West Glacier - Road Trip 2019

We left the ideal conditions of Banff behind to visit West Glacier next. Since we are travelling in a generally eastern direction there is a bit of backtracking to the west required.

Alberta’s Kootenay National Park lies between the trans-Canada highway on the east side of the continental divide and British Columbia’s Radium Hot Springs on the westside.   Unfortunately we are back in the clouds and rain!  Arg!

Near Radium the clouds have dispersed!  To add to our excitement there were 7 big horn sheep lazing along the roadside as if they were the official town greeters. 

It was a travel day, so we continued on … until another thunderstorm descended upon us.  We checked into the Will-O-Bend RV and Golf, I did not even hookup just parked.  The morning was postcard-perfect!  The park is beautiful, what pleasant stop!

I took my morning walk around the park, which has its own driving range (FREE), hiking trails, with exercise equipment and a well maintained common area.

While Fran played a round of golf I did the laundry and gave the RV a sponge bath.  Fran said this is the most  enjoyable course she has ever played.

I also had time to whip up myself some breakfast and try some of the pea-meal bacon.

Although very tasty, I find the bacon to be quite high in sodium, more so than most other bacon or ham products.  The pea-meal is a cornbread wrapping, which makes the bacon less suitable for use in a sandwich. Yes I would buy it again. 

I searched George’s recipe page on his blog HERE for other ways to prepare pea-meal bacon, alas he has a lot of great ideas for the grill, just not the bacon.

The only place with a spot for us near West Glacier was American RV about 5 miles outside the entrance to West Glacier. 

Trust me 5 miles is a long scooter ride on a 70 mph 2-lane highway!
But we made it just fine … Our first stop was to join the crowds at the Apgar Visitor Center.

Kami has had a hand in the design of 3 of the 4 National Park games for sale here!

 BTW – Hogwart’s Defense Against the Dark Arts is coming out.  A short clip with Kami introducing her game is on Twitch TV can be seen HERE.

We scooted on the Going to the Sun Road along Lake McDonald to the lodge.

About a mile beyond McDonald Lodge is the trailhead for John’s Lake, which is about a 2 mile loop.  This is a very nice trail past the lake before returning to the McDonald River.

Once back at the river a foot bridge crossed above the Dancing Cascade

Then on to McDonald Falls

The road to the Lake McDonald Ranger Station was closed for repairs.  The sign made it pretty clear we were not welcome.   “No Walking, Hiking, Biking, Crawling past this point.”

The reason the Ranger Station was an important destination is The Chouters posted this was where Ansel Adams created his famous photo.  All of the Ansel Adams photos from Glacier National Park can be viewed HERE.

We continued up the Going to the Sun Road to the Avalanche Trailhead.  The parking lot was closed,but there’s always room for a scooter!

I only have this single pic from the Trail of Cedars.  I somehow managed to change the settings on the camera and have several time-lapse photos of the inside of the camera case.

We returned to the Lake McDonald Lodge for lunch.  I like to try something local and unique and could not resist the Elk Burger with huckleberry and goat cheese. OMG so good!

We ran into a total traffic jam returning – miles long!  With the scooter we advanced our position to a turnout and shade to wait.  An hour later we heard sirens of the first responders.  The single car (large SUV) accident injured 3, but fortunately no fatalities.

Although a family of 3 may disagree, at least we had No Bad Days.

We’re off to East Glacier next as we continue to work our way to Ohio.