Thursday August 14 through August 16, 2025
Thursday morning we departed on the next leg of our adventure. We head east to Columbia Falls (5308 souls). Columbia Falls, MT, has a diverse and growing economy, heavily influenced by its proximity to Glacier National Park and its role as a gateway community. While traditional industries like lumber have seen a decline, the city has seen growth in tourism, construction, and healthcare. The town lies on the Flathead River.
The west entrance to Glacier National Park is very popular. Three campgrounds lie on the shores of Lake McDonald and access to the very popular Going-To-The-Sun Road is easy from here. We want to visit the park but not have to elbow our way through the crowd. While most folks who drive Going-To-The-Sun highway stop at the Logan Pass (elevation 6646′) then head back down the way they came, some drop down on the east side to view some more of the park. They would like to visit the Logan Pass Visitors Center but the parking lot is almost always full- cars circling the parking lot looking for a parking space.
We Spot a Stunning Peak While Traveling on U.S. 2
So we decided to go to the much quieter East Entrance of Glacier National Park- 18 miles from Logan Pass. The drive on US 2 is good to the West Entrance turnoff but it wasn’t long that the road turned into an unmaintained pile of crap. It was rough, with potholes for mile after mile- some of the worst paved road we’ve ever been on- really bad considering it is a United States Highway and a scenic byway at that. I had to slow down from the posted speed limit of 60 mph to as slow as 40 mph and it was still a very rough ride. I suspect the worst of it was in Flathead County. East of Flathead County is Glacier County. The road was much better in Glacier County.
Vistas On Our Way To Our Next Campground
We come to Essex, a very small community at 44 souls. There’s a few resorts and guest ranches along the route. The only community of size thus far is East Glacier Park (396 souls). Its Amtrak station is open seasonally. The town is heavily reliant on tourism and is located on the Blackfeet Reservation.
The Rez
The population of the Reservation is 10,405 souls while the enrolled members of the Tribe are 16,500 souls. Browning is seat of Tribal Government. Many communities on the Rez serve the tourist economy.
The Views From Our Campground At Aspenwood Resort
Leaving Browning we head west on US 89 to the place we are staying for 3 nights- the Aspenwood Resort. Honestly folks, the place has a cafe and maybe 12 RV sites. The sites offer 30 amp electric and water. It appears to be a converted field used for raising horses or cows. Don’t get me wrong- we like the place as it’s quiet, we love the country atmosphere and two horses visit us over a wire fence that separates us from them. But Lordy, calling the park a resort isn’t even a stretch! It just isn’t!
Friday we went into Browning to get a look at town and go to the Museum of the Plains Indians. The museum offered the history of the Indians but the remarkable offering was the Indian clothing, tools and weapons as well as beading and porcupine quill weaving exhibits. We’ve seen quite a few like exhibits including that of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming and this one is right up there with the best. Unfortunately no photos are allowed which is somewhat disappointing. It is what it is.
Two Tribal members are exhibiting their artwork. A lady is making bead bracelets but the show stopper was a fella making ledger art. Ledger artists use discarded “ledger paper”—banking book paper, accounts books, certificates and bonds, and sometimes even currency—as their drawing surface, creating art right on top of old writing, printing, and images. His art was tribal based but boy it was beautiful. He gets his ledger paper or even entire ledgers from most anywhere. He had some ledger paper from Oklahoma.
Browning is not a pretty town. It appears as a lot of folks don’t give a rats about their home’s maintenance. I hate to say it but of the many the Rez towns we’ve been to this seems to be typical. Why?
Scenes from the East Glacier Park area
Today, Saturday August 16 was Glacier NP day. We drove 20 miles to St. Mary and turned west on Glacier NP Road. My gosh, the view of those huge peaks is beautiful! We drove many miles into the park enjoying the changing perspective of the mounts and peaks. We paralleled St. Mary Lake for many miles. Traffic was light. A popular photo opportunity had less than a half dozen cars parked in the pull out.
The vistor center at the East Glacier entrance is flying three flags and it appears as if the Canadian and the Blackfeet flags are being flown higher on the staff. But that’s not true- its and optical delusion- they are flown on separate staffs.
An interesting phenomenon occurs in only one national park and it is this one. The continental divide within the park sends water three different directions. One watershed sends water towards the Pacific Ocean, another sends water towards Hudson Bay and the third sends water to the Gulf of America.
We drove back to St. Mary and treated ourselves to a drum stick ice cream and some 87 octane for our Subaru. Fuel is expensive here……….
A side note: I failed to mention Buster’s attack on a lamb back at the Blue Lake RV Resort a blog or two back. The park has a fenced dog run so on our way to Bonners Ferry we decided to let the dogs run a little. Both dogs were leashed so Buster came out first and immediately went into attack mode. I caught him- the lamb was uninjured but was knocked down. Ollie was already in the dog park and Buster half way when he unexpectedly pulled the leash out of my and continued the attack on that poor lamb and the lamb once again went down. The lamb as it turns out- was made out of concrete! Buster is a rescue. The stupid dog obviously has been trained to attack any animal including a concrete lamb. The unfortunate result was the lamb attacked Jil’s shin when it was knocked over the second time. She has a big owie that is going to take a while to heal. Buster was uninjured in the kerfuffle. As you may surmise we plan our overnight stops around that crazy dog, looking for places that have plenty of room to walk him.
Tomorrow we’ll be heading east. See you then!
Travel With Jil and Mike 