Going-to-the-Sun Road, Montana, United States

5coolwestsider 5:00 PM Jul 10, 2021

An EPIC experience! US’s crown jewel!
This is an experience of a lifetime to be in the crown jewel of US national parks (in my opinion). We did GNP as a third leg of our vacation after Grand Teton and Yellowstone. This engineering marvel of a road takes top honors as the epic experience. I had planned this vacation for a while and had done extensive preparation. Both NPS website and google search have been providing plenty of information that NPS was instituting a ticket system for going to the sun road, so I purchased the $2 entry ticket 60 days ahead. I had no problem and that worked out really well. As for this road itself, there is no word to describe it. We entered from the west entrance on Thursday. After driving past lake McDonald, the elevation starts picking up and the drive is not for the faint of hearts, however, every lookout that you could find parking at gives you an insane view of the park. After we passed The Loop which is the only switchback, we found a lookout area and picnicked. No other lunch has ever tasted better. We got to Logan Pass around 1 pm and as it’s mentioned plenty of times, the parking lot was full. We circled the a few times, couldn’t find parking and headed towards St Mary’s. We ended up doing the St Mary’s and Virginia Falls hike which in itself is one of the best and popular hikes off of this road. We really wanted to hike at least a park of the Highline Trail which starts at Logan Pass, so we returned on Saturday. We noticed a lot of cars leaving towards west entrance and the park relatively less full. After circling Logan pass parking lot couple of times, we found parking. It was around 2 pm. The Highline trail is epic and even my parents who are over 70 did about 1.5 mile on it. What an experience. Oh, we saw marmots and mountain goats on various parts of going to the sun road. We then drove down towards 2 medicine lake. Both St Mary and Two Medicine Lakes are stunning. Not enough to days to even cover a small portion of the park. So we will be coming back.

5MaryEllenM27 5:00 PM Sep 23, 2022

A Glorious Day Along the Going to the Sun Road on the First Day of Fall 2022!
The first day of Fall 2022 was just glorious. Clear blue skies...not even a hint of smoke, few crowds, 69 degrees, and fabulous colors all around. The trees & shrubs along the road & across the valley floors were just beginning to turn yellow & bronze, grasses were turning all shades of Gold and Rust. The higher in elevation you drove, the more color you would see. Bright red berry clusters on Mountain Ash shrubs. Brown flat convoluted seed heads of Cow Parsnips were so interesting to look at. But the FIREWEED along the Sun Road was the highlight of our day. This was the first time in over 25 years of driving the Sun road that we saw the spectacle that was Fireweed in the Fall. In Summer Fireweed fields have plumes of lavender flowers but now...in fall, it's foliage had turned a deep burgundy and/or a vibrant red. The seed-head stalks had turned to hot pink with silky white tendrils just waiting to be lofted off into the wind. There were fields of them along the Alpine Section especially at Big Bend where there was also plenty of parking. On the eastern side there were more trees, shrubs & grasses turning color than there were flowers. St Mary Lake was surprisingly still since it was a rare non-windy day. It was a very deep blue and that accented the red color in the Mountain Peak tops above the lake. The Logan Pass visitor center was not open but the accessible restrooms were. Parking at mid-day was hard to find but before about 8:30 and after 4 PM we found parking easily up there. There was a constant turn over of parking spaces at all the pullouts along the way. We saw one mama deer with two fawns, but no Grizzly Bears, Mountain Goats or Big Horn Sheep. We did not see any of the cute round eared Pikas or any Marmots. But the scenery made up for that. At Avalanche there were quite a few parking spaces when we arrived around 5 PM. Which was fine for taking the Trail of the Cedars before the late afternoon shadows began to darken the skies as the sun sank behind the tall ridges west of Lake McDonald. Actual sunset that day was at about 7:35 PM. I highly recommend driving the Going to the Sun Road during the waning days of September. Dress warmly, bring your camera and binoculars.