Our July adventure out west started with a flight out to Montana. There is an airport just outside Glacier National Park (Glacier International Airport) but often you can find cheaper flights to nearby airports that can make the short drive over to the National Park worthwhile. We were starting our 10 day trip with Glacier National Park and working our way down to Grand Teton National Park. We flew into Missoula for the cheaper flights, arriving around 930pm and spent the night there.
The next morning we enjoyed a nice breakfast in our hotel alongside a river before driving the 2.5 hours up to Glacier National Park. We arrived near the gates to the park in time for an early lunch. We stopped at the West Glacier Restaurant. It was a good lunch spot. Good selection of food, plenty of opportunities to sample the local huckleberry recipes. The boys enjoyed the huckleberry lemonade and ice cream. After eating, we turned into the park (you could almost see the gate to the park from the restaurant so it was a quick drive).
Our plan for the day was to do a few short hikes, and explore Going-to-the-Sun road. This also doubled as a convenient path to our hotel for the next 2 nights - Many Glacier Hotel. We love to visit National Parks wherever we roam so our Annual Pass to the National Parks helped expedite our time through the gate. The gate we entered at was the Apgar Visitor Center. There is a shuttle at this center that allows you to go on Going to the Sun road on the shuttle and return to your car. We needed to drive through to the other side, since our hotel was on the other end of the park, but the shuttle had distinct advantages, and not using the shuttle caused us to miss some things we would have liked to have seen.
We drove first along the beautiful Lake McDonald and stopped to take our first pictures inside the park.
Our oldest stopped to wade in the lake a bit. I put my hand in and, as you'd expect from a glacial lake, it was COLD. We stopped near Avalanche Creek and were lucky to find a spot. (note if you're on the shuttle you don't have to worry about this...we saw many people just driving around looking for a spot to park in). We took the Trail of the Cedars which was a 1.9 mile hike on fairly even terrain (some areas had boardwalks, some were gravel, some stairs were also on the path). The views in the woods and along the river were beautiful and there were some great places along the way to explore.
We continued on Going-to-the-Sun road towards Logan Pass, stopping frequently for pictures. While parking at stops was crowded, the road was not yet as crowded as it gets later in the summer and we could drive at a normal pace most of the time. I understand later in the summer it can be a crawl. We did have one long delay just before Logan Pass due to an accident on the road. The road is just one lane in either direction so an accident or similar pretty much shuts down the road until they can clear it.
One thing to mention about when we went (we were there the first week of July), is that we were not sure until days before our trip if the road would be cleared of snow yet. As recently as about 7 days before we were to arrive, Logan Pass was still impassable and not yet cleared of snow and ice. Fortunately days before leaving we found out it had been cleared. Although it was clear, you could still find tall snowbanks alongside the road, especially near Logan Pass.
We wanted to take the Hidden lake trail at Logan Pass and visit the Visitor's Center but there was no parking at all available in that lot. This was the one time I really wished we were on a shuttle so we could have seen this area more. Next time, we may take a one direction shuttle to Logan to explore the area more (and there will definitely be a "next time", this is now my favorite National Park!
On the descent to the other side of the mountains, we were able to see some distant glaciers in the mountains called out on turnout placards. We ended up checking out Saint Mary's Lake and stopping for snacks (by now we were pretty hungry). we stopped at the St. Mary's Visitor Center and then had dinner at Two Sisters' Cafe near Babb, Montana. We had heard really good things about this restaurant, but we were fairly disappointed in the food. I really don't think our expectations were too high, it was more that the quality of the food was way out of line with the price of the food...even for such a remote area. It was our least favorite of all the places we ate at in Glacier.
We made it to our hotel, Many Glacier Lodge, with no issues and it was beautiful! Our room was ready so we checked in. It was an unusual heat wave in Glacier with temps around 80 degrees and up, so the room was a bit stuffy, but I'm sure most of the time it is perfect. They did provide a fan which helped a lot. We were mostly only in there to sleep and change so it wasn't a huge issue.
The lodge has some great ranger talks to check out, we really enjoyed ours on the animals in the area! After a ranger program, we relaxed in the lodge and enjoyed the view out the back porch (below) and rested up for a day of hiking the next day.
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