Into Montana

Friday, May 16, 2014--Sandpoint, ID, to Kalispell, MT

It was a long driving day today.  The direct route would not have been so long, but we made some detours to be able to see some sights off the regular path.

The Idaho panhandle is narrow, and Sandpoint is near its eastern border, so we were out of Idaho early and spent most of the day in Montana.  We followed scenic byway routes going southwestward from Sandpoint on ID 200/MT 200 to MT 56 which we took northward to US 2.  Tall evergreens lined the roadways, and snow-capped mountains were ahead of us and to the eastern side of us.

Once we got to US 2, we turned northwestward back toward Idaho and then took MT 508 further northward.  Our main goal was to see Yaak Falls.  This route (US 2, MT 508, and MT567) forms a loop route that is highly recommended in the travel literature.  Yaak Falls was great--rushing water cascading over giant stone boulders.  We were able to get right up next to them.

There is an unpaved shortcut road that would have allowed us to miss part of the loop.  We turned onto it, but it was blocked after 1 1/2 miles causing us to have to turn around.  Probably it is still blocked by snow.  We were surprised later to find that even the MT 567 route was only open to light-weight vehicles (which ours is).  It was a great road to follow--very narrow and twisting and winding high up into the mountains with snow banks still on the sides of the roadway.  The thick tree growth came right up to the edge of the roadway.  And the mountains above us were still covered with snow.

Back on US 2, we back-tracked a short distance to see Kootenai Falls and to walk across a swinging bridge that crosses the river there.  The Kootenai is a much wider river than the Yaak, so the rush of the water was more dramatic.  The long swinging bridge allowed us to walk across the whole river and explore the other side.  There, we found two young guys who were putting their kayaks into the water planning to go down the river, but they were studying the roughness of the water.  It was still churning quite a lot just below the swing bridge.  We all walked back across the bridge together which made it swing much more than it did when it was just two of us on it before.

After that, we just wanted to take US 2 all the way to Kalispell where we are staying for two nights.  It was about a 90 mile trip through valleys with the mountains of Glacier National Park gradually becoming evident the closer we got.  We will go there tomorrow to explore the portion of the park that is open so far this year.

Two interesting notes:

Most of the area we drove through today was created by a giant glacier 12000 years ago.  It resulted in the beautiful valleys between the mountains and in a large number of natural lakes that still exist.

Montana highways have small white crosses along its roadways for each person who has died in an accident.  If more than one cross is in a place, it means that more than one person has died there--in the same accident if on one post and in multiple accidents if on separate posts.  We saw one single post that must have had over 20 crosses on it today--probably the result of a bus accident.