The Most Beautiful Place We've Ever Been

This is Christine and I sat along the side of a road eating lunch at a spot that, in this very moment, we agree is the most beautiful place we've ever laid eyes on. A place that, if it were to pop up on my social media feed, I'd probably just assume it was AI generated, but we can assure you it is not. It's both real and unbelievable, and in this video, we're going to do our level best to somehow try and do the beauty of this place justice. But first, allow me to rewind a bit because this story begins perched high atop a mountain ridge broken down camp and hit the road. It's a little before six o'clock and we're halfway down the mountain, and the reason for that is that we are heading into Glacier National Park today, and they've now got a vehicle ticketing system in order to access parts of the park by vehicle. We really want to explore going to the Sun Road, and so we have to make it into the park before 7 a.m. We're like an hour and a half away from the park where we camped, and so yeah, early, early breakdown of camp, and as we're heading down the mountain, thankfully it's getting a little bit lighter out because I am like on high alert for deer and wildlife right now. In fact, when I woke up, I had a little bit of a code brown moment. I woke up, I got out of the tent, I shined my headlamp, it was pitch black, I looked over to the right and there were just two eyeballs staring right at me like 10 feet away, and it was a massive buck, and before my brain had processed that, I was convinced it was a bear that was going to eat me. So yeah, lots of wildlife out here, seen a couple deer already this morning coming down the mountain, and yeah, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll make it into Glacier before 7, because that is what we really, really need to do to set ourselves up for today. So trying to toe the line between bombing down this mountain and not hitting a deer or flying off a cliff. Good news, we made it into Glacier National Park and passed the checkpoint that we needed to make it to before 7am, and I don't know if I mentioned that when I was half awake driving down the mountain, but that's why we had to get into the park before 7 is because we don't have a timed entry permit to do going to the sun road, which you need unless you get into the park before 7, which we did with like five minutes to spare. So mission accomplished, we are now on going to the sun road, and that means the next stop is to find a place to get coffee, because I need that desperately right now. Coffee acquired, feeling better already. Now it's time to hit the first trailhead. We're gonna do a couple hikes today, and first one, we need to try and get to the parking lot before it gets full. So that is where we're heading now. I tried to shake it, find a way to get you off my mind. All right, we're underway on our first hike. We're heading to Avalanche Lake, or we're on the Avalanche Lake Trail, and it's supposed to be a pretty popular one, but should be pretty scenic. All right, we're coming up on this waterfall. So cool. I don't know if you can see it from lake is amazing. It was totally worth the trek up here. I think it was like a two-mile hike. Super pretty and super worth it. This lake is super clear, and what's awesome is in the distance, beautiful. That definitely did not disappoint. We just had some lunch, and it's beautiful, but it's time to move on and see what else we can find in Glacier. But this is an incredible spot, and hard to film, unfortunately, the waterfalls. There's four waterfalls back there, but it's directly into the sun, so I couldn't really film it. But trust me when I say it is spectacular. Well, that was a fun hike, but it was a lot of work. My Garmin watch is reading 18,000 steps, and I think both Christine and I were feeling it by the time we got back to the truck. So now it's time for a scenic drive, which comes at the perfect time. And this road, going to the Sun Road, has been on my bucket list for scenic drives for probably the last eight years. I have a thing for scenic roads, be they paved or unpaved, I don't care. It's like Pokemon, I gotta collect them all. And we just started climbing, and the views are already getting incredible. And we're going three miles an hour, so I get to look at them all because of the traffic. Yeah, I'm really excited right now. Going to the Sun Road is a 50 mile long ribbon of asphalt, cutting through the center of Glacier National Park. Completed in 1932, it took around 11 years to build and is an engineering marvel. It's a road in a place where a road probably shouldn't exist. As up to 80 feet of snow bury it during the winter, clearing it in the spring can take two full months. Open only for a short three to four months each year, going to the Sun Road passes through one of the most rugged, dramatic, and beautiful landscapes in the United States, as we were about to find out. We had to pull over at one of the first pull-off spots because the views here are incredible. Jeff and I have done a ton of scenic drives over the years, whether it's on the motorcycle or in one of our trucks, and this has to be hands down the most scenic drive we've ever done. And we haven't even made it to the top, so I am really looking it doesn't even look real. It's like someone was designing a fantasy Lord of the Rings video game, and they were like, I'm going to make the most outlandish mountain landscape possible. And then their boss was like, hey buddy, you need to tone that down a little bit, no one's going to believe that's real. It's like that guy's original vision. I mean, seriously, like it's ridiculous. Ridiculous. I am, that's it. That's all the words I have. As a passenger princess, this is an amazing road to just hang out, sit shotgun, take in all the views. We're having to stop every couple minutes to pull over so that Jeff can also take in these awesome views. So here we are, back to where we started this video, and as I mentioned in the beginning, as we sat here and ate lunch, Christina and I both agreed that the scenery along Going to the Sun Road was the most impressive we had ever seen. There's so much to take in that it's hard to know where to look. Above, clouds drift past jagged peaks, capped in snow. Innumerable waterfalls cascade down sheer cliffs, which then give way to dense forests and lush meadows, which paint the mountains a stunning shade of green. Is the road packed with people? Yes. Is it a place where you'll find solitude? No. Is it something you need to see for yourself anyway? Well, the answer to that is a resounding yes. After our impromptu lunch spot, we continued east and just stopped at the Jackson Glacier Overlook, and I think that, I'm not going to say that's it for Going to the Sun Road, it does keep going east, but the day's getting away from us a little bit. We just stopped and enjoyed so much of this road after our hike. So we're heading back west to Lake McDonald Lodge because I had maybe my best old-fashioned of all time at that lodge on a motorcycle trip a handful of years ago, and I am very much in an old-fashiony mood right now after today, and so we're going to go to the lodge, maybe do some dinner, definitely do an old-fashioned, and just celebrate an amazing day. It's just as good to remember it, but what's funny, I just realized right this moment that I've been wearing an old-fashioned shirt all day. Not planned, but pretty good coincidence. After a long day hiking and exploring Glacier, old-fashions were had, dinner was also had. In fact, Christine even has, where is it, right there, a to-go cup. French 75s to-go. In case you were wondering, Lake McDonald Lodge is pretty awesome, and so anyway, from the shores of Lake McDonald and Glacier National Park, that's going to do it for this video, but not for our time in Montana. We'll be back again at it tomorrow, but for tonight, we're going to enjoy a shower and a bed because we're both sweaty and smelly and tired, and we're bougie like that. That's just how we roll, right? Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one.