Is this America’s most beautiful National Park? Trip to Alaska Episode 63
This is the most beautiful water I've ever seen! Look at it! Wow. Just... No Photoshop, no saturation. Pure blue. Wow. Crystal clear. Look at that log underneath the water. Ah, it's so gorgeous! Glacier National Park! [two up and overloaded] Oh, it's got a giant fin! Oh and then look at the pyramid made of awesomeness! Oh my God! Oh my God! [Quest to the Sun] We'll call it quest to the sun! Quest to the sun! Wow! [riding the world together] Oh no, my water. Ah... Hey everybody! Welcome back to another episode of 2Up and Overloaded. My name is Tim Notier,
and this is my lovely wife. Marisa Notier. We travel the world two up and overloaded, if you will, on our KTM 1190 Adventure R. We've been through the Americas, we've been halfway up through Africa, and in this season, we are coming back from the top of Alaska through Canada, and we have just entered back into the United States. This is true. In our last episode, we kind of had a bummer day. We did. It started off pretty cool and breezy if you will.
[previous episode] It's so windy today. It's just windy! I can't even see. But then it kind of ended in a slump. And a pretty crappy motel where somebody tried to screw us over, to scam us. But Marisa, she's the cheerleader. And so her positive energy and she was like,
"Let's get back into the groove of this. We're better than this." But she was able to rejuvenate my spirits. And we decided to indeed go to the sun via a road called... That is correct. Going-to-the-Sun Road. Bam. [Alaska Trip - Day 136] I felt that the road itself, just being on the motorcycle and seeing beautiful scenery, enjoying riding on a motorcycle was going to lift our spirits. We were very close to what is considered to be one of the most beautiful national parks of the United States, and that is Glacier National Park. Yeah buddy! And in order to traverse Glacier National Park by road, it has this one awesome road that goes through it, and it's called Going-to-the-Sun. And it was going to close
down within weeks I think. So this was like if every good day, people just migrated to it like Mecca. Yes. [St. Mary - Montana, USA]
We pulled in, and there was a little bit of a line. We had our little National Park Pass. We got in, and immediately there was a little bridge. And I was excited because you can see the valley going up into beautifulness, and there's this little river. We are in Glacier
National Park, yay! Wow. And there were some cows that walked halfway across the river and got stuck on some little Island, and then got too scared to keep going. These poor cows. They were stuck on an island in the river. They refused to mooove. Oh!!!
That's all it took to rekindle my spirits. Yes. Marisa's influence, and some stranded cows on an island. It made me feel like there's a lot of positives in this world. Going-to-the-Sun Road begins right when the national park begins from St Mary. It goes along in the beginning this beautiful lake called St Mary. And the lake is just this color of deep, deep blue. And we're kind of in this valley of two sides of it, and that's where the lake is nestled. But it almost felt like we were encompassed, like we were in some kind of crater. So it
looks like a big crater lake even though it's just this regular standard lake. Regular standard lake! Non-cratered. It was a beautiful regular standard lake. It was a very beautiful lake. [Due to its high elevation (4,484 feet / 1,367 meters), Saint Mary Lake is also very cold, rarely rising above 50˙Farenhiet / 10˙Celsius.] So we made sure that we were going to take as many pictures as we wanted, pull off at any opportunity, absorb the day, get some of the negative energy out from the previous day, and be a loving and happy couple. That's right. [Saint Mary Lake was also the filming location of the opening scene in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."]
So one of the first things we noticed when we got into the park was not only was it beautiful, and that Lake St Mary was gorgeous, but there were a lot of people. Yeah, when we pulled into the park, every little offshoot and little parking area was full of cars. But it really blew my mind, because yes, granted it was a gorgeous day, the weather was absolutely perfect. And also it was a Saturday. But besides
all of that, I couldn't believe that there were all these people who had made it to this remote corner of Montana. [Going-to-the-Sun Road - Montana, USA] We just went slow and steady. Yeah. There's really only one way to go. It's just the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and everyone's just kind of piled along. You got one lane
on one side, and oncoming traffic on the other side, and that's it. Yeah. But the views just got grander and grander as we break into these these valleys with these vistas. Logan Pass... wow. Yeah, absolutely amazingly beautiful. I mean one of the prettiest national parks, and it's so hard to commit to that, but... It really is up there. It was absolutely gorgeous. The whole time we kept thinking to ourselves that it reminded us of this epic journey. Even the name Going-to-the-Sun, it just sounded like we were on a quest.
I don't know if it's a butte, or a mountain, or just something pretty to look at. Yeah. We did come on a weekend, so there's some traffic but it's all right. That's pretty. Yeah. I'd rather have a lot of traffic and good weather, than no traffic and no sights. Exactly. Going-to-the-Sun was a part of an old Blackfeet legend that said that Sour Spirit, which was one of the deities... That was me (Tim) in lives past. Sour Spirit... He came down from the sun to teach the Blackfeet about how to hunt and fish. And then on his
way back up to the sun, he made an imprint on a mountain, and it's called Going-to-the-Sun Mountain. And so the road that goes by the mountain has since been named Going-to-the-Sun Road. Bam! Nerd fact! You get a different perspective if you're cliffside, versus if you're on the edge of the cliff side. Yes. You can either go all the way through the park and then back around south out of it. But in my mind, I'm like, "Whenever we get
to a point where it goes back down into normal stuff, let's turn around and go back, and head the other way." Because it was too pretty just to do once. As we lower down from Logan Pass, we got into this more foresty area with beautiful yellow trees that were turning for the fall colors. And we decided this is a perfect time to eat our snacks that we had packed up for the day, and have a good rest stop. This is a nice little dry creek bed where we can find a good rock eat on.
[Logan Creek Trailhead - 48.7247˙ North 113.7654˙ West] I had a turkey sandwich. I did too. And some peanuts and stuff. Oh, it was just absolutely gorgeous. That water was so clear, you could see straight down to the bottom.
Unbelievable! After our lunch, we continued following that little creek, it was McDonald Creek. And the colors of the creek! We stopped again to take a look at this little waterfall area. [Red Rock Point - 48.6953˙ North 113.8174˙ West] It was such a deep green crystal clear color. Yeah. I would call it turquoise, but I think it was greener than that. It was crazy, it was just the craziest water. It was too cold
to enjoy and bathe in on a chilly day. But I can imagine if it was very hot, that would be beautiful. Look at the color of these waters. And then there were trees that had fallen into the water. And you can see right down
to them. Even from up high on this cliff looking down into the river. If there was a fish this big, we would have been able to see it. So eventually we were coming to the end of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. We turned around, and decided that this is going to be the end of our epic quest, and we are going to go all the way back. And it was totally worth it. It was. Just the different angles and different perspectives of everything you see going this way is just... you can delve
deeper into it. [Known as the Crown of the Continent, Glacier National Park is the USA's 10th National Park, established in 1910.] So stunning! That was stunning. Oh, and then there's the dwarven kingdom, you can tell. Oh, totally! I love it. Yeah, you could totally imagine an elven city on these slopes bathed on sunlight with the falling leaves.
It's poetry. The sun hitting something and some Dwarven ruins glow gold and the second day of the third month on the fourth hour. The road to the sun is amazing. It's a fantasy road. It is. And I'm just glad that we're not going to enter the realm of the dark elves, because that's always much more dark and gloomy.
Mordor? Yes. We want less Mordor here, folks. [In 1850, there were about 80 glaciers in the park. Only 26 glaciers remain today.] And we continued to pull over at different little rest stops. There was Bird
Woman Falls. Bird Woman Falls. [Bird Woman Falls - 48.7081˙ North 113.7482˙ West] If there was ever a rare little pocket that there were no cars in, I'd flip around real quick and have Marisa take a little picture or video of me and pretend like we're the only ones there. Yeah. [The mountains of Glacier NP still hold spiritual significance to the Blackfeet, Salish, and Kootenai Tribes.] So yeah, it was just an overall good day. It was really what we needed to lift our spirits. It looks like there's giant condors or something that pooped on the rock. So now
the rock all the way on top looks white. Yeah! There be dragons! All the fire weed is filling the air with little magical seeds. They're saying, "Go home now or forever be frozen." All the stress from the day before was just completely wiped away by the glory of this road. We were having such a good day, and we were back to being us again. Yeah. Whatever monsters and Gremlins had taken control of us the day before, they were gone. I was that grumpy
Mountain God, what was his name again? Sour Spirit. Sour-puss Spirit. He dissipated out of me. The sun had had washed it away. Ah, those are my favorite. Just a little dusting of powdered sugar. Look at that, folks! Glorious! Once we were out, we felt very refurbished. Revived. Revived is a better word. The cows got out of there folks. We started heading towards just southeast, because that was the general direction that we were going. Yeah, we were just going to go across Montana
next. So we're really heading east, and we knew that the next big town, well, "big town" was going to be the town of Cut Bank. And we figured we'd be able to find something there. [Cut Bank - Montana, USA] We were totally willing to use one of our Temple of Moto splurges on a luxurious hotel room for the night. I think we really needed it, I think we really deserved it after the horrible, horrible day before. Hey! Considering we had such an awful night last night, I'm very happy to be in an excellent hotel. I think we really need just to have a bit of luxury and some really good rest in a warm place, We've had such a fantastic day, that I guess we're kind of spoiling ourselves. So Temple of Moto is a motorcycle tour company
that goes all over the United States to different national parks. And you got to check out their website to see if they go to Glacier National Park. And you too can go on Going-to-the-Sun Road. It was absolutely magical. And you will stay in a glorious place. Yes, their accommodations
are amazing. So check out TempleofMoto.com. We pulled up to a nice little town, and it was a regular Super 8, or it was like a real hotel. It wasn't like Bob's Backcountry Bush Hotel. It was a nice one. Which is nothing against Bob's Backcountry Bush Hotel, because those can be awesome. And we love the little ma and pop places. For sure. But this one was
also very nice. Sometimes you want that fake new hotel room spray smell. And you're like, "Mm." "That smells fake." The night before was so bad, and this day was so awesome, we just wanted a really good night's rest.
And we were blessed in the evening. But as the sun began to set, we were right next to this trellis... Trestle. Trestle! We were so close. What is a trellis? That's for plants go up. This is for trains to go across. Yes. But the sun was setting, and... We were in Montana, right? But this was like I had woken up in Oklahoma. This was like an Oklahoma sunset with the
train tracks going into the hills, and these little baby mountains, well huge mountains. But now they're small on the horizon. And I was like, "Yeah, this is is good." And we loved each other again. So it was a successful quest to the sun. This is true. And we had returned, and we had destroyed the Sour Spirit of Tim. So our next quest
was going to be our journey across the northern states of the plains back to Chicago. We did not think anything exciting was going to happen. We thought this was the apex folks. But no! But no. ----- You ever heard of it? Nope, we're not talking about it yet. No, we're not talking about nothing. You can mute that out
so I'm like, "Sdlfgjflg..." Scramble it. So stay tuned for the next episode, and I hope you liked this one. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up, and hit the Subscribe button below, and we'll be seeing you next time. Stay safe everybody. Bye! Peace. I have returned as a loving, once and future husband. The Sweet Spirit. Yes. Sweet? The mildly grumpy had returned.
2023-03-25 17:25
