Day 6 - Olny to Glacier

I woke up early the next morning--who am I kidding, I woke up early every morning while camping.  But I woke up early again, and had my muffler on my mind again.  The sky had clouded up overnight, partly why it was so warm the previous night.  As I was laying there thinking about the muffler, I heard a couple taps outside that could have been leaves or twigs falling, but in not too long, I felt moisture on my face and knew that it had started raining.

Chuck and I hadn't been using our rainflys because the weather was nice and we wanted to see stars when possible.  And also, a rainfly is just another thing you have to deal with when you're pitching or breaking camp.  So we hadn't set them up this evening either.  After a few attempts of calling out his name, Chuck woke up and I told him it had started raining.  

We both got out of our tents and went about securing our gear and throwing on our rainflys as quickly as possible.  It was a bit of a Chinese fire drill exercise, but we got all the important stuff covered in the early morning twilight.  As soon as we got back in our tents, the sprinkle tapered off, and that was that.

A little while later, we both got up and had coffee, and while I headed into the woods to take care of business, Chuck took a look at my muffler.  By the time I came back, he had it disassembled and showed me the fresh ding in the bottom of the midpipe.  Sigh. I got it attached and put back together and hoped that that would be the last we had to deal with that.  I'm not sure if it's on there quite right, but it sounds mostly like it should.  While I was working on the muffler, I took a look at my oil since the sight glass was right in front of me, and I was way low, even though I'd done an oil change right before the trip.  I remembered reading that the SV (at least the first gen) likes to burn a little oil on long trips.  It wasn't what I wanted to see, but I wasn't too terribly concerned

Back on the road, bikes intact.

We got out of there with minimal drama, but much like our first camping spot, I was nervous until my bike was sitting safely on the main road.  Our next stop was Whitefish, MT where we gassed up and I got a quart of oil.  Chuck talked to one of the guys at the gas station recommended the Buffalo Cafe, which turned out to be an excellent call. Chuck maintains that it was the best breakfast we had on the whole trip. I preferred Connie's in Sand Point, but either way, if you can't go wrong with either one if you happen to be in the area.

Whitefish was similar to Sandpoint in that it had restaurants with great breakfast food, and an abundance of attractive ladies.  I don't know what they're putting in the water in this part of the country, but I'd like to see it more widely distributed.

We set off towards Glacier, and before the trip, Chuck had mentioned he wanted to stop at a roadside attraction or two, which I was more than fine with.  One place he'd specifically mentioned was the Mystery House of Montana, outside of Columbia Falls.  We found it and stopped there.  We'd hoped to be able to just pay our admission and stroll around at our leisure, but no, we had to be on a guided tour.  

What mysteries lie behind cash register?

Well apparently this time of year is the slow season, and they were pulling some sort of shift where only one guide was present and was taking care of two tours at once.  Our guide was Robert, a short man with a tourist appropriate silly hat, and he sounded like we caught him in between morning cocktails.

I don't know what we were expecting from the mystery house, really.  We certainly weren't expecting to be convinced of mystical vortex powers, but we were expecting at least some sort of kitsch entertainment.  Chuck and I are both smart people, and we both have skeptical dispositions, so as Robert was hurrying through his disjointed and rehearsed spiel, anyone able to read minds would have seen that we were both thinking "bullshit!"  What was especially annoying about Robert's tour was that rather than trying to come up with some vaguely plausible pseudoscientific explanation, his default statement was always "Don't ask me how it happens!  I don't even pretend to know!"  One of the ladies on the tour took a couple pictures of us, where we're standing there, awkwardly wishing we could just leave.

Dude, do you smell something?

Yup, I smell it over here too.

Eventually Robert left us alone to go guide another tour, and we walked around looking at a couple things, such as a random golden door, with cheap spray paint flaking off of it, that led to a bench.  No explanation or optical illusion, just a cheesy gold door.  There was also the "fountain of youth," a cheapo plastic garden fountain, with a piece of paper taped to it that proclaimed it as such.

If only Ponce de Leon knew....

Chuck went to the bathroom before we made our escape, and told me I had to go use it.  I didn't really have to go, but I made myself on Chuck's recommendation.  I immediately saw what he was talking about.  Inside the urinal on the little scented mat thing, was a plastic goalpost with a football suspended in the middle.  As you peed on it, the football would spin on the string.  It was by far the most entertaining part of the mystery house experience.

I did my best John Madden illustration.

From there, we were on to Glacier, which would be the high water mark of our route.  We got there pretty quickly, and everyone we'd talked to about Glacier recommended the Going-to-the-Sun road.  As it turns out, there's really only one road that goes through the park, and that's the road, so we didn't have much trouble finding it.

The informational sign was about a wildfire that destroyed the trees on the other side of the lake.  They're still working on coming back.

The road brought a mixture of emotions.  On the one hand, it's design was awesome, lots of great twists and turns.  And the scenery is simply unparalleled.  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it is one of the most beautiful roads in the world.  It covers the breadth of the eponymous glacial canyon and though it's a cliche description, the view is breathtaking.  

If you look closely, you can see where the road leads on the left hillside

The downfall is that since it's such a famous road, and the only road through there, it is heavily used by photographing and slow moving tourists, most of whom have no concept of the etiquette of pulling over to let faster moving traffic through.  And as it turns out, they didn't need the etiquette anyway, as significant portions of the road are under construction now.  There were several spots where it was down to one lane and we had to wait for flaggers, but the worst was a large section under construction that required a pace car to lead the procession through.

We had to wait a while for the other direction of traffic to come through before we could go, and when we did, it was a slog of never exceeding 10 mph, uphill on varying levels of paving.  Needless to say our engines were running hot, and our clutch hands were getting tired.  And by the time the pace car finally pulled away to let us speed up, we were, of course, behind all the traffic that had accumulated, most of which only sped up to about 20 mph.

Eventually, we passed the scenic part and found a picnic area to pull over in and take a breather.  There were several campgrounds scattered around the park, and we both agreed that we wanted to avoid the RV crowd, like we'd experienced at Farragut.  Our best option, we decided, was to go to one of the primitive campgrounds that was first come, first serve.

A nice spot for a break

We stopped at a grocery store to get some supplies for the evening--some canned soup and rolls, and some beer, Pig's Ass Porter (yes, I was sold on the name).  The campsite we were most drawn to was about half an hour away from the park proper, and had about five mile gravel road to get to it.  As we were riding towards it, and having no way of knowing if it was full or not, we both were scoping out potential guerrilla camping opportunities if it came down to it, because we didn't feel like riding back down that road, especially since it was getting late by then.

Nice splatter on a freshly cleaned visor

The road to the campground...would there be a site for us?

As it turned out, our fears were unfounded. There were something like 19 sites total at the campground, and only a few of them had residents.  We picked a spot and I went to the registration board to get an envelope and saw that there was a notice that gathering firewood was illegal in the park except for designated areas (which we weren't in).  

I told Chuck the bad news and neither of us were stoked, because we'd heard that Glacier gets cold at night, no matter the season, and the closest place we knew to buy firewood was half an hour away.  There was a ranger in the campground doing rangerly things, and Chuck asked him about the firewood situation.  The guy was younger than we were, and seemed to be pretty cool.  He informed us that yes, gathering firewood in the park was indeed illegal.  However, the area outside of the campground, about a mile back up the road, was not national park land, so therefore outside of his jurisdiction.  Wink wink.

With that in mind, after Chuck and I had set up camp and relaxed a bit, we set off up the road, equipped with The Choppah.  We found a spot outside the gates and quickly made our way to the fringe of the woods to find some dead wood that wasn't too rotten for burning, and that could fit on Chuck's bike.

As it happened, there was a bunch of wood for the grabbing, but a lot of it came equipped with stabbers.  Not thorns, really, but little spiky nubs that didn't feel too good when you grabbed them.  Somehow in his haste, Chuck got a little too rough with one, and the next thing he knew he was bleeding.  It wasn't anything that justified stitches, but it was enough to look at it and say "Holy shit, dude!"

Holy shit, dude!

In not too long, we had a good haul of wood, plenty enough for the evening for the two of us.  We strapped it to Chuck's bike and it worked surprisingly well.  Chuck had his tie down straps, and the wood bundle, while precarious and a little bouncy, was secure.  I don't think we even lost a twig en route.

Our successful plunder

We got our fire going back at camp, and dined on some Dinty Moore and Campbell's Chunky, fortified with chunks of bread and canned corn.  It actually wasn't too bad at all.  It was hot and hearty, and I wasn't complaining.

Glacier is in bear country, and all the sites had bear boxes where we were supposed to put any food items, in case a bear wandered into camp.  As it turned out, we saw no bears, but plenty of cows.  The neighboring land, where we pilfered our firewood, was free range cattle land, and the cattle had wandered into the park.  So while we didn't see any bears or elk, we did get to listen to some moos here and there.

As predicted, Glacier got cold, but we were prepared for it, and we both slept without issue that night.