Day 17

We sleep through the pounding of our not so youthful hostel-mates up and down the hallway. Did Andrew mention that our hostel host informed us that the space once served as a brothel ("Along with almost every other building in East Glacier") ? Perhaps he didn't, but we certainly let our minds wander over how that would have played out in such an acoustic space.

Brownie's Hostel is also a convenience store and a bakery, and we buy a glorious raspberry/peach bran muffin on our way out the door. Andrew maneuvers the twisty mountain drive on the way to the infamous Going-to-the-Sun Road while I put together an inspiring "Going to the Sun Mix" on my iPOD that consists of such greats as "Paradise City" by Guns 'n' Roses and "Island in the Sun" by Weezer.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is still closed! No! How could they insist on protecting innocent tourists from collapsing over the flood-weakened edge! They tell us we can drive about a third of the way in from that direction, or we could drive back to West Glacier and take it from the other side where we can get almost all the way over. We decide to do both.

This journey takes us about 6 hours. The east entrance looks much like the rest of the park - dramatic mountain ranges with peaks of ... snow? Ice? Glaciers? Andrew and I are slowly coming to realize that: 1) There is a different between a "Glacier" and an "Iceberg"; and 2) The icebergs that we thought were glaciers and expected to find in Glacier National Park do not really exist there - maybe because we not are floating in an ocean.

We snack on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on our way to to the west entrance. The drive to West Glacier is over an hour, and combined with the hype and obstacles surrounding this "Going-to-the-Sun Road," our expectations are steep. About 10 minutes in, Andrew snarks:

"Um, this road is not currently delivering the goods. Am I jaded by our many National Park and scenic drives? Because I am just not blown away yet."

I agree with him, but we learn that the glory of this road is actually in the steep climb, and that the scenery becomes more impressive the higher you go. The pinnacle is "Logan's Pass" where a crystal clear water fall collides with the road - you can drive your car through it and then stop and hike up.

Somehow our day in the car inspires some competitive twinkle in Andrew and I, and we insist on climbing higher that anyone else we've seen today, and further still in the water. I fill a bottle from the water and play in the small patch of snow still hiding from summer.

We fly back down the road and say goodbye to Montana - the state we've spent the longest in so far. We blow through Idaho, looking for a place to find something made from a potato, but are turned away from a restaurant because we've arrived past closing. Plus, we're actually only in Idaho for about a half hour.

A surprise waits for us with our hotel booking in Spokane, Washington. Somehow, we've stumbled across a fantastically equipped Super 8 with a 24 hour pool and jacuzzi that we hit up around 1 a.m. With our mind still full of our Glacier vs. Iceberg epiphany, we fall asleep to the cable TV viewing of "Titanic" on our hotel TV.

- Emily Entry