After two nights in St. Mary, Montana, we packed up on Saturday, June 20th, to begin the long drive towards Spokane, Washington. But first we planned to head south around the park and re-enter it from the west, in order to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road from the other side. Only 12 miles were accessible from the east, which we drove the night we arrived, whereas 29 miles were open from the west.

Two parts of the road in a switchback were destroyed by an avalanche over the winter, rendering the already narrow road a frighteningly narrow single lane wide. I can’t say that I’ve ever witnessed the destructive after-effects of an avalanche before. It basically looked like the mountainside had been combined in a blender, tree trunks, boulders, soil, snow and all.

It took us an hour to make it up to the point where the road was closed, just passed a section known as the Weeping Wall. We parked for a bit, had a snack, saw a family of bighorn sheep, and watched children horseplay precariously on the mountainside snowpack. And then we really began our drive home.

We opted to take US-2 west rather than I-90, and so meandered through Kalispell, MT, Bonners Ferry, ID, and Newport, WA on the way to Spokane. We were so exhausted after driving all day long, we had Indian food delivered to our hotel room, and collapsed.

And that was it. We woke up late the next morning. We went to Huckleberry’s, a local organic grocery store, for a well-deserved brunch. And then we headed over to the airport to catch our flight home to San Francisco.