Friday, July 3, 2020
Yesterday's cold wind gave way to sunshine. Steve and I drove back up MT49 to a place that overlooked Two Medicine Lake for a picture in the sunlight of where we had been yesterday.
When we got back, Mom was up and ready to go so we headed west on US2.
The lodge people had recommended a Skyland Rd. into the national forest just after Maria’s Pass. It goes up toward the continental divide. Gravel, but quite doable. Narrow and challenging to find a place to turn around. I guess anyone can camp for free on public land. We saw several tents and a couple RVs pulled off by streams. This being Fourth of July weekend, that wasn’t at all surprising, although one camper looked like it may have been there for a while.
On US2 we caught this guy crossing the road.
We continued west to the park. The line to get in wasn’t too long, but we were turned back just past the tourist area. Too many cars ahead. Try again after lunch. We weren’t about to hang around the tourist shops for two hours even if there weren’t a pandemic on. We used bathrooms and headed out.
The other place the lodge people had recommended was Hungry Horse Reservoir. "It's the same wilderness as in the park." There is a road all the way around the fifty-mile-long lake.
From the map it looked like the east side (top) was gravel and the west (bottom) paved. Turns out most of the west is gravel as well, but it was all decent road. Beautiful through the lodge pines. The west side was more open to the lake and the mountains beyond, but the east side had some spectacular views as well. MUCH less crowded than the park although we did find people camping at boat launches and lake access points. More on the west than the east. We had lunch by one of the boat launches on the east and met some campers who had relatives in Rice Lake.
I can’t compare this route to the park since we saw so little of the park, but I would definitely do this route again. Finding a camp site would probably be easier on a non-holiday.
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