Riding the Rockies


Throughout this tour we've been struck by the profusion of wildflowers along the sides of the roads.


Near the town of Babb, Montana, on the edge of the prairies, Many Glacier Road, above left, enters Glacier National Park. It does not connect with the famous Going to the Sun Highway. Rather, it ends near a National Park campsite, above right. From there, we enjoyed a hike on the Swiftcurrent Trail, below.

From the Many Glacier area, we rode back toward Babb, and then south to St. Mary, where the main eastern entrance to Glacier Park is located. Below, St. Mary Lake. The town itself is touristy and not very attractive.

At Rising Sun campground, we met Ray and Lydia Ducharme, below left. We cycled up the pass together and, as things turned out, camped together occasionally over the next two weeks, finally cycling together to their home in Calgary, where we ended our tour. In both photos below, we're just starting up the Going to the Sun Highway. Our recumbents are well loaded, to say the least, but we made it with less difficulty than we had feared. (It appears that the climb to Logan Pass is easier coming from the east than from the west.)

Below are views on the way up to Logan Pass. Below right is quite near the top of the pass.


Above left is the busy parking area at the Logan Pass visitors' center. Of course we also took the obligatory photo (above right) to document our climb. Below, the area near the visitors' center is so popular that the park service has built a long, long boardwalk to prevent destruction of the Alpine measows by thousands of hikers.

Bicycles are allowed on Going to the Sun Highway only during limited hours. Therefore we had to start at dawn, and we were hiking above the visitors' center by mid-day. Amazingly, it was blazing hot, even on the snow. (Above left, Barb; above right, a couple whom we don't know, but we like the photo. It may be us a few years from now.)

One of the rangers said that all the glaciers will be gone from Glacier Park in the next 15 or 20 years — if not sooner. We believe it. Animals seemed to be suffering in the heat more than we were, below.