Day four saw us leaving Lake McDonald Lodge heading east on the western section of the Going to the Sun Road. Again, the middle section was still closed, so we weren't able to go much farther - maybe 4 or 5 miles past Lake McDonald Lodge. Here are a few shots of that portion of the Sun Road.
While we'd seen some absolutely beautiful, stunning, breathtaking and rugged scenery, nothing could prepare us for what we saw on our way out of Glacier National Park. The wind was completely dead - even for the relatively late hour we were exiting (approximately 9:30 - 10:30 am). No wind means glassy water, and let me tell you, it was like a mirror. I had never seen anything like that, and I was awestruck. Here are some shots of the lake on our way out of the park.
Exiting the park on the west side at West Glacier concluded our whirlwind tour of Glacier National Park. Since we left the park at a relatively early hour that day, we went to Plan B, and in the spirit of driving and seeing sights, we took the (really) long way home. We didn't have hotel reservations anywhwere for this particular night (Wednesday) because we weren't sure about the details of the trip at that point. So we just winged it. It was our goal to make it at least to Bozeman that night, and with that restraint we headed further west and north from the west park exit. This took us up through Olney to Eureka, MT, where we stopped for lunch. This town is only 6 miles south of the Canadian border. We then took highway 37 out of Eureka sount along the eastern banks of Lake Koocanusa. Man that's a LONG lake! We also saw a couple of spot fires going on across the lake, and even passed a team of firefighters gearing up next to the helicopter (which had landed in one of the road pullouts) getting ready to go jump in on the fires.
This route took is past Libby Dam (which was pretty cool to see) and into Libby, MT. We then paralleled the Kootenai River over to Montana 56. Before getting to 56, we passed Kootenai Falls. We pulled into the turnout/parking area and proceeded to hike a little bit down to the falls. Here are a few shots of the falls.
It was mid-afternoon when we left the falls, and we realized that if we were going to make Bozeman that night, we were going to have to boogie. Kootenai Falls was really our last scenic stop of the day - after that, it was hammer down! Up to that point, the Cummins in Derek's truck had averaged over 21 mpg on the trip. We killed it haulin' ass to Bozeman that evening - it dropped to about 17.5 by the time we reached Bozeman! Anyway, a dinner stop was in order in there somewhere. Missoula seemed like a good place, so we hopped off the interstate and started hunting some feeding grounds. We saw several things that were of interest, but almost every one of them had a casino attached. We weren't interested in any of those, but we ended up finding a Mac Kinzie River Pizza Company. It was an on-a-whim stop, as our options seemed to be running out at the time, but it turned out to be great! The pizza was fabulous, and so was the scenery 
. They also had Moose Drool on tap, so we were good to go. After refueling ourselves, it was back on the road to Bozeman. Four hours later, at about midnight, we arrived at the Hampton Inn we had stayed at in Bozeman the previous Sunday night.
Thursday was going home day. We had some time to kill - essentially another whole day - so again in the spirit of the road trip and sightseeing, we took the long way home. Rather than the most direct route to Worland, we backtracked south to West Yellowstone, with the intention of seeing some of the park that I had never seen before. I hadn't seen Old Faithful, so we decided to trek south to the thermal area of the park. Here are a few shots of that area.
We got to Old Faithful just about the time it was erupting, so we only caught the tail end of it. At the time, the geyser was only going off about every hour and a half, and we didn't really have the time to wait around for the next eruption. We ate lunch there, and then proceeded through the park to the east entrance. This took us by Yellowstone Lake and some other cool stuff, but by this point, I was about all photo'd out. Not many pics from this area (I'd taken over 750 pics by this point!). We exited the park towards Cody. We did stop at the visitor's center at Buffalo Bill Dam (which impounds...you guessed it...Buffalo Bill Reservior) west of Cody. It was raining, so I didn't get any good photos here, but the dam is pretty darned cool - and a long way down! The visitor's center there is also nice and definitely worth a stop. There is also a pretty cool tunnel just to the east of the dam - kind of fun to go through those!
From there we headed into Cody, and then home to Worland.