Montana – Glacier National Park Day 1 & 2
It has been several years since Keith & I have been able to get away alone for an extended vacation but ourr 20th anniversary seemed like the perfect excuse! We settled on visiting a new state for both of us, Montana, and decided to spend most of our time hiking in Glacier National Park. I thought I would break our trip up into a few posts and then I will recap with one post containing suggested itineraries if you have Glacier on your list!
We were traveling from Houston and what I have learned is that most direct flights stop after labor day. Originally we had a direct flight going but earrlier this summer the flight times were changed which caused me to shift our flights to layover in Denver so we could arrive early in the afternoon and have enough time to get settled.
Whitefish, Montana is a small town about a 27 mile drive to the entrance of Glacier National Park. There are some great places to stay in the park but you definitely have to book them at least a year in advance. We knew we wanted to have a day to do something other than hiking and we loved having so many dining choices we could walk to.
The VRBO we rented was darling! And, funny story, we had some friends who visited earlier in the summer and I actually booked the exact rental without even realizing it. While it was perfect for 2, the rental does also have a murphy bed that could accomodate 2 more guests off the kitchen area.
We arrived around 3 and headed straight for some burgers at Craggys before checking in. Once we were settled we made our grocery list and headed to grab some food for the week. The day ended with a walk around town along the Whitefish river and some ice cream from Sweet Peaks. One must is trying some huckleberry ice cream!
As rookies we slept in a little longer than initially planned, made our lunches and snacks for the day and headed out around 7 for Glacier National Park. The sunrise on the way was definitely a little teaser of what was to come!
Getting around Glacier National Park requires using Going to the Sun Road (GTSR) which is only open a short time fo the year and is about 50 miles long. It takes about 2 hours to drive from one end to the other, however, as it is quite curvy. This year you had to purchase an advance ticket to even be able to enter the park and drive on GTSR so thankfully I had planned ahead for once! There are shuttles but most stops were closed in 2021 and they seemed very inefficient so I’m not sure it would be my first choice.
Logan Pass is about the midway point along GTSR and we made this our first stop. I had read to get there early or parking would be full and we arrived to a crazy parking lot full of people waiting to park. So many people just get out for a quick peek so we probably only wasted about 30 minutes before settling into a spot. There are restrooms and a visitor center here where we grabbed some additional maps and checked the board for any closures. Hidden Lake was one of the hikes we had on our list but it was closed due to bear activity.
Instead we headed onto HIghline Trail. This trail in total is 11.8 miles and we learned it is typical to park at “the loop” and take a shuttle to Logan Pass and then hike the full trail back to the loop. On this day there was no shuttle stop due to an active search for a missing hiker. We hiked the trail for about 3.2 miles, stopped to have our lunch and then hiked back to the car. The elevation change was about 1285 feet and it was a great hike to get us warmed up.
There were fires to the west and the smoke definitely created some haze but the views were still amazing! I can only imagine how beautiful the views are earlier in the summer with the wildflowers in bloom. We did see a mule deer, a big horn sheep and some mountain goats along this hike!
We took GTSR back down to the parking area for Avalanche Lake and Trail of the Cedars for our second hike of the day. Every morning the parking here seemed to fill up really fast as it is one of the first hikes you come to upon entering the park but we only circled a few times before finding a spot in the afternoon. The scenery was completely different and the inclines were a little steeper at times but the total elevation change was only about 762ft. In and out was a total of about 5 miles for us.
The views were amazing as we walked out of the tall pine trees and onto the beach of a beautiful lake. There were so many waterfalls that could be seen on the side of the mountains and I couldn’t believe how loud they were even from such a distance.
We headed back to Whitefish for the day and quickly found out the dining situation. Most of the restaurants take reservations and if you did not have one the wait times were a little crazy. They were also open/closed random days of the week and not always the same for all. What we determined at some point was they may have workers who come for the summer but have already left by labor day. Not sure, but we love to eat so it only took one day for us to get this figured out! Ha!
Mama Blancas is a latin cuisine spot and there was zero wait and fresh squeezed margaritas so we were sold! Not sure why they were the only dive with no wait this night but we didn’t complain. Our food was delicious.
After some very long showers we hit the sack determined to get a much earlier start on day 3! You definitely don’t want to miss what’s next becuase day 3 definitely held one of the highlights of the trip for me.