Glacier National Park

It’s a long drive across Montana. We had a stop for the night at Walmart in Havre (and WiFi from the K-mart next door), and arrived at Glacier soon after noon. The St Mary campground was open so we decided to spend the night there. Most of Glacier is still closed, including the Going-to-the-Sun Road which probably won’t open for another month, but we took a nice walk on the Beaver Pond Loop. Birds and a groundhog or marmot, but the big attraction was meadows of wild flowers. Funny that’s what I remember most about Glacier from a trip here in the 80s – the wildflowers.

Unfortunately, our pleasant afternoon was marred when we drove back to the campground. When we crossed a cattle guard, the rumble shut off all “non-essential” (David’s words) electrical on the van. We had no running lights, turn signals, wipers, or backup camera. The windows wouldn’t open and the air conditioner fans were off. There were multiple error messages on the dash, none that seemed to make sense. Fortunately the van would still drive, so we camped for the night and made plans to travel to the nearest Sprinter dealer 140 miles away in Calgary, but who would not be open until Monday.

-- Janet (text) and David (photos)