Camping inception

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Since we’re camping fulltime, going on a camping trip is somewhat weird. You’re feeling like you know what you’re doing, but you’re don’t. And it is super weird to go to a campground without your house.

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We were tired of the crowds of tourists. And we had a bad day. A oversleep-forget-the-camera-baby-throws-up-in-the-car bad day. And when we finally made it out of the campground we couldn’t even make the turn on the Going-to-the-sun-road, that’s how many people had the same idea we had: Heading up to Logan’s pass. Our mood was going downhill is an understatement.

We headed back home and decided to go on an adventure. It took us an hour to load up the car with food and sleeping stuff and head to the northernmost campground in the National Park: Kintla Lake. You actually have to exit and then re-enter the park, drive 20 miles on a mostly dirt road and then another 16 miles on a rutted dirt road. The entire way is a dead end, because there is no border crossing to Canada. The only kinda-civilization you pass is Polebridge, officially inhabited by 59 people and consisting of a bar, a mercantile, a fruit stand aaaand that’s it. It is a cute little settlement, but hearing the people talk about how it’s been a while that they’ve seen tomatoes and how beautiful those offered today are I know I could never live that far away from anything. Not even for the huckleberry claws they sell.

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Anyways, off to Kintla lake we go. After being tailgated for an hour we got the last campsite at 11am. Apparently it’s not that remote. But then, they only have 13 sites available.

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The campground is right at the lake and after some lunch we managed to hike almost 4 miles on the Kintla Lake trail (with lots of bribing and singing and a swim break). The campground was kinda crowded but nothing compared to the Apgar Campground we came from. Plus everything was way more relaxed and everybody was quiet by 9pm. Except for our kids.
If it wasn’t for the hassle to get them to actually fall asleep in the car we’d do those carcamping trips way more often.

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We left relatively early that morning and were stuck in the traffic jam not 2 hours later. It was nice to see the more remote parts of the park, not less beautiful than the rest. I’d love to take one of the more difficult hikes once the kids are old enough.

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