We bid farewell to the Medora Campground and Theodore Roosevelt National Park at noon on Monday, and started West toward Glacier National Park in Montana.
We had two choices of routes to drive across Montana. Both routes would take us roughly 9 1/2 hours. One promised more scenery while the other promised more fuel stops. With our tire blowout experience in Minnesota fresh in our minds, we chose less scenery, more fuel – I.e. civilization and help should anything go wrong.
If our drive across Montana on Route 2 was touted as the MORE populated route, I shudder to consider what the more scenic, southern route would have looked like. We were lucky to arrive in Havre, MT just in time for dinner and in dire need of groceries on Saturday night. We found a nice park with a beautiful playground to eat dinner and let the boys play for a bit. Then we headed to the Havre Walmart for our second grocery shopping stop of the trip, and to boondock in the parking lot alongside a couple of other RVs and travel trailers for the night.
We were up and at it early on Sunday morning, excited to see the Bear Paw Mountains around us in Havre, but even more excited to see the Rocky Mountain range emerge as we neared western Montana and Glacier National Park.
West Glacier KOA
We pulled into the West Glacier KOA Resort at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon, a bit worried that they wouldn’t be able to accommodate us until our scheduled 3 pm check-in time. No one in the office batted an eye, and they had us pointed to our site in minutes.
The West Glacier KOA Resort – I’m not sure what there is to say, so I will borrow a phrase from Junie B. Jones: “Wowie wow wow”. I would recommend this KOA to anyone traveling to Glacier National Park, not only as a great place to stay in a prime location to the National Park’s West entrance, but as a whole experience. The landscaping is immaculate, the amenities include, (but certainly aren’t limited to) two pools (one adult, one family), two hot tubs (adults only), two playgrounds, a volleyball court, a “Bearstream” (airstream converted into a bar), a restaurant, and an ice cream shop.
Don’t have a camper? They have SO MANY cabins! Want to bring the whole extended family? They have some REALLY big (like – a house) cabins! Want to tent? They have BEAUTIFUL tent sites.
We set up our beautiful site 53, even finding two perfect trees to string a hammock between, and knew that we were going nowhere for the rest of the day. The boys made fast friends with a crew of kids at the Gaga ball pit where they spent most of their free time during our four-night stay. Mike and I enjoyed a cocktail from the Bearstream and were settled in just in time for Bingo to begin, where he won a deck of cards and a KOA koozie.
We enjoyed listening to the live music – all solo acoustic artists – every night of our stay, saw a magic show one night, and met so many people who we could share stories from the road with and collect bits of advice from for the rest of our trip. We met one couple with a wealth of Yellowstone National Park knowledge, and after talking with them I feel FAR more prepared to tackle that HUGE National Park in a couple of weeks.
We enjoyed a campfire every night, got ice cream from Scoops twice, and on our last morning stopped in at the Bear Cafe for a delicious breakfast of pancakes, fresh toast, and world’s best bacon before we hit the road west to Idaho and Washington. We were all really sad to leave. Sad to leave the beauty of Glacier National Park, and sad to leave that beautiful campground full of wonderful people. But that’s life on the road, and on Saturday morning the North Cascades were calling.
