Leg 11

There may be no more scenic, more jaw-dropping, more absolutely breathtaking road in America than the Going-To-The-Sun Road through Glacier National Park. Just, woah.

After a recuperating day spent in Great Falls at the institutionally weird, awesome, and properly hipster O'Haire Motolodge & Sip N Dip Lounge (look that up), I headed north bright and early to beat the weather that was coming for Great Falls.

On that note, I'm convinced that Montana was hell-bent on welcoming me back to the PNW with a proper dousing of precipitation. Each day I spent in Montana, I spent some time rerouting around a storm cell so I wouldn't get drenched. I'm thankful for modern technology and access to tools that allowed me to stay completely dry in spite of torrential downpours happening all around me.

The GTTS Road is the major byway that cuts through Glacier National park horizontally. It is a highly sought, highly coveted, drive by all types of vehicles, not just motorcycle riders. As such, to enter the highway, there is a reservation system that opens the day before your drive that you must call promptly at 8am. That is, IF you enter from the more popular West side of the park in Apgar. The east entrance through St Mary would begin requiring reservations to enter starting this weekend, so with three days to spare, I was able to avoid the hassle of calling yesterday and proceeded directly to the entrance plaza with no issues.

The road from the entrance plaza meanders lazily for a few miles along Saint Mary Lake, before quickly climbing in elevation and instantly transforming into a cliff-hugging, vertigo inducing, vista overlooking, crawl along multiple mountain faces with steep drop-offs into deep valleys below. It twists, hairpins, climbs, and descends for 40ish miles, before arriving back down on the valley floor and hugging 9-mile long, Lake McDonald at the western terminus.

Fun fact, I only know that Lake McDonald is 9 miles long because at the very beginning of the road touching that lake, the clean, smooth, paved road gave way to a stretch of compact gravel and dirt interlaced with sharp vertically running edges of asphalt that ran the entire length of the lake. All 9 miles of it. As the park National Park is replacing this section of the road, they are in the middle of the stage where they strip it down to nothing so they can repave, which is great news for a future me, not so much for today me. 9 miles of that quality of road was a little stressful on a bike not built for that type of terrain, however, I was aware that the stress I would have felt 2 weeks ago was not present as the miles ticked by.

I realized that I had truly become comfortable on my bike. At just over 850lbs fullly loaded with fuel and gear, it took a while for me to settle in on this bike, but after 4,100 miles over 15 days, I had come to understand and appreciate all of it's nuances and the less-than-ideal road conditions I was currently encountering barely raised an eyebrow.

After touring the visitor center in Apgar, a quick 60 minutes south brought me to Kalispell where I'll spend the night. Some touring of Whitefish and downtown Kalispell are on the agenda, and then up early tomorrow for the last long day of the trip to Winthrop, WA.