Glacier National Park

The Friday before our trip to Glacier, Dustin and I drove up to Pocatello after work. We got to hang out for a few hours with Randy, Teresa, Alex, and Max (who Randy & Teresa had picked up the week before). Teresa also gifted us with a pair of binoculars and a water filter pump for our anniversary.

Saturday morning we had a waffle breakfast before heading up to Montana. Randy & Teresa were driving up to Helena for a wedding, so we caravanned to Dillon before piling the kids in our car to take with us the rest of the way to Missoula. We got into Missoula in the afternoon and Angel was nice enough to allow me to use her Costco membership to pick up some last-minute supplies.

We sent a ransom text to Heath

Sunday Angel, Alex and I went to a street fair downtown where Alex and I tried our hand at the pottery wheel. That afternoon, Dustin and I headed up to the west entrance of Glacier National Park. We set up camp at the Fishing Creek campground and quickly did the Rocky Point Nature Trail (2 miles) before it got dark.

Alex trying her hand at pottery

The Rocky Point Nature Trail, Lake McDonald

Playing 'Pass the Pigs' in the tent

Monday we decided to drive across the Going to the Sun Road and find a camping spot in Many Glacier for the next 4 nights. The drive was so pretty and there are mountains everywhere. After we set up camp, we drove back onto the Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass to do the Hidden Lake Overlook Trail (2.7 miles). The trail was very busy, but still pretty. We saw two pairs of mama and baby mountain goats (one pair up really close) and two bighorn sheep. On the way back to camp, we did the St. Mary Falls Trail (1.7 miles).

Mama and baby mountain goats

Bearhat Mountain at Hidden Lake Overlook

Two Bighorn Sheep

Wild Goose Island

Tuesday we hiked to Iceberg Lake (9.7 miles). We didn't see much wildlife, though the hike itself was amazing with the mountains and lake. On the way home a large group of grouse took over the trail behind us. We were told by some other people that a grizzly bear had been seen on the trail near Ptarmigan Tunnel, another trail that split off from ours. We drove out to East Glacier to eat dinner at a restaurant called the Park Cafe, which was reported to have amazing pie. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near as amazing as SLC's Park Cafe, but it was alright. I was very disappointed in the pie (very thin, icky crust).

Iceberg Lake

Wednesday was our 3 year wedding anniversary. We drove back to the Logan Pass to hike the Highline Trail (11.8 miles). It rained for part of the hike, but it was fairly warm and when the sun came out, we dried off quickly. A little more than halfway through, we took the Grinnell Glacier Overlook Trail (1.2 miles). That one mile was so steep and, though it totally kicked my butt, revealed an amazing view.We saw two bighorn sheep. The trail put us out at The Loop on the Going to the Sun Road. We caught the last bus back up to our car at Logan Pass, where we saw another 7 bighorn sheep and I got to play with a Golden Retriever puppy that plopped herself down right next to our backpacks. To celebrate our anniversary, we had dinner at Two Sisters Cafe. Dustin had a gigantic bison specialty burger and I had a bison steak with huckleberry compote. Both were so amazing! Our server went outside and, when he came back in, announced that there was a black bear on the hill behind the restaurant if anyone wanted to go look. Dustin and I looked at our delicious food and each other, debating whether it was worth leaving our plates. Dustin stayed inside while I ran out for a quick picture, but I ran just as quickly back in to my steak.

Grinnell Glacier Overlook

You can see the Grinnell Glacier Overlook trail to the right of the tall tree in the center

Black bear on the hillside behind the restaurant

Thursday we were sore from all our hiking the previous three days, so we decided to take it easy and just do the Red Rock Falls Trail (4.2 miles). We also took advantage of the token showers at the nearby inn to finally take a shower! That afternoon, we had a crazy rain storm and spent hours in the tent playing games and reading. The rain stopped for a short time and we ran out to make ramen noodles and eat in the car before diving back in the tent for the rest of the night.

Friday morning, I got out of the tent to find someone already staking out our camping spot. Apparently there was already a line to get into the campground (it was the beginning of Labor Day weekend, after all) at 8 a.m. We packed up camp and headed out, with plans to drive up into Canada since I'd never been there. On our way out of the park, we saw a black bear right next to the road! We drove into Canada and spent a few hours in Waterton National Park, where I caught up on emails (and text messages about Sophie, who had gotten sick while we were gone) at a coffee shop with free wifi. We also hit up a local candy shop and hiked the Bear's Hump (1 mile), another steep trail that overlooked the town. I had wanted to drive the Akamina Parkway to Cameron Lake and rent a canoe, but the Parkway had been damaged in the June flooding and was closed. Instead we took the Red Rock Parkway, where we saw one brown bear and a black bear with two cubs. We also stopped by the bison paddock to see their small bison herd (nothing compared to Yellowstone) before heading up to Calgary and, eventually, Banff.

Pearl's Cafe. Our first access to the internet in a week!

The drive to Calgary was exceedingly flat and boring, but luckily we had a book on tape to listen to. There were pull-out areas called 'roadside turnouts' all alongside the road, complete with garbage and recycling, which we found very strange, but we also didn't notice very much litter. Calgary itself was very confusing to us. It was huge and sprawling and there were a bunch of 'freeways', but they all had stoplights and no over/underpasses. We finally got into Banff just before it got dark and got a last-minute camping spot. The campground was very full, but they had a section of trailer spaces that weren't hooked up yet that they were letting tents camp on. Everything was gravel, so I was very glad that we had an air mattress or sleeping would have been very uncomfortable. We went to the hot springs to relax before going to bed. We slept terribly because a train came through the town multiple times during the night and woke us up. It was also freezing!

Stoplights on the freeway seriously suck

Saturday morning we found another coffee shop to check up on how Sophie was doing and wandered around Banff. We were so tired from our long week that we didn't really want to do any hikes, so we mapped out a different way home (trying to stay closer to the mountains) and made our way back to Glacier National Park. We drove through one last time before heading down to Missoula. Sunday afternoon we headed back to Pocatello to pick up Sophie (Mishael had dropped her off to have a little Grandma-time) and hang out with Randy and Teresa for the evening. We finally made it home Monday afternoon and made a lazy time of the remainder of our Labor Day.

This girl was happy to see her daddy

We are SO ready to go home

Daddy snuggle time!

All in all, we had a great time. We'll definitely come back, but I think we'll skip on the Calgary/Banff excursion. Too much driving and we were too pooped out by the time we got there to do much. We made note of some of the other hikes we'd like to do next time around. To see all 335 pictures from our vacation, check out my Facebook photo album.

If anyone is planning on going to Glacier, I would recommend the book Moon Handbook's Glacier National Park and the website HikingInGlacier.com . We used both (I printed off trail guides from the website before we left) and they both came in handy!