[twitter]When you start researching an African safari, the term “Big Five” often crops up. The “Big 5” refers to the African: lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and Cape buffalo.

I’ve never heard of anyone going on safari in the Rocky Mountains, but our trip over Glacier National Park‘s Going To The Sun Road amounted to one in which we managed to bag The “Big 3”.

Mountain Goat. Big Horned Sheep. Bear.

The Going To The Sun Road cuts a path to the sky across Logan Pass and is easily one of the most spectacular drives you will take in your lifetime. It’s only 80 miles long, but there’s a reason there are pull outs every few hundred metres along the entire route.

The view is spectacular. The driver needs to pull over lest they get distracted.

So many of our North America roads meander along valley floors with the mountains towering above us. Rarely do we get the chance to climb to the peaks to see what they’re really like.

The Going To The Sun Road gives you that chance, if it only be from late June until October. The rest of the year, the road is buried in metres of snow. Even on our July 2 visit, the road was still cutting a path through snow walls on either side.

Here are some of the sights we saw on our trip over Logan Pass

We drove the Going To The Sun Road from West to East and that seemed to have the heavier traffic. It’s probably the more eerie drive since most of the drop is off to your right the entire ride up. That’s also the side where all the pull outs are, so it’s easier to get over and take pictures.

Really, you don’t have to do the entire road. You can just head to the top of Logan Pass, have a picnic lunch, maybe hike up to Hidden Lake and then turn around and head back to whichever side you’re based on.

It’s an absolutely fabulous day trip and we’ve already made mental notes to make longer stops on the next route to explore the dozens of hikes that spur off the road.