Going West 2013

Friday July 26

We had a great trip on Route 2 over the Marias pass to the East side of the park. The route follows the railroad and river through much of the route, so it’s very scenic. At the top of the pass there is a rest area with a Lewis and Clark monument and other commemorative plaques. We left the heavily wooded west side of the Rockies for the grasslands and mixed growth forests of the east side. Different, but nice. The KOA is OK, probably the nicest campground around, but everything is very dry even for the dry side of the mountains. When we arrived there was someone still on our site, so we had to wait a while for them to leave, but we were set up by noontime. We went to the visitor center and watched a short movie about the park, looked at some exhibits, and listened to a short ranger talk about the topography of the park. There is a historic ranger station that was to be open with a talk at 2, so we went to that. When the park opened back in the day there were 12 persons that were in charge of the whole park, and this is where one of the rangers lived with his family. The main job of the early rangers was to reduce the population of predators in the park, so they were basically hunters. The family lived in the station in the summer, in the lodge at Many Glacier in the winter. After the talk we went back to the visitor center and watched another movie, this about building and maintaining the Going to the Sun road. The exhibits in the center deal mostly with the relationship of the US and the various Indian nations that exist both historically and currently around the park. The general consensus is that the park really should belong to the Indians rather than the government because of treaty shenanigans. There are also presentations of the various Indian cultures. After a tour of the gift shop we returned to the KOA and did laundry with a dip in the pool while the clothes were taking a bath.