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After spending the night at Cedar Breaks NM, we headed north and spent a couple days visiting with friends we hadn’t seen in several years before continuing our way further north. This was our first visit to Glacier National Park, and we timed it to coincide with the Glacier Half Marathon.
We arrived at St Mary campground and spent two nights there before switching to the race campground, which we stayed at for three nights. Neither campground had water, sewer, or electric hookups, but St Mary campground did have a sanitary dump, so we were able to dump the tanks and fill the fresh water tank in between campgrounds.
Sunshine and River completed their Junior Ranger packets and received their pins. This was River’s first one, but definitely not Sunshine’s first. There was a non-reader packet for River, which was a lot easier than the packet Sunshine completed. He wasn’t super interested in finishing the packet though, so we’ll wait awhile before we have him do another one. He is only three, after all.
While we were at the visitor’s center we bought a larger Jr Ranger vest for Sunshine, and I moved all her pins and patches to it so River could use the smaller vest, which Sunshine had been wearing since she was five.
Glacier NP is quite large and spread out and while Going-to-the-Sun road does intersect it, is was closed 12 or so miles in because of snow still blocking the road (we were there the third week of June). We naturally explored the St Mary area since that was closest to where we were staying, but we had to take the long way (skirting the southern boundary of the park) to get to Apgar. That was a long, twisty drive that made all of us nauseous. The Two Medicine area was closer to where we were staying and much easier to get to, so we did a bit of exploring there as well.
In the interest of narrowing down our choices and keeping the kiddos upbeat about all the hiking, we mostly chose hikes that took us to waterfalls and weren’t super long. I’ve got some posts about those hikes in the works, so keep your eyes open for them.
Even with spending several days in the area, we didn’t come close to seeing all that the park had to offer. We decided that when we come back to Glacier, we’ll stay on the east side for 3-4 days and explore everything on that side, then move to a campground on the west side and explore everything on that side. It’ll be a much more efficient use of time and will allow us to see more of the park.
The day before we left the area I ran the Glacier half marathon, which was run just outside the park. You can read about the race here. Running the half marathon was a great way to celebrate my 40th birthday and the completion of my 40 by 40 goal (which I need to do a post on still), and the location was the cherry on top. It was so beautiful!
On our to do list when we return: find more waterfalls, drive Going-to-the-Sun road, ride some of the bike trails, hike to some of the glaciers and lakes, take a boat tour of at least one of the lakes, do some kayaking or canoeing, and do some stargazing. What else should I add to the list?
