Day 10 - A day spent in Glacier National Park

Day 10 - A day spent in Galcier

Our first wake up and not have to pack up the campsite say! It was refreshing to sleep in a little, especially for the kids. The strangest part about the night before was the time of sunset. We tried to get to bed early, but at 10 pm the sky was still crazy light. The kids were bouncing off the tent walls, which wasn't helping the go to bed process, but we didn't mind since we knew they were sleeping later.

A little about our campsite: The name of the site is "Rising Sun Campgrounds" and it's on the East Side of Glacier National Park. We didn't shop around for campgrounds much because a) we were tired and b) we didn't know any better. The pre-arrival research really didn't say much about the differences between the East side of the Park and the West side. So, we took the closest, available campground. This site was like no other campground that I've stayed in before. You drive into the campgrounds and then drive around to find available sites. Then you set up camp and drive back down to the entrance where you fill out an envelope that states how long you are staying, slide in the appropriate amount of money and bam, you're registered; no waiting in line, no slow, outdated computers needed to enter your personal information so they can send you future junk mail. You simply get to pick your own site; how cool is that?!?! So, we drove around until we found a nice site that had a fabulous view of the Rocky Mountains. We were so close you felt like you could reach out and touch them. The only thing separating us from the mountain was a small glacier fed lake called St. Mary's lake.

The night before I really didnt' appreciate the beauty of the site because we were so tired. Today is a different story. Once we rolled the kids out of bed we ate some PB&J on bagels for breakfast and then set out for our day in the park. Little did we know how immense this park truly is in comparison to other parks we have visited on this trip. We started with the scenic ride on 'Going to the Sun Road'. This road takes you from East Glacier to West Glacier via a very, very narrow road that takes you up over the Rocky Mountains. The views are simply breathtaking! It was very difficult to drive and soak in all the beauty and grandeur the ride had to offer. So, we stopped often and sometimes took pictures and other times just absorbed the view. The scenery was a mixture of glacial lakes, steep mountain sides, cascading waterfalls and overlapping peaks that run off up into the clouds. There are 16 glaciers in total at the park, but we didn't get to see them all. If we were staying for 5+ days we probably could have covered more of the park, but we were on our whistle stop tour. Partway through the drive we stopped to do a short hike into the Cedar woods. The highlight of the hike for the kids was playing along the river bank of the Apache Gorge. The water was frigid, but it didn't stop the kids from taking off their shoes and socks and playing in the water. Skipping stones, throwing sticks and climbing the over dead trees were the activities that kept us busy on the river bank for 45 minutes. We finished the hike with some wet feet, but nobody seemed to care.

Back in the car to finish the scenic ride. As we neared McDonald lake the scenery became even more beautiful, if that is even possible. We found a restaurant at the West Glacier Lodge and decided to have an early dinner since we kind of skipped lunch. It's a good thing our kids are flexible ;-) The meal was unimpressive, but the views of McDonald lake made up for it. It too was a glacier fed lake, but it's location and views were far more impressive than that of St. Mary's. After spending a little time at McDonald's lake we continued on and shortly found our way to West Glacier. What a great little town! It was lively and eclectic! There was live entertainment going on with all sorts of outdoor activities geared towards families. It was much more lively than the other side of the mountains. Wish we knew that ahead of time, but the reality is getting to West Glacier would have tacked on 1.5 hours of driving to our already very long ride. The total ride time across the mountains took us almost 2.5 hours. Now we had to head back. We decided to take the non-scenic route which took almost as long. It was a much less stressful ride back. Some of the moments on the 'Going to the Sun Road' were a little unnerving. You had to hope the people coming the other way weren't busy texting or taking pictures because sometimes it was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The rock outcroppings looked as though they were going to poke through the windows into the car in some places. We were happy to take a slightly less eventful ride back to the campgrounds.

Once back we enjoyed the sun setting on the mountain and some play time before getting the group settled down for bed. Once again, this 10:30 sunset thing is killer for the kids. Our next day will be a much shorter drive to southern Montana where will will connect with Pat Slater & Beth Gibson, friends of mine from Stapleton, who are kind enough to offer accommodations to some very weary travelers. It will be nice to sleep inside for a night before we get to Yellowstone!