Glacier NP

We crossed into the US without issue. No serious searching or otherwise odd procedures. Rolling in a fairly conspicuous vehicle, I was a little concerned we might get some special treatment. Canada was great, but crossing back into the US gave us that “back home” feeling that's hard to get in other countries.

That day we were headed to Glacier national park, the idea was to take it easy since it had only been two days since Adrianne sprained her ankle. We were on a mission to find activities that did not involve ankles – so biking and climbing were out of the question for the next few days. We were thinking about finding a lake and going paddling around in a canoe.

National parks all have collection booths at the entrance, and Glacier was no exception. One unique feature about the collection booth at Glacier was that they had a line painted 18 ft behind the stop sign line and 10 feet high up from the ground on the booth. This was to check to see if the vehicle would fit on Going to the Sun Road over Logan pass. Not surprisingly, the van was a little tall, and we removed the bike from the passenger side to prevent any overhanging rocks from catching a handlebar.

The weather was beautiful as the van climbed the steep pass. This was high season at the park; the road was crowded with cars and the picnic areas were full of families. My family and my friend Graham recommended a hike at Logan pass, the highest point on the Going to the Sun road. There is parking at a visitor center at the top of the pass. Signs at the entrance of the park warned that the lot was full at the pass, and my parents were unable to find parking when they visited the week before. Not surprisingly, the lot was a zoo when we arrived. We were optimistic, and pulled into the parking lot anyways. We lucked out and had someone pull out in front of us on our first trip down a parking aisle, leaving us their empty spot.

We were excited to be able to check out the famous hike. The trail was a mile and a half long, and mainly paved with a few stairs. The trail crosses the continental divide, and since we were at the highest point in the park, there was still snow covering the trail in a few patches. Adrianne was a sport and carefully balanced her still-tender ankle on slick snow up to the hidden lake viewpoint. (Joey was a sport and lent me his arm as we walked across the slick sections.) Even through it was only a three mile hike, we spent about three hours walking and absorbing the great scenery.

Along the way we saw mountaingoats that didn't mind a close audience. An Amish family was on the hike at the same time, we took an incognito photo of them!

See if you can spot the snowboard in this picture

One of the overall-clad boys hauled a snowboard up the trail presumably to impress the bonneted girls on the rock-hard august snow. He avoided the goats and impressively managed to stand up down the scalloped icy slope!

I got some sweet intel from my sister Christine (our guest blogger) about a must see attraction at the other end of the Going to the Sun road. We were planning on stopping on the west side of the park anyway to check to see if there were any places to rent canoes. Since we spent such a long time on the trail, it was a bit too late to rent a canoe – and we were pretty satisfied with our hike anyway. We stopped for some delicious ice cream instead – and got Moose Tracks and Huckleberry on Christine's recommendation. (Thanks Christine!)

We headed out of the park to find a campsite in the National Forest outside of the park. We headed towards Kicking Horse, where we got groceries and drove by some pretty authentic Montana saloons (or as Adrianne likes to call them, “Salons”, perhaps the funniest mispronunciation of the trip). We found a nice spot in the NF to camp that was not too far from the paved roads. We lucked out.