U Today was the much anticipated Going to the Sun Road ride through Glacier National Park.  There has always been a lot of hype about this ride, so after Iron Mountain Road and Beartooth Highway, it would take a lot to impress us.  But this ride more than lived up to the hype, I can't imagine a more beautiful ride anywhere.  Since the entire Going to the Sun Road is only 48 miles from West Glacier to St Mary, we slept in a little, and dawdled around getting breakfast, since this is one of the few hotels that doesn't offer a free breakfast.  So we didn't get started riding until around 10:00.  In truth, we also took our time because it tends to be in the 50's around here until the afternoon when it gets up into the upper 70's, so we were also waiting for it to warm up.  Also, since we were staying in West Glacier, we decided to ride the Going to the Sun Road from west to east to St Mary, stopping at any turnout or hiking trail that looked interesting. On the way back from east to west, St Mary to West Glacier, we would set up the GoPro and ride the entire distance non-stop so we could record the ride.
      Immediately, we noticed that everything in Glacier is much greener than any of the mountains we have ridden before .  Most of the mountains and valleys are covered in forest, so there are trees everywhere.This makes everything look much lusher and much less barren that mountains we had seen before.  Of course this makes everything even more beautiful.  the other thing we noticed is that the streams and lakes were more a bright aqua color rather than the typical green of other mountain streams.
     So as we began our way up the Going to the Sun Road, we came out of the tree lined roadway and came upon the aqua blue beauty of Lake MacDonald.  The lake is huge and the mountains appear to rise out of the lake and are enormous.  It's difficult in a picture to show the sheer size of everything.  We followed along the lake for several miles, stopping at turnouts to take pictures and admire the beauty.  On the northeast tip of Lake MacDonald is the MacDonald Creek that feeds in the water.  From the overlook we could see MacDonald Falls, and when we looked closer, we noticed people on the other side of the creek.  We took a look at the map and found we had just driven past the trailhead, so we turned around and headed back so we could hike .  It was a short hike through the woods and when we emerged, we were right at the edge of the creek and right at the falls.  We took some great pictures and followed the trail up the creek a little way before we turned back.  We could easily have spent the entire day exploring MacDonald Creek.
    As we got back on the road, at some of the various turnouts, we noticed some reflections way high on the side of the mountain in front of us, and that was when we realized that they were cars!  At some point we would be up the side of the mountain where they were and we got excited.  According to the posters at the various turnouts, the Going to the Sun Road is unique in that it climbs about 3000 ft to Logan's Pass, and the original plans called for about 15 switchbacks to get up that high, but some clever engineer figured out how to do it with only 1 switchback, called The Loop, So the entire road follows the side of the mountain only reversing on itself one time as it ascends.
     So we started the ascent, stopping at the various turnouts, when all of a sudden the traffic stopped completely in both directions .  We looked ahead, and there in the middle of the road, just walking along was a bear.  He was young, barely bigger than a cub, and this time I had the presence of mind to get out the telephoto lens camera and get a few pictures.  We were looking for the mother bear, but she didn't show and eventually the bear sauntered off.
     We continued our ascent and eventually stopped near The Loop to take some pictures and talk to some of the other bikers.  There were a lot of bikes.  The other cool thing about Glacier, is if you don't want to drive, or are just too scared to drive, the park offers a free shuttle service in these 1930's styled buses back and forth all day, stopping at the key points of interest.  What a deal!  We saw these buses all day carrying passengers back and forth.
     Once we got passed The Loop we noticed that there were lots of waterfalls.  Evidently, the melting snow from the higher elevations just runs down the side of the mountain creating waterfalls everywhere.  There is a section of the road where so many waterfalls are present, it is called the Weeping Wall .  Some of these are so close to the road that the water actually will drip on the westbound cars as it comes down.  We climbed around a few of these and took a lot of pictures.  As we came to the summit, at a place called Logan's Pass, there was another Visitors Center.  The parking lot was shown as full, but there is also a special motorcycle parking section and we were able to find a spot for our bike there.
     There is still a lot of snow around the Visitors Center, and some of the hiking paths still have snow cover in some sections.  It wasn't too cold though, maybe 66 degrees at the summit, even with the snow.  we did a little hiking around the Visitors Center, but it was getting close to 2:30 and we weren't even to St Mary yet because we had made so many stops along the way.  We got our Passport stamps at the Visitors Center, looked for some Big Horn Sheep that had been spotted in the area - no luck, and decided it was time to begin the descent to St Mary. 
     The descent to St Mary is much more straightforward than the ascent from West Glacier, mostly because it doesn't drop as much .  There was supposed to be road construction on the St Mary side, and with our recent gravel experiences we were a little leery.   But it turned out that the pavement was good, just didn't have the final finish surface yet.   There were a couple of spots almost into St Mary where we had some delay as they were single lane with a flagman and doing the final finish in that area.  There was still a lot of guardrail and stonework to be done, so consequently there were mostly no guardrails at all in this area yet.  The sad part was that the turnouts were also unfinished and blocked off.  So we were unable to stop and take pictures during the descent into St Mary which was disappointing, especially at the first appearance of St Mary Lake visible in the valley from an overlook on the mountain. 
     When we reached the bottom, we were able to visit the St Mary boat docks, so we were able to take some pictures.  The water sure was cold!  We finally pulled into St Mary about 3:30, bought a couple of t-shirts, gassed up the bike, and got ourselves some much deserved coffee .  By 4:00 we had set up the GoPro and were ready to head west back to West Glacier.  It had taken us about 6 hours to go west to east, it should take us 2 hours to go back non-stop from east to west.
      It's a different experience, riding continuously as opposed to stopping along the way.  The stopping gives you the individual perspective on each of the various sites of interest.  The continuous ride gives you the bigger picture.  You don't spend as much time on the minutia as you see the enormity of everything around.  We're really glad we were able to ride both ways so that we could better take in all that the Going to the Sun Road has to offer.
     There are other areas of Glacier that we just don't have time to explore, the Going to the Sun Road has an additional Canadian counterpart called the Chief Mountain International Highway that takes you all the way into Alberta Canada, there are miles of hiking trails that visit glaciers and wildlife.  There is whitewater rafting and floating and just a myriad of things to do here.  But if you own a motorcycle, you must ride the Going to the Sun Road, it is one hell of an experience.
     Tomorrow, we have a boat ride planned in the morning on Lake MacDonald.  Hopefully we'll get some good pictures.  We then continue our trip west, and a little south as we make our way to Idaho and a little whitewater rafting on the Salmon River by the end of the week.

145.1 miles today
6763.2 miles total

4.571 gallons today
162.878 gallons total