Day 81: Glacial Troubles

Curlew Lake State Park, WA to Duck Lake, MT

455mi

(Just like the other two, this blog was drafted back in late August, but I never got around to publishing it, whoopsie! – Joseph, 1/26/26)

It IS still summer, right? Well, it sure didn’t feel like it when I woke up shivering from how cold it was outside. Here we were in Northern Washington, only a few miles from the Canadian border and I really wished I had a beanie and socks. It was partially our fault, since we decided not to put the rainfly on our tent last night. Though rainflies are made to protect from rain, they also help to insulate the tent. I got up, put on two jackets and sped over to the bathrooms, which were unfortunately quite far away. Thankfully, the bathrooms themselves were pretty toasty, providing me some relief from what felt like a winter wonderland (there was no snow, no ice, no Christmas tree, just the cold).

Eventually we got ready and left pretty quickly. Although we were too cold to properly enjoy it, it was a very nice and peaceful stay in the park by a very pretty lake. The cold wasn’t the only reason why we were so eager to get out of our campground. Today was going to be (as many days will be) a long day and Glacier National Park was near the end of the drive. We wanted to make it to the park with as much daylight as possible, so we could enjoy it. Pretty early we stopped by a random overlook, hoping to catch some nice views of the mountains. Disappointingly, a lot of the views were obstructed by trees, but we did find some wild blueberries on the way. We continued on to a gas station in Kettle Falls, where we attempted to fill up on some gas. However, we were getting a strange problem. Every time we would pull down the lever gas would fill in the car for all of 5 seconds and then stop as if the tank was full. I can assure you, the tank was nowhere near full. Poor Ramona had to press down on the lever probably 20 times just to get us 30 dollars of gas, before we gave up. We thought maybe the gas tank was broken, so we moved to a different one, but it did the same thing.

We continued onwards and stopped down the road at a cafe inside of an antique store. It was really cozy, we sat on a couch and planned the day, while waiting for our order of a sandwich, burrito and a chai latte. It was taking a while, so Ramona ventured across the street to exchange our propane tank, since we thought our stove was not working because we were out of propane. This was something we would later find out to be not true. Eventually I left the cafe with our food and walked across the street. Before I could get to the gas station, Ramona walked out with the same old propane tank, but now twice as heavy. The gas station clerk was confused by Ramona’s request to exchange the gas tank. Instead, like it was common sense, he topped it off using the gas cylinder outside and pulling at least five different levers. We found out the tank was half empty as opposed to being fully empty. This also meant it was half full and our stove troubles were probably not because of an empty tank. That was quite suspicious. But we thought maybe with double the gas we would get double the pressure and the stove setup would work again. Spoiler alert, that was not the case. But that’s all for later.

So, we continued on. Passing through Colville, we saw a self-serve carwash. At this point, cosmetically, the car in shambles. Now, I normally wouldn’t care too much about this, but the windshield was so dirty that it couldn’t be considered fully transparent. This was an especially big problem in the mornings when the sun rays would illuminate the whole windshield, obscuring the road in front of us. Driving blind on windy mountain roads is less than ideal for obvious reasons. And so, we gave our car, Bertha, some love. Clean for the first time since we got her, she was shining.

Leaving Colville, we continued on, soon crossed into Idaho, blogging all the while. Now, I of course could not write out the blogs, so as I drove, I would tell Ramona what to write and she would type it up for me. Thanks, Ramona! At some point we were passing by a big lake (Lake Pend Oreille) that we could see through the trees. We wanted to stop by and take a closer look, but there were no real overlooks. So, at some point we stopped at the side of the road and walked to the lake. We definitely did not need to cross any railroad tracks or anything. Note that to actually touch the water we needed to descend a steep hill full of loose rocks. With our terrific balance, we managed not to fall into the water, but there were some close calls.

We were once again running low on gas, so we stopped. And once again we were having the same problem as before with the gas only filling for a couple of seconds before stopping. At this point we started to suspect that maybe the car itself was the issue. I decided to do what I always do when I realize that there is a problem that I don’t have the knowledge to fix and pulled out Google. I managed to find a pretty helpful video explaining what was probably happening, but the solution would involve removing the gas tank of the car, which was not going to happen on Bertha without the help of a mechanic shop. As we were trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do, Ramona tried filling the tank once more and to our surprise gas started filling up as if there were no problems in the first place. At the same time, the gas tank door magically fixed itself and was able to fully close for the first time in days. We don’t have any explanation for why things started working again, but I am not one to question good fortune.

We continued on and at some point, something that hadn’t happened in weeks happened once more – our time zone changed, but this time the time skipped forward instead of back. The good thing about time zone changes is that it doesn’t actually change how much sunlight you have left, so we still had a good couple of hours to spend inside of Glacier National Park. We eventually arrived at the West Entrance of the park and checked out the Apgar Visitor Center. Inside, along with my routine of getting a National Park sticker, I also got a beanie and some thick socks – two things I would have really liked to have last night. We asked the park ranger what to do as we drove through Going to The Sun Road. Along with stopping at various overlooks, she recommended that once we get to Logan pass, we hike to Hidden Lake to watch the sunset. We still had roughly 3 hours before the sun sets, so I concocted a plan to make dinner at the top of Logan pass. I figured that cooking couldn’t get much scenic than this. Plus, it would be very efficient, since we knew that we were getting to our campsite after dark. Armed with a plan and some time, we ascended up into the park.

At first, the drive was very nice, following the shore of Lake McDonald for miles. Then the road veered away from the lake and started climbing. At some point the road became very narrow with barely enough space for two cars to fit between the rock wall and the cliff edge. I’m sure at this point the mountain views became very scenic, but I was too busy trying not to crash and die to notice. However, Ramona did snap a lot of pics (update: Ramona’s phone died a few weeks after this and we lost all of her photos from this day of the trip, RIP). We stopped at a few of the overlooks, so that I, too, could enjoy the views, but we didn’t linger for too long.

Eventually, we made it to the top of Logan pass. There was a visitors center up here, but we were too late and it was closed. We drove around to the end of the parking lot and set up our makeshift kitchen overlooking some beautiful views. We turned on our camping stove and put on a big pot of water to boil. Except, it never boiled. As previously mentioned, filling up our propane tank had not solved any problems. But we were hopeful that eventually the water would boil. So, an hour passed. It wasn’t enough. We were ready to call it quits. That was until a nice couple passed by and asked us what was going on. We told them about our plight. And they went back to their car to grab their small propane can and a small burner. They wanted us to use these to troubleshoot and isolate whatever the problem was with our stove setup. The first thing we tried was connecting the propane can directly to the stove. Seemingly, it worked flawlessly. The next thing we tried was hooking up our propane tank to their small burner. It did not work. So, we figured our problems did not lie with the stove itself, but rather our propane setup. They offered us their small propane can, but we declined, since it was a bit late to cook and we thought that we would surely be able to figure it out tomorrow. In hindsight, we should have just taken their can… But that’s a story for tomorrow. We chatted with them until the sun set. The hike was definitely not happening. We packed up our stuff and left for our campground at Duck Lake.

One thing I was glad about was that I would be able to descend Logan pass with some daylight left. It did not seem like it would be fun to drive in the dark. We caught some views of Saint Mary’s lake just before darkness fell. I did the last 40 minutes of the drive in the dark, always on the lookout to make sure I don’t hit any wildlife.

Before we arrive at our campsite, we stop at the Leaning Tree Campground, only a few minutes down the road from our campsite. This was where we were told there were showers and laundry available. At this point, I had completely run out of clean clothes, so the laundromat was well appreciated. We left our stuff in their laundry lounge and showered as the washer went through its cycle. After some warm showers, clothes went in the dryer, and I attempted to call the other Spokies. The connection was good enough that they could hear Ramona when she was talking to them, but the moment I took over the call, they couldn’t hear me. The connection wasn’t good enough to do anything else, so we waited patiently until we had clean and dry clothes. With our business at the Leaning Tree Campground done, we drove a few more minutes down the road to Duck Lake. After missing our camp site at the first drive through, we went all the way to the end of the campground, which was in complete darkness. We set up camp, brushed our teeth and promptly went to bed. This time I slept with a beanie and socks. I did not wake up in the middle of the night from cold. Yay!