Get ready for the drive of a lifetime! You saw it in the opening moments of the film “The Shining” as Jack’s Volkswagen glides past St. Mary’s Lake and up the road. You’ll be traveling through one of the most scenic 50 miles in the world, and a truly inspiring journey. Shining, glaciated peaks, plunging valleys, and turquoise blue lakes were carved by ice and slow-moving glaciers that still quietly creep across a vast wilderness. The Going to the Sun Road pierces the landscape through the heart of Glacier National Park, crossing the Continental Divide over Logan Pass at 6,646 feet. The steeper and more jagged peaks near the Continental Divide are about 10,000 feet. The 52-mile drive, both a National Historic Landmark and Civil Engineering Landmark completed in 1932, is the only road that crosses the park. It was literally carved out of the precipitous mountainside for 12 miles of its length, where the cliffs drop hundreds of feet from the roadside. As you start through the park, you’ll pass through lush forests of spruce, lodgepole pine, cedar, hemlock and subalpine fir. Turnouts allow you to relish vistas of glacier-sculpted mountains and glimpse wildlife. Further on, the vertical rock face along the road is known as the Garden Wall, a section that features amazing waterfalls, especially in late spring when the snow is melting. A long section of rock wall adjacent to the road covered by running water, called the Weeping Wall, is one of the more unusual. The road, generally only open from early June to mid-October, is one you want to take slowly. Even in summer, the peaks may be shrouded in clouds with fog at the top. In spite of that, don’t miss the Crown of the Continent’s beautiful road through rugged terrain. It’s a once in a lifetime adventure.