I left the hotel with trepidation: I forgot to book an appointment for Glacier National Park, and they created a new system that requires a ticket to enter; 75% were pre-sold in advance for the season and 25% were held for release two days earlier. I was concerned about how this would work out, and I felt like my other options were fairly limited: I was too late to book tickets to other services (a tour bus or a tour boat), so that left me to wonder what would happen.

As I drove north, I recalled a couple thoughts that I've had in the last few days:

With this said, Montana is really something: last night, I stopped for gas in Billings, which is the biggest city in the state. It is about half the size of Rochester and had a lot of recent growth from oil findings (and the oil processing industry had a visible footprint), but that's slowed. I really enjoyed coming up to it and seeing a nice city, and then within 20 minutes of leaving, it was back to the mountains. Today, I went though Great Falls on the way to Glacier National Park. It was mountains for a long time, and then all of a sudden, much less dramatic hills and huge expanses of farmland again. Then, before long, I climbed a hill and at the far horizon, past other smaller hills, I saw a line of grey mountains: the Continental Divide.

When I got to Glacier National Park, I had a really enjoyable time going to the park. Part of my goal for getting there was to go on the Going-To-The-Sun Road, which is supposed to be a beautiful drive. I went to the east entrance and enjoyed the hills going — and then was denied entrance, even to the visitor's center (so I couldn't get my stamp!). The drive to the rejection was amazing (there was supposed to be a lake in the back in the next picture) and I barely felt sorry for myself!

I drove around the perilous southern perimeter of the park, peering over steep cliffs without guard rails, and came to the Glacier Park Lodge, which was kind of cool: when the park was new, they called it "America's Switzerland" and built the lodges in a Swiss style.

When I got to the western entrance for the park, it was after 5:00PM, so I was allowed in, and I got to drive the part of the Going-To-The-Sun Road that was actually open. It turned out that I was early for the road being fully open: 16 miles or so were open on the west side and 13 or so on the east: 29 of the 50 needed to do the whole road. They even had pre-stamped paper blanks at the western visitor’s center!

Finally, when I got to town for my hotel, I had a great time watching hot rods and motorcycles and other conveyances hold an impromptu rally up and down Main Street. I could totally imagine it getting old for a town resident, but for a visitor, seeing the raucousness and the customizations was a lot of fun.