21. One Bad Thing

--or how to save money--

I suppose that on a trip of this magnitude, it's inevitable that One Bad Thing will happen.

This was a section of the trip that I was particularly looking forward to. A couple of years ago I wrote a short story that involved a road trip through Glacier National Park. I wrote the descriptions based on maps and photographs, since I had no memory of having been through the park myself. I had been hoping ever since to have a chance to travel the same path that my protagonists did, and to see how closely the reality of the road matched my imagination of it.

Tuesday night found us in Kalispell, outside the western entrance to Glacier. Lodging near the park entrance is quite expensive, and rather than spend upwards of $150 for a hotel room, I decided to spend about $25 for a tent spot at a campground. Now, the best laid plans of mice and men are often gang aglee (or something), but these were hardly the best laid plans. As soon as I started to set up the tent, it started to rain. It would rain off and on all night. Stands to reason that our one night of camping would also be our one night of rain. We had dinner at the campground restaurant. I had a hoagie and Jake had ribs. Jake said the ribs tasted a little funny, but not too bad.

The plan for Wednesday was to drive through Glacier park in the morning, ending up at Cardston Alberta hopefully by one in the afternoon, and Swift Current Saskatchewan before nightfall. The drive from Kalispell to Cardston would echo the drive my characters took in my short story, though presumably without their mishaps.

I woke up in some amount of pain. I injured my back a couple years ago, and every now and then it flares up. Sleeping on the hard ground instead of a nice hotel bed probably didn't help.

Jake awoke feeling just awful. I mean really really awful. We thought it might have been due to the altitude, or the twisting winding driving we did the day before, but our prime suspect was the ribs. Which we saw again that morning, if you catch my drift. We couldn't leave right away anyway because we needed to give time for the sun to come up and dry out the tent. So Jake rested while I went and got coffee; then I came back and broke camp while Jake rested more in the car. Jake was still not feeling great, but he decided to try to tough it out. I didn't know if the mountain air would revive him, or if the twists and turns of Going-to-the-Sun highway would only make things worse.

It was the latter. Jake was miserable on the entire trip through Glacier. He lay there with his eyes closed and moaned while I saw some of the most magnificent scenery on this planet. Jake did manage to open his eyes momentarily to watch the big horn sheep that walked casually across the road in front of us. I did stop a couple times to snap some photos, but didn't spend anything like the time or attention that I wanted to in the park.

By the time we reached Saint Mary at the east exit of the Park -- only about 60 miles into our intended 400 mile drive -- it was clear that we were done for the day. The only thing available at the Saint Mary lodge was a 2-room cabin for a hundred and eighty bucks. So we checked in and I got Gatorade and water and Pepto for Jake. I hoped that this wouldn't last more than a day. I canceled the reservation in Swift Current, and began to strategize a plan to get the trip back on track.