Tuesday June 8, 2010 - Helena, Montana to St. Mary, Montana

The rest of the drive to the top of Montana was relatively quiet and still beautiful. Lots of rolling hills, and eventually you see towards the west this line of pretty impressive looking mountains. We parallel them for quite some time before we finally turn firmly westward and run smack into them.

St. Mary, MT is on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park. We've read/been told that the eastern side of the park is the more pristine and undeveloped. This is a rather major understatement. We set up camp at another KOA. This one is neither as big or as nice as the one we camped in outside of Mt. Rushmore, but it provides all the things we really need. The young man who checked me in hailed from Ahwatukee, AZ - practically next door to the area of Phoenix suburbs where I had lived most of my life. Turns out he was an ASU student as well, which I thought was a pretty cool connection. It didn't get me any discounts, but it was interesting all the same.

I get a clearer idea of just how isolated we are, though, when I head into St. Mary to get some groceries for dinner. I had been excited to see that St. Mary had a grocery store, which meant a 1-mile drive rather than a 31-mile drive back down to Browning, MT. But my excitement was a bit premature. The grocery store had most of the basic necessities, but didn't have much of anything in terms of produce or meat. It had hot dogs though, which is what the kids were jumping up and down in anticipation of. But nothing else - except for bacon. Gena and I had hoped to do another buffalo foil packet sort of dinner for ourselves, but alas, this was not to be. Still, the kids enjoyed their hot dogs and marshmallows, and Gena and I made due with hopes of finding something better the next day.

We were happy that our campsite was fairly secluded, and also surrounded by aspen trees. We were hopeful that this would mean a less windy night for us, and we weren't mistaken. I don't think the wind stirred all night.

But this didn't mean that we slept any better.

All of our sleeping bags are rated for pretty cool nights - like 20 degree nights. Plenty fine for the low-40's temperatures that we would be facing here. Yet for some strange reason, Gena and I were freezing all night. And with us being cold, we worried about the kids. However, it was clear that the kids were sleeping like logs - very warm logs. Whatever cold issues we were facing were limited to Gena and I. Neither of us slept very well or very long, though we both discovered independently that if we pulled our sleeping bags over our heads, we managed to stay a little warmer. Once again, dawn couldn't come fast enough.