Glacier National Park, Part 1

The land mass that makes up Glacier National Park is long and narrow, shaped like a rectangle or a slanted parallelogram positioned vertically with the Rocky Mountains running lengthwise through the middle.  The famous “Going to the Sun Road” which just opened for the summer season after snow plowing was complete, crosses from one side of the park to the other over the mountains.  It seems the climate and terrain on each side of the mountains is different.  There are park entrances on both the west side and the east side.  Coming from Flathead Lake we entered the park on the west side.  Still suffering from sun blisters on my ankles from our kayak ride on Flathead Lake I am forced to take a few days of downtime because my feet are swollen and I can’t even put on a sneaker or hiking shoe.  The only thing I can get on my feet are some slip-on shoes that almost did not make the cut when I was packing the van.  I can’t even wear socks with them so this makes for some cold feet in this wet muddy mess they have going on here.  There are four campgrounds on the west side of the park, we decide on Fish Creek campground near Apgar with the mention of showers, even though it is the most expensive campground at $23 a night.  They do accept reservations here at Fish Creek but we just show up and are able to get three nights.  It turns out there is no hot water in the showers and only 4 showers for 178 sites not to mention they are very far away from where we camped, you are not allowed to drive to them and I have got some bloated feet.  No shower at Fish Creek for me.

Lake McDonald is on the west side of the park and there is a grand old lodge built in the Swiss chalet style right on the lake.  These old lodges in the park were built a long time ago so that they are a day’s horse ride away from each other and the tourists could go from one to another and experience the beauty of the park.  Lake McDonald Lodge offers boat tours and red bus tours on the going to the sun road from the lodge and they also have a nice restaurant with good food.  We plan on taking the red bus when we are on the other side of the park at St. Mary.  Since it had been a few inactive days, and there was intermittent rain, we ended up spending some time sitting on the back porch of the McDonald Lake Lodge.  It is there that we met Magic.  I regret that I didn’t take a picture of him.  He is a guide dog for a lady who is legally blind.  He is a black lab and of course still has that friendly, playful lab personality even though he has graduated from guide dog school.  The owner told us he was actually returned to the guide dog school by someone else and when she heard there was a lab available without a second thought she took him right away, not asking why he was returned.  Well she now thinks it is most likely because he still wants to play.  She said he was very excited about the ground squirrels popping their heads up and down on the lawn here.  I did see his tail wagging when other dogs walked by and of course everyone who loves dogs had to stop and pet him.  But Magic got to go on the Lake McDonald boat ride and the red bus tour up over Logan Pass even though he had to sit on the floor of the bus which must have been uncomfortable for the pooch.  It looks like Magic has a job for the time being in spite of his happy-go-lucky attitude.

Leaving Fish Creek we stayed at a private campground right outside the entrance of the park.  We were able to get showers and laundry.  With the increased rainfall, humidity and muddy tree debris everywhere, including inside the van, I was getting more and more negative about this region.  I just felt cold and wet and muddy.  I try to convince Tim to cancel our camping reservations at Banff in Canada thinking this in not the climate for me, we are too far north already.  He reminds me that the east side of the mountains has different weather so we should check that out before we make our decision on Banff.

There is a vehicle length restriction of 21 feet on the Going to the Sun road, we are 22.5 feet long.  A sign at Avalanche Creek tells you to turn around there, don’t go any further if you are over 21 feet.  To get to the other side of the park we have to take route 2 on the southern border of the park.  We set our sights on Two Medicine which is a less visited area of the park but they have a campground there, beautiful views, hiking trails and a small ranger station.  As we get closer the weather gets drier, the sun comes out, a good sign.  Campground is self-registration, first come first serve, perfect for our vision of a non-committed, flexible lifestyle.  We are able to get a site easily.  The weather is dry and sunny.  The scenery here is beautiful.  There are wildflowers everywhere.  Things are looking up.  Two Medicine feels good to us, so we are staying.

View from campsite