Day 46 - Glacier National Park

Monday, June 25, 2016

Posted from: West Glacier, MT

Miles driven: 106

Total trip miles: 7,808

Glacier is quickly becoming one of our favorite national parks. (They are all so unique, it would be hard to truly choose a favorite.)

After a late night of star gazing last night, we slept in and left the campground around 10:00 am to drive into the park. 

The main road through the park is called Going to the Sun Road. This road is famous as an engineering marvel built in the 30's to allow motorists to see some of the best views the park had to offer. The only catch is that your vehicle can't be longer than 21 feet. Whew! We just made it. 

Our plan for the day was to drive this road and possibly hike a bit at Logan Pass if we could find a parking space. In the end, we just drove the road because we had underestimated how tired we would be after our late night. 

Ta da! (We all encouraged Matt to shower, but that didn't happen so....we kept our distance. Okay, I'm just kidding.)

It isn't a legit scenic drive without a tunnel or two. 

Oh how I wish I could easily post the Canon pictures while traveling. These pictures do the park an injustice. 

Well hello there Mr. mountain goat. 

We drove the whole length of the road from Apgar to St Mary's. We stopped at St Mary to check out the visitor center. They had solar telescopes set up so you could look at the moon. Their chief astronomer was there to talk about what you were seeing and promote the "Park After Dark" initiative the park service is implementing. It is a way to encourage visitors to visit parks at night to view stars and learn more about astronomy since these parks are some of the last places in the United States with limited light pollution. 

We started back across the Going to the Sun Road. It was busier by now. Both directions of traffic have periods where they are driving very close to jagged rocks that stick out from the side of the mountain. Most trucks had their mirrors folded all of the way in to avoid clipping one. We passed a truck with wide mirrors who was maybe going a little too fast and just as we passed him we heard a crunch. He had ripped his passenger mirror off against the rocks. Matt and I cringed. Matt had to pat the dash of the truck and assure it that he would take care of it...boys and their toys. 

We stopped to admire the clear blue water of the river.

We arrived back at the campground by 2:30 pm. The pool was calling our names.

The kids met other kids at the pool who happened to be our campground neighbors. Their daughter was close to Grace's age, and their son was Cameron's age. Their youngest girl was younger than Caleb. They were traveling for about eight weeks too while their dad was on sebatical from his senior pastor position. The kids had a lot in common and everyone got along really well. They all hung out the rest of the day. 

Today I went to make dinner, but when I opened the silverware drawer I saw this. ??!! We had used every single utensil. Even the butter knives. Is that even possible?? Dishes had to happen before dinner tonight. Mom took on dish duty so the kids could enjoy their new friends. 

As great as it was to drive through Glacier NP, I think the best part of the day was watching the kids make new friends. They interacted like they had known each other for years.