6-29-08 Glacier Nat'l Park- Going-to-the-Sun-Road, Avalanche Lake, Polebridge |
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7 viewsWe finally made it into the park!! The first few days we spent on the west side of the park (which you'll see in later pictures is extremely different from the east side). The largest lake in the park is Lake McDonald, which is shown in these next few pictures.
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8 viewsThis is a view of our campground from the South side of the lake. That cabin on the water is like a garage for boats or something, and the campsites are just a few feet behind it. Thick forest!
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8 viewsThis is a fork of the Flathead River (there is the north fork, middle fork and south fork, i'm just not sure which fork this is). There are countless and rivers, brooks and creeks throughout the park.
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9 viewsAnd here is the wonderful Chevy Trail Blazer that took us over 1,100 miles! The thing had a lot of room for all our camping gear, which was nice, and the ground clearance for some of the dirt roads we were on. But we soon realized, no amount of room is worth paying for the gas for a vehicle that only gets 18 miles to the gallon! We regretted not renting a Subaru Outback or something like that.
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8 viewsThese next several shots were taking from the Going to the Sun Road (driving from west to east). The road was closed about 17 or 18 miles in, but we drove as far as we could the first day. This road is an engineering masterpiece as most of it is built into the sides of steep mountains, but it sure requires a lot of maintenance every year from all the snow melt.
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10 viewsHeavens Peak is in the background which is one of the taller mountains in the park nearing 9,000 feet.
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8 viewsIt's not all paved, but they are planning to have it completely renovated for the parks centennial celebration in 2010.
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11 viewsMore views from the Going to the Sun Road.
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8 viewsAs you can see, this road is literally built into the side of a cliff! They had to build tunnels under the road to provide for the run off from the snow melt. They get so much snow there that during the summers these waterfalls never stop flowing.
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8 viewsHere is a closer view of a typical tunnel built under the road for a waterfall.
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