Pacific Northwest Road Trip – Part 4

Here it was the afternoon of the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend and the fifth day of my grand road tour of the Pacific Northwest in which I had experienced the perspective and wonder of four major national parks from Glacier NP in Montana to Washington’s diverse trio of North Cascades, Olympic, and Mount Rainier, but after I had exited Mount Rainier National Park, I had attempted to drive southward on a weather-beaten road to reach Mount St. Helens National Monument, a protected environment under the US Forest Service, which was created a few years after the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens in May of 1980 had decimated the surrounding area. However, twenty miles down this pot-holed, rocky, and gravel-roughed road, I was suddenly stopped by a sign and roadblock indicating the road beyond was still closed by winter snows. I pulled into a nearby campsite parking area and pulled out the printed computer itinerary I had created for the trip. Within the line details of the route, I noticed that I was supposed to take a southbound local road from another town to the west of the town where I had followed the road sign. The road I was on headed down the eastern side of Mount St. Helens, away from the western entrance where the informative visitor center was located. However, if I drove back up to the main road and tried to find this other unmarked local road, I realized I could find it difficult to stay on course. I could hear my friend’s voice in my head telling me that this is what a GPS app was for. Of course, I could take the main road back to Interstate 5, then drive south to the Mount St. Helens exit, then drive back east to the visitor center, but this would add a couple of hours, if not more, to the day, and it was already the mid-afternoon. I decided that I needed to pass up Mount St. Helens and move on. I had accomplished the main goal of checking off four national parks from my trip bucket list and the remainder of my itinerary was to visit a couple of national monuments on the way back to Colorado.

I put my car through the suffering of going back up the rough twenty miles to the main road and headed for Interstate 5. Once on Interstate 5, I headed south to Portland. I had thought it might be a good idea to drive through downtown Portland, but the earlier delays of the day made me decide to take the 205 bypass around Portland to connect with Interstate 84 and head east to the small town of Pendleton, where I had made my motel reservation.

The next day, Memorial Day, I got up early and headed back onto Interstate 84 towards Idaho. I had commented in part 2 of this multi-part blog post that this trip had another goal of upgrading Idaho on my bucket list. I had first visited Idaho in the spring of my first year of college when I had visited my birthplace of Burns, Oregon, and had taken the bus to Boise to catch a plane back to Los Angeles. This was before I had a decent camera to record my trips. About fifteen years ago, I had driven a half hour through a small corner of southeast Idaho on my way to Jackson, Wyoming, and Yellowstone National Park without stopping. On this current trip, I had driven through the upper Idaho panhandle between Montana and Washington, but I had stopped to eat dinner in a small Idaho town. Now, I was going to complete the upgrade by visiting the Craters of the Moon National Monument in eastern Idaho, taking pictures of a stark landscape.

Craters of the Moon National Monument is a small protected area of dark rocks, cone hills, and fissures along the Pioneer Mountains. To many, it may look like a stretch of moon landscape, which is how it received its name, but the landscape is really the result of past lava flows in a volcanic fissure. Its proximity to Yellowstone just to the east gave me a wonderful perspective of the volcanic activity lying below this fissure. I walked around a small trail and hiked up a nice black cone to get my pictures before driving on.

Paisley Cone, Craters of the Moon National Monument

I headed south into Utah to reach Brigham City where I had made my motel reservation. Brigham City is also next to an important historical location where east and west rails came together to form America’s first transcontinental railroad, bridging the two coasts. The final connection was done with a golden spike in a bold historical display. I had planned to make a quick stop to check it out. However, as I drove down to Brigham City, the clouds darkened overhead. Since it was getting late in the day, and I wasn’t sure how the site would look in the rain, I headed straight to the motel and checked in for the night. I figured that I would have a chance to slip over first thing in the morning before moving on. However, when I got up the next morning, the clouds were still around and threatening. I was glad to be near the important historical site, but I felt I could pass up this little side trip under the current weather conditions.

I was now on my way to my final stop before heading home, Dinosaur National Monument. The preserved environmental monument straddled over the Utah-Colorado border with most of the land being on the Colorado side. The park is mainly known for the dinosaur fossils that were discovered within the park, making it a very scientific perspective of archeology to explore, so I had planned the itinerary to visit the Colorado side on my way home. However, as I did my research on Dinosaur NM before starting the trip, I discovered that an important dinosaur gallery was on the Utah side, so I added the Utah entrance as well. Now, as I headed east on US 40 coming close to the Utah entrance, I was glad to see the dark clouds staying behind to the west. I turned onto a local road and headed up to the entrance.

I parked next to the visitor center and went in to explore. From the visitor center, a shuttle took me and other visitors up the hill to a building constructed against a quarry wall where loads of dinosaur fossils were visible within the rock. At one spot, visitors were allowed to actually feel the bones in the rock. When visitors were finished viewing the fossils and other exhibits, they had the option of taking the shuttle back or walking the outdoor trail down to the visitor center. Of course, I chose the trail which showed stretches of the geologic strata where the dinosaurs were found. Clam fossils were prevalent and a dinosaur backbone was visible on a rock wall along the way. When I reached the visitor center, I asked one of the park ranger about what fossils I would see on the Colorado side. I was surprised to discover that there were no fossils on display in Colorado. The park was mainly natural views of the canyon created by the Yampa River with recreational activities. Since there was no connecting road within the park, I would have to drive out to the main road, cross the border, and then drive back up to the Colorado entrance. I had thoroughly enjoyed the dinosaur perspective I had just immersed myself in, so I decided that I did not need to visit the Colorado side.

Dinosaur Fossils on Quarry Wall in Quarry Exhibit Hall, Dinosaur National Monument

I headed back through the Colorado Rockies on my way home. It was a glorious way to finish up this road trip. I had accomplished this trip in seven days and seen a lot to increase my perspective. It was a wonderful adventure to experience.

 

Pacific Northwest Road Trip – Part 1

When it came to deciding which road trip I should take this year based on my travel bucket lists, my choice was down to two options: a Midwest circuit around Lake Michigan and a broad circuit around the Pacific Northwest. The Midwest trip was designed to visit the last two states in which I had never stepped foot and one of the two states where I had only visited by changing planes in a major airport. It would also add two US national parks to the list I had visited. The Pacific Northwest trip would only visit the other of the two “changing planes” states on my list and upgrade an asterisk-visited state, but would add four US national parks to my visited list. The Midwest trip also appeared to be a simple short trip when I threw in a round-trip airfare to Chicago and the use of a rental car, as opposed to a long mileage trip in my own car from my home in the Denver area. I also had to consider that unlike last year when I had a friend join me on my trip, I was undertaking this trip solo. In the end, I decided to take on the greater challenge with the grand tour around the Pacific Northwest. To add to the challenge, due to other planned commitments, I had to schedule this tour around the heavily traveled Memorial Day weekend.

The first stop on my planned trip was Glacier National Park in Montana. I had experienced Montana fifteen years before during a Rocky Mountain road trip which had included exiting Yellowstone National Park out of the Montana entrance, then traveling eastward to the Little Bighorn National Battlefield; however, Glacier National Park, connected to its Canadian neighbor, Waterton Lake National Park, is basically the premiere tourist spot of Montana and one of the most popular of the US National Parks. Its position in the northwest corner of the state bonds it well with the three national parks on Washington in forming the core of this road trip. In my initial computer mapping, the route programmed me to the western entrance of the park, but the main feature of the park is the Going-to-the-Sun Road which goes over the continental divide as it travels between the eastern and western entrances. This led me to plan a longer trip to the eastern entrance in order to drive the entire route to the western entrance. Now, it was time to start the trek to get there.

Based on the computer map calculations, driving moderately in eight hour days, it would take me two days just to drive from the Denver area to the park entrance. Knowing that interstate highway speed limits were higher in the west and deciding that I could drive a longer day, I decided on Butte, Montana, which is only hours from Glacier NP, as the first overnight stopping point. I booked a motel online the night before my start, filled an ice chest with three days of pre-made lunches, then set out north early the next morning. The long drive through Wyoming was basically uneventful, and I made my way into Montana by mid-afternoon. However, a warm day and an emerging front brought heavy thunderstorms as I headed west in Montana. By the time I had reached my motel in Butte, the skies had cleared, and I was looking for a relaxing evening before setting out for my first visit. As I was checking in, I mentioned to the manager about my plans to drive through Glacier National Park on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and he responded that the road is never open before July because of the time it takes to plow out the winter snow. In my room, I went online and confirmed his information on the national park service website. Because this was a standard annual issue for Glacier, it wasn’t even a top alert on the site. The Going-to-the-Sun Road was only open twenty miles in at each entrance. I adjusted my route to head for the western entrance and enjoy Glacier as far as I could go in from that point.

The next day, I reached the western park entrance just before midday. After stopping at the Visitor Center, then taking a short detour, I started driving up the Going-to-the-Sun Road as it bordered on Lake McDonald. I stopped and took photos of the mountain range on the other side of the lake, although clouds did cover some mountain peaks. At the eastern end of the lake, there was a lodge and cabins with parking, which is where the main road was closed to vehicles. However, the Going-to-the-Sun Road was still clear for a distance, so it was opened for exploring bikers and hikers. I was able to hike down the road and pop in the woods for a bit, even meeting a curious deer at one moment, in order to get a sense of the northern mountain environment. I may not have been able to experience the sharp mountain ridges and glacial valleys at the continental divide and center of the park, but I truly savored the natural section I was able to experience. After enjoying the hike and picture taking, I drove back out of the park and headed back south to the interstate, where I turned westward.

Glacier National Park montage from the Lake McDonald area

I crossed into the Idaho panhandle and stopped for dinner. Prior to this moment, I had only consciously experienced Idaho twice. When I first came out to attend UCLA, I used my first spring break to fly up to Oregon in order to see my birthplace. On the way back, I took the bus to Boise and flew back to LA from there. This was before I had a decent camera to properly record any travel. Later, during the Rocky Mountain road trip, I crossed into the southeast corner of Idaho for a half-hour on my way from Salt Lake City to Jackson, Wyoming prior to visiting Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Because it was just a half-hour crossing, I felt this only gave Idaho an asterisk for my more recent travels. Now I had stopped in a town and was actually enjoying a meal in Idaho, finally allowing me to remove the asterisk off my trip bucket list accounting. However, I had more planned for Idaho later in my trip.

Finally, after dinner, I headed on into Washington where I had reserved my night stop in Spokane Valley. The only other time I had been in Washington was when I changed planes in Seattle-Tacoma Airport on my way to a land tour in Alaska sixteen years ago. Now, I was going to truly experience Washington by visiting its national parks over the Memorial Day weekend. My excitement was growing.

To be continued…