Great Vacation Drives
Be a survivor in Glacier park. Glide over beaches. Relive the Revolution. Groove to the blues
A sign on a tree soon made me forget all about bears: "WARNING Mountain Lion frequenting this area. Be Alert."
For four miserable hours, we clambered through a dense forest that offered no vistas. Maybe the lichens were lovely, but we were too busy to look, swatting flies and reviewing mountain lion etiquette (stand tall and throw stuff at an attacking cat). Finally, we emerged into a sweltering sun with no sign of our destination. Daniela, my 11-year-old, burst into tears. "There is no Sperry Chalet," she declared.
Then we saw it--a rugged, two-story stone building with a peaked roof, high on a lonely bed of rock. It seemed we had another four hours to go. But a mere hour and we came upon stone steps--the last leg of our epic journey. A mountain goat and her frolicking kid banished Daniela's bad mood--and added to my list of worries. Goats have horns, they're territorial, and we were in their space.
At 6,500 feet above sea level, Sperry Chalet is a Shangri-La. Mountain bluebells and yellow lilies bloom all around. Silvery Lake McDonald sits far below. The air is so clean and piney that my urban nostrils went into shock. The only sounds are the rushing of waterfalls and the buzzing of horseflies. "Who needs the Matterhorn?" a guest gushed. "This is the most beautiful place on Earth."
The Great Northern Railway built the chalet, one of eight in a back-country network for hearty travelers of the early 20th century. They would come to the park by train, then go from chalet to chalet on horseback. The rise of the auto ended the chalet era. The only two left are Sperry, with 17 rooms and a meal plan, and Granite Park, just a hiker's shelter. But rustic doesn't mean cheap. Sperry charges $50 a night for a room--and $100 per guest for three meals.
Over the hill. Sperry almost didn't survive as an inn. In 1993, the park service shut the place because of environmental concerns. "The waste disposal was over the cliff," explained Barb Warrington, whose parents ran the chalet before her. The park built an outhouse with four lemon-scented composting toilets and two cold-water sinks. Sperry was back in business in 1999.
Now it's true you can't take a shower at "1913 House," but otherwise, life is good. We strolled to a pond (but skipped the 3.5-mile hike to Sperry Glacier for obvious reasons). Then our kids played cards on the rickety beds in our stone-walled, wood-beamed room, while my wife and I drank in the view.
The stresses of the 21st century seemed 6.7 miles away, if not farther. So did the gadgets of daily life. Maya, 14, found out you can go a day without blow-drying your hair. "We'd like a TV very much, but there's nothing we can do about it," Daniela offered. Once the sun sets, flashlights offer the only illumination. All you can do is go to sleep in an exceedingly tranquil hotel.
Hiking isn't the only path to Glacier's wonders. After descending from Sperry Chalet, we drove Going-to-the-Sun Road, the 52-mile highway that crosses the spine of the Continental Divide. The road winds past one heart-stopping vista after another--and some heart-stopping graffiti. The words "N'Sync sucks, Eminem rules" were etched into a patch of lingering snow. "At least it's meltable," laughed a ranger.
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