Drinking It In

I first visited Glacier National Park in 2012 nearly two months before the winter season ended and the famed Going-to-the-Sun Road opened in its entirety. I stood at the edge of Lake McDonald’s impossibly clear water, drinking in the scenery. Even with a mix of frigid rain, snow, and thick fog cascading down the colossal peaks before me, I had fallen completely and irrevocably in love.
I returned the following August but failed to anticipate just how busy it would be. With Glacier’s only thoroughfare open for a meager 3 months per year, the high season (mid-June to September) is understandably subject to great demand.
I finally reached the visitor’s center at Logan Pass after a slow ascent in laughably incongruous traffic, but instead of enjoying unspoiled views from the Continental Divide, I was treated to throngs of children chasing ground squirrels and two young men harassing a family of mountain goats.
My plans of finishing the 50-mile drive quickly dissolved as I slid back into the driver’s seat and chose, somewhat dejectedly, to leave the Sun behind me. When I reached the end of the road, I was faced with a decision: turning left would take me to the exit and out of the park for good; turning right would take me to nowhere in particular, an expanse of road with no promised outcome. With more than half a tank of gas in my economy rental, I set off for the unknown.
Past the Apgar Visitor Center, just up Camas Road, there was no one. Not another car or human being for miles. Asphalt gave way to dirt as I made my way past scurrying grouse and marmots. Scorched mountainsides and matchstick tree trunks were all that remained in some spots. Ravaged by wildfires ten years prior, these areas were charred but not fallen, stubbornly holding their place in both space and time. A testament to both majesty and resilience.
I skirted the border of Glacier—the meandering North Fork River—on bumpy gravel until hunger begged me to turn around. As if ordained by fate herself, Home Ranch Bottoms bar appeared, the only facility for 30 miles. I took a seat, and the owner fixed me a slice of their homemade huckleberry pie. No one had ever found The Bottoms by “driving by,” he told me.
I smiled and felt the magic of Glacier National Park wash over me. How thankful I was to be “nowhere”—in this moment, at this remote bar with the sun streaming through streaked windows in one of the most gorgeous places on Earth.
Well, that and having left room for pie.