East Glacier

Wednesday was a travel day from Billings MT to the East side of Glacier National Park at St. Mary.  A fairly long drive of 378 miles.  Another day of unbelieveably good traffic.  We chose to travel back roads and stay closer to the mountains for better views than the interstate route.  There were almost no cars in either direction.  A very nice drive.  The last 30 miles or so were on very tight turns on Rt.89 where it became obvious that by keeping the truck centered in the lane that the RV would go over the yellow center line by up to two feet.  Good thing that there were few cars going the other way, but I couldn't accept the risk.  On each turn marked at 35mph or less, I hugged the outer right edge of the road which often had quite a drop off (not a cliff).  Good practice for trailer awareness.

Our major east side activity was the Red Bus tour  for the International Peace Park route.  US Glacier and Canada Waterton parks were the 1st in the world to try to promote peaceful cooperation between countries using national parks, a model followed by many countries now.  To us, it was more of a way to see the sights without having to drive.  The photos tell most of the story about what we saw.

47 new photos added at http://picasaweb.google.com/rosser.tom/RVVacation2010#

Part of the story of the Red Bus tour is the history of it.  Our driver/guide had a microphone and speaker and entertained us with stories about national parks where he worked, facts about the lodges of the park system, and the restoration process of the Red Buses.  Turns out that Ford had to figure out how to rebuild 38 historic vehicles and spent about $225,000 each by the time they were done (tax write off).  We were disappointed that the rain prevented pulling back the canvas cover.  We will be taking another Red Bus tour tomorrow (Saturday) over the Going to the Sun highway.

Friday started out as a very rainy day.  We had considered getting up early and taking some short hikes in Glacier, but we slept in late instead.  Left the RV park at about 10 am and headed down the same narrow Rt. 89 we used to get there on Wed.  We planned to take Rt 49 to save some miles, but a sign at the junction said that the maximum overall length was 21 feet.  Since our truck is 20 feet long and our trailer is well over 1 foot long, we decided that the turns were too tight and proceeded to take the long way down to Browning.

We arrived at the North American RV Park in Coram and had to set up in the rain.  We had a back in site with a dog leg left guarded by boulders and obstacles  on both sides.  We took it very slow, but made it in on only one attempt with a planned "pull forward adjustment" on the dog leg.  The hitch was temperamental in disconnecting so we waited for the rain to stop then basically started over on the un-hitching process.  The ground was soft anyway, so raising up the front landing gear to reset the hitch allowed us to put down boards to prevent sinking into the soft earth.  We walked the dogs between rains and plan to take it easy tonight.  Some TV stations, excellent internet (to do Blogging).  We will be here for 4 nights.

No new problems, but the vibrations of towing are taking their tolls.  We lost a marker light from the rear fender of the truck, a light cover under the RV at the rear of the truck broke, screws in the RV need to be tightened, lost a light plastic step stool from the bed of the truck (stolen or blown out).