National Route 2

We have been on Route 2 for most of the way since Leavenworth and will stay on it until we come out the other side of Glacier National Park. Though it is mostly a single lane highway it is an excellent road, mostly quiet and very dramatic in many places.

This is one of those great American Highways (not designated as one though), like Route 1 (all the way up the East Coast), Route 101 (all the way up the West Coast), and Route 66 (Chicago to Los Angles), This road crosses the country practically from coast to coast, hugging the Canadian Border and actually crossing into Canada in the East. It starts in Everett, just north of Seattle and finishes in  Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Along the way it runs alongside many beautiful rivers and mountain ranges. The Skokomish River and the Wenatchee river take it across the Northern Cascades and  it then follows the Columbia River across the Washington Scablands, after briefly crossing the Spokane River in Spokane it follows the Pend Orriele River of Northern Idaho, then the Kutenai River through the Bitteroot Mountains into Western Montana. It is the most accessible crossing of the mountains of Glacier Park. On the plains of Montana it runs alongside the Milk River for 185 miles, before briefly following the Missouri River. Skirting the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. It strangely disappears at Lake Huron to become Route 23, and Route 20, which hug the shores of Lakes Huron and Erie. Which takes you to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, before it reappears at Albany, where it can be traced East to Boston, where it starts/finishes on Commonwealth Avenue, a distance of around 3300 miles across the USA.

It also re-appears further North, at the confluence of the New York, Vermont and Canadian borders in the North, where it then winds through northern New England before crossing into Canada at Houton, Maine, it then runs East to Nova Scotia where it meets the Atlantic Ocean at Halifax, a distance of 4071 miles. I am sure that it would make a fascinating road trip, however we will not be doing it at this time. Once we cross Glacier Park we head South for Helena and Yellowstone Park,