Jeanne's Travel Blog: Vacation 2009 - Glacier National Park

This is the fourth page of our vacation 2009 blog. The first page starts here.

Glacier National Park

We did run into some construction delays on Going to the Sun Road, but this was not a surprise, as it was well-documented on the park website.

We really enjoyed our visit to Glacier. The park was beautiful, and the weather was perfect - warm days, cool nights, and no rain. One thing that struck me about the park was how busy it was, even though it was off-season. Maybe it was because there were no shuttles running, so more people were there in cars. Otherwise, I would hate to see what this area was like during peak season.

Tip: get up early if you want to see Logan Pass - even in off season, the parking lot fills up, and then you are out of luck.

If you come to Glacier, plan to spend a good amount of time riding from place to place, either in your car, or using some of the shuttle options available. There are lots of places to see, but they are spread apart. Going to the Sun Road is the only road that goes all the way through the park, and it does not connect with all of the sites in the park. You can only get to the others through separate entrances. Besides the requisite overlooks and pullouts, there are lots of short walks and hikes. If you are into long hikes, you could easily spend weeks at this park. Not being that hardy, we stuck to the shorter walks and guided nature trails. And we still spent five full days here and at Waterton Lakes just across the Canadian Border.

Apgar Village

Just outside the park's West entrance is West Glacier, which is not as much a town as it is a conglomeration of all the needed and expected commercial tourist amenities - gas, restaurant, souvenirs, groceries, etc. Based on this, I was a little surprised to see more of the same at Apgar Village. but I suppose this is to be expected at popular tourist attractions, and the west side seems to be where most visitors enter the park.

It was Thursday evening when we stopped here - on a short exploratory trip to pick up my Senior Pass, and to get a bit of a feel for what was ahead of us. We did make it down to McDonald Lake and took a couple of pictures there.

McDonald Lake from along Road

Friday morning we started our drive along Going to the Sun Road. The road between Apgar Village and Avalanche Creek follows along the edge of Lake McDonald, providing lots of beautiful overlooks and pullouts. We took pictures at some, and flagged some others to stop later.

McDonald Lodge

McDonald Lodge is near the North end of the lake. These pictures were taken on the beach behind the lodge. I guess we should have taken a picture of the lodge, too.

People were building towers and castles with the rocks along the beach.

You can't see it very well, but someone actually built an arch here. Amazing it does not implode.

We took this picture into the water to show how clear it was.

More Views from along Road

These were just some beautiful shots along the road between McDonald Lodge and Avalanche Creek. I think the falls were McDonald Falls. There are pictures from two or three overlooks here, on the way to Avalanche Creek. The mostly green shot is some little tiny pinecones that we thought were interesting. There is also a picture of Dale trying to clean some of the dust from the windshield so we could see better. Apparently we picked this up while towing the car on the way here.