again hit the road east. As the sun set, we got off at an exit with a “No Services” sign and parked about a quarter mile from the interstate along the side of the road. We had a pleasant view of the plains and some nearby ponds. It didn’t occur to me until far too late that the ponds likely bred mosquitoes. Sure enough, Faith and I spent the next 15 minutes killing mosquitoes that had gotten into our van after leaving the door open for only a few moments. After completing the insect genocide, we drifted off into peaceful rest.

The sun rose all too quickly, and we got moving down the road towards northern Minnesota to meet my family for our annual vacation. We made it to Fargo, ND just in time to have brunch at Costco (a hotdog + samples) before poking around town then heading north and east. As the miles passed by, the roads became ever smaller and the landscape shifted from fields to forests. The drive was pretty and a very nice change from the previous 20 hours of driving through the plains. We made it up to the house we were going to stay at for the next week just south of Big Fork, MN and spent the rest of the evening unpacking, catching up, and poking around the property with the rest of my family. As night came, we all parted ways and fell asleep in our freezing rooms. Turns out the previous people had left the A/C at 63, which is a bit cooler than we were comfortable in. We didn’t have the energy to find the remote and turn the heat up, so we just piled on the blankets and passed out.