Glacier National Park Road Trip

 

Glacier National Park is one of the most popular national parks in the United States. It is located at Northwestern Montana bordering with Canada. In fact, you can actually hike to Canada via hiking trails to Canada's Waterton Park. The unique aspect of Glacier National Park is that the lake color is emerald green. Many lakes are long and narrow carved out by glaciers. Glacier National Park is also home to many Grizzly Bears and Black Bears. Thus hikers need to carry bear spray and be extra cautious.

We drove from Portland to St. Mary by Glacier National Park early in the morning at around 5AM. We stopped by Spokane and had a quick brunch at IHOP. As we drive towards Glacier National Park, we could see the sky getting smoggy due to the forest fire in the area. It was really unfortunate. We drove through Going To The Sun's Road and the view was breathtaking. We got to KOA St. Mary Campground by 7PM in the evening. We got a small cabin and it was quite nice.

On the second day morning, we drove to Many Glaciers Hotel by Swiftcurrent Lake to wait for sun rise. We loved the view here. We then drove to Grinnell Glacier trail head to hike to Grinnell Glacier. It was a great hike and saw a grizzly bear when we came back.

On the third day, we drove to Logan Pass Visitor Center very early in the morning by 5:30AM. We had to get here early in order to get a parking space. We first did the Hidden Lake trail before the sun rise. After that we did the Highline Trail and hiked all the way to Haystack Butte. At night, we went to Wild Goose Island overlook to see if we could see the milky way. Unfortunately it was too smoggy.

On the fourth day, we drove 3 hours to Bowman Lake through Polebridge. It was a beautiful lake with wildlife around it. The deer was not afraid of us and people were having amazing time kayaking and hanging out by the lake.

Overall, we loved Glacier National Park. It was one of our favorite. The mountains and valleys carved by the glacier was just so amazing. We would definitely come back next time when the smoke is gone.