Road Trip

Down the Backroads of Northwest Montana

We’ve been to Montana plenty of times. But we haven’t really focused on seeing a good portion of the state. Our first big bite in 2026 was to travel through some of the backcountry starting north and heading south in the western portion of the state. We took a day to drive nearly to Canada, and then settled in for a few days at a picturesque lake before making our way back south for the first half of July. July started out cool and rainy, much better than it ended, hot and smoky. The clouds and rain that started out our trip seem so distant now in the oppressive August heat and choking smoke, it seems like a distant memory. Our views of the mountain above the lake were obscured on arrival, but we could tell this was going to be a great place to spend a few days.

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A Loop of Washington’s National Parks | Mt. Rainier National Park

After picking up our tuna in Westport we spent the rest of the day moving east while avoiding Washington’s biggest cities. Making the loop from North Cascade to Olympic and then on to Rainer had the added bonus of creating a route that avoided the traffic and chaos of Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. By late afternoon we were close enough to Mt. Rainier that we could get into the park and try and beat the big crowds we knew we’d find at Paradise. The next morning we arrived at Paradise fairly early, and just barely in time. The parking lot was filling with the hoardes.

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A Loop of Washington’s National Parks | North Cascade National Park

After hiking in the North Cascades for two days without actually making it into the national park, we ventured further along highway 20 and spent our third day in the park. Besides highway 20 there are a few other access points to North Cascade National Park, but overall, even more so than most national parks, if you don’t get on the trail and take a hike or backpack trip you aren’t going to see very much here. We had pondered a backpack trip during our planning, but a couple weeks out from departure the available overnight permits were pretty few and far between. We could either backpack in as far as we could day hike (too short), or we could pack in 20 plus miles (too long). We opted for day hikes instead.

We headed to the Thunder Creek trail and up the drainage we went.

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