In which we spend the day at Glacier NP and then stuff ourselves at a buffet

We intended to wake up early to get a parking spot at Logan Pass since the rangers had warned us that it would fill up pretty early in the morning. But it’s so hard to get out of a warm sleeping bag on a chilly morning! We ended up getting up (reluctantly) at about 7:30am. We packed up our tent and everything into the van pretty quickly and left by 8:10am. The drive to Logan Pass was once again breathtaking, and it was cool to see everything in the morning sunlight this time instead of the evening sunlight.

We arrived at the Logan Pass Visitor Center about 8:45 am, but it turns out that was too late, and the parking lot was completely full. Oh no! We drove a little bit back down the hill to Oberlin Bend boardwalk and found one spot left there, which we snatched up. It turned out this was for the best, because it was at this spot that we caught our only glimpse of mountain goats!

There was also a squirrel party happening on this rock

Once we had a parking spot, we took our time eating breakfast and getting dressed for the chilly morning air high up in the mountains. It was only a short walk to the visitor center and we got there and found the Hidden Lake Overlook trailhead and embarked on that hike at about 9:30am. This was a shorter hike than yesterday, so only Joe and I carried backpacks with a few snacks and water bottles, not a full lunch or anything. The total distance to the Overlook was 1.5 miles. There is a further hike you can do all the way down to Hidden Lake, but it is currently closed due to increased bear activity in the area. I thought 1.5 miles would be short and easy, but it was actually a lot of uphill climbing and ended up taking us about an hour and a half. All the climbing helped warm us up though! The high temperature in the forecast for the day at Logan Pass was 58 degrees - and it was still pretty early in the day. It was a perfectly clear and sunny day though, so that helped with both feeling warmer and having amazing views of the mountains all around us. Plus we saw lots of squirrels - the speckled Columbian Ground Squirrel and the striped Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel, plus the smaller chipmunks, and even a few hoary marmots. We didn’t see any more mountain goats though - so I’m glad we saw that pair earlier at our unplanned parking spot!

I underestimated how much climbing up this hike involved. Lots and lots of big steps up on the boardwalk! Plus it is very popular, so there were lots of folks on the trail with us.

Much of the hike was through alpine meadows with babbling streams

Video of one of the hoary marmots we saw. The sound effects are provided by the Yatzeck children.

We sat down at the overlook and had a snack before heading back down. Here is a quote I saw in the visitor center from the park’s first ranger naturalist, and I think it is spot on: “Here is the place where clouds are made...a fairy land, where dreams of fantastic things come true, and where interest and wonder never cease.”

It was a little bit faster going downhill on the way back, and we were back in the van by 12:30pm. We continued driving along the Going-to-the-Sun Road towards St. Mary and our maybe-canceled-reservation. I had wanted to hike to St. Mary Falls and Virginia Falls, but when we got there the kids were protesting that they were hiked out. We HAD been hiking a lot recently, and Mary offered to watch all the kids if just Joe and I wanted to do this one, so we took her up on it. The kids had plenty of food and water, the temperatures were in the high 60s/low 70s, and we told them they could either stay in the van or play around the trailhead. We also had walkie talkies so we could stay in touch even though our cell phones weren’t working inside the park. I highly recommend bringing a good pair of walkie talkies - they came in handy several times when our cell phones weren't working. Joe and I got to do a kid-free 4 mile hike to the falls and back, and it was really great, and all the kids were alive when we got back!

Photo of the trailhead sign showing our route to the falls.

Here's a video of St. Mary Falls.

And a video of Virginia Falls.

And a bunch of photos from our hike.

From there it was a fairly short drive to the St. Mary campground. The ranger there confirmed that no tents were permitted and said that we could still camp there if we all slept in the van. It was only about 4pm, and while the showers available at St. Mary were very tempting (none of us have been able to shower since leaving Seattle), in the end we decided that our reserved campsite wasn’t very appealing - mostly out in the open, and that it would be better to knock out a big chunk of driving today towards our next destination. The ranger said that they were offering everyone a full refund due to the bear issue, so we decided to take them up on it and headed out of Glacier National Park at 4:30pm. After a quick pit stop in the town of St. Mary for a potty break, we were on our way to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

On this drive we had much discussion over what we should do with our unexpected free night. It was about a 9.5 hour drive from Glacier to Teddy Roosevelt and we had originally planned to do it all on the next day. We were all in favor of doing some of that driving today instead. We were driving in and out of cell coverage and cell data, so I was able to do some searching as we drove, looking for different campground and hotel options.

I found a KOA campground that was about $75/night - pretty pricey for camping, but it included a pancake breakfast, waterpark, and live music. We ALMOST decided to go there, but when I asked about the waterpark hours, it was so limited that we could have only spent an hour there at the most, plus the "tent campsites" were just an open field you parked in. I also found some hotels that were about $75/night, where we could all shower, but there was no breakfast included and no pool. Then someone - not sure who - said they were hungry and wanted to go to a buffet. I did a search for “buffet” in the next big city and Golden Corrall popped up. We figured that would also cost about the same price as the KOA or a hotel. So we all weighed in our opinions and the kids overwhelmingly wanted to eat at the buffet instead of getting a hotel or campground or shower, so that’s what we did. We usually go to buffets during the cheaper lunch hours, but the timing of this stop was during peak dinner hours so our bill was just as much as getting a hotel for the night for sure. But we did get steak and shrimp! It was nice to have lots and lots and lots of great hot food to eat, because we have mostly been eating sandwiches. Plus of course the kids love the ice cream and cotton candy. We spent about 1.5 hours there filling up our plates, staying almost until they closed and we were all very full. We got gas and hit the road again. About 10pm we pulled over at a rest stop near Sluice Boxes State Park - we are hoping to visit there tomorrow and hopefully at least get a swim in the river to rinse off since we haven’t had real showers. There were lots of family jokes cracked about eating Golden Corrall being better than sleeping in beds or taking showers - haha!

Total miles traveled today: 222
Total miles traveled on this trip: 4816

Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake

We all had a solid nights sleep and didn’t wake up until 8:30am. It got chilly, but not too cold - we were glad we spent the money on the warmer sleeping bags though. We took our time getting ready and eating breakfast - finally a day where we didn’t have a whole lot of planned activities or even much driving to do!

One thing that was on the list was to hike the Trail of the Cedars and go to Avalanche Lake. The trailhead was right in our campground so we didn’t even have to drive anywhere. We packed up backpacks with snacks and water for everyone and hit the trail about 10:15am.

Sometimes the kids are excited about hiking and sometimes they are not. On this particular morning Mary was a reluctant hiker. But only a few minutes into the trail we came upon this stream and she sighed and said contentedly, “This is good water.”

This was a really great hike. There was a river, a gorge, boulders, trees, flowers, and mountains. No wonder it is so popular - even though it was a Monday morning there were lots and lots of hikers on the trail with us.

Katy insisted on taking this photo of me looking at her through this log

It took us about 2 hours to reach the lake - hiking a distance of about 2.3 miles at kid pace - which is often frustratingly slow, plus there are lots of stops for exploring and snacking and whatnot. When we reached the lake, the kids immediately wanted to take off their shoes and socks play in the water. Joe decided to take an adult-paced hike around to the other side of the lake while the kids were splashing around in the water. We also had lunch at the lake - and some squirrels tried to join us. We of course followed the rules about not feeding the wild animals - but that didn’t stop one squirrel from jumping right on Joey’s lap to try to eat his sandwich!

Joe's view from the other side of the lake

Joey and the squirrel who wants his lunch. They have squirrels here that are striped like chipmunks, but you can tell them apart because they are bigger and the chipmunk stripes go all the way through the eyes.

Katy and Lily were trying to get this squirrel to come closer

Katy was so proud of herself for making it all the way out on this log!

It was such a great spot and we felt unrushed so we spent about an hour and a half at Avalanche Lake before deciding to hike the 2.3 miles back to our campsite. It was a little faster to get home since it was downhill most of the way, and we got back in about 1.5 hours this time, about 3:15pm. We relaxed around the campsite. There was no cell phone or data service in the park, so none of us were distracted by emails or text messages or phone calls or Facebook. The kids played outside, drew pictures, we made friendship bracelets, and Joe took a nap.

I bought the kids each a new notebook before the trip. Good investment! I also got a couple of cute "How to Draw" books at the Dollar Tree and Katy absolutely loved them!

Hanging out at our campsite. Love this park!

I couldn’t help feeling a pull to at least check my emails for anything important, so at 5pm we drove over to the Apgar Visitor Center where I thought there would be a good Wifi connection. We arrived about 5:30pm, and while I was able to check my email, the signal was too weak to do much of anything else - so we couldn’t update the blog in real time. I was able to respond to a few important emails, and we also got an email from Glacier National Park saying that our reservation for the next night was in danger of being cancelled due to increased bear activity in that area. Yikes! They were permitting only hard-sided campers and vehicles only, no tents allowed. The email said we had to call the campground, but it was already closed and we didn’t have a good cell signal anyway. I guess we’ll wait and see what happens with that tomorrow.

We were running low on groceries so we decided to drive just outside the park to stock up. Joe said we should skip the store right on the other side of the park boundary because it would be too expensive and that we should drive another 15 minutes into the next town. I insisted on stopping anyway because I didn’t think it could be THAT bad. Well, turns out he was right - everything was priced about 4x higher than it would have been in a normal grocery store, and it was a very very limited selection of items - not really a “general store” as advertised. Mostly packaged and processed foods at crazy high prices. So we drove to the next town and found the local grocery store which had a much better variety of fresh food at lower prices and stocked up for the next few days. We got back to the campsite a little before 8 and built a fire. It was a little difficult because everything was so wet from yesterday, but we succeeded in the end. We roasted hot dogs and ate tortilla chips with salsa and cheese and queso dip, and fresh peaches.  Then it was time to head to bed - a great day at Glacier National Park. We were all in bed by 10pm.

Katy snuggled into her hammock in the van. She loves sleeping here!

Total miles traveled today: 55
Total miles traveled on this trip: 4594

Glacier National Park - Going-to-the-Sun Road

We all overslept our alarm and woke up at 7:40am. Mass was at 8am, so it was a good thing we were already parked right next to the church! We hurriedly got dressed, used the church bathroom, and went to church. After that it was on to Glacier National Park!

We stopped about 10am to get gas, and were able to get a great FCFS campsite in our first choice Avalanche Campground before noon - Site 21. All thanks to dad driving us so far so quickly! The kids were glad that they were able to sleep most of the drive from North Cascades National Park.

Since it was raining, we decided not set up any of our campsite and instead head to the visitor center. We went to the Apgar visitor center, and Joe decided to try to nap in the van while I took the kids inside to work on getting their Junior Ranger Badges. The booklets were the perfect thing to do during the rain - the kids are actually way more excited about doing the activities and getting the badges than I thought they would be! We listened to a “Wilderness Encounters” talk by one of the park rangers, and it was actually really interesting. The ranger talked about some of the wildlife we might see in the park and how to behave appropriately. She had some really great stories about her past encounters with bears, and I feel a whole lot more prepared now should we happen to come across a bear while hiking around this park. We are planning to spend three days here, so the kids would have plenty of time to get the badges. At some of the parks we have visited there just hasn’t been enough time to do all the activities and get back to a visitor center before they closed in order for them to get their badges. But they all finished this one pretty quickly and were sworn in as Junior Rangers of Glacier National Park. The rain had stopped and we decided to do another ranger-led activity near the visitor center called the "Trees Along the Trail Walk". It was really interesting to learn how to identify a lot of the different trees in the park and learn about the succession patterns after wildfires, which are quite common in these parts.

Lodgepole pines produce two types of pine cones. One of them (shown here) is tightly sealed up, and only will open in the heat of a wildfire. We walked through different areas of the forest to see the succession of which trees grow in the decades after a wildfire.

We thought the rain was done for the day and we would be able to set up our campsite, but it continued to rain on and off. We decided to check out Lake McDonald and found a pull off where we could walk to the shore. There was nobody else around so we had our own private beach!

The lake and the mountains and rocky beach reminded me of our trip to Switzerland

It was perfect for skipping rocks! 

We had a light dinner on the beach and played around there until it started to rain again. It was a little disappointing that it kept raining, but at least there were breaks of sun here and there and we could enjoy the park. At about 5:30 pm it was still raining. We could either continue to sit around in our van at the campsite, or go somewhere else in the park. We decided to drive up the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Logan Pass and scope it out, since we figured we could make it there by 6:00 or so and the visitor center would be open until 7pm. It turned out to be a GREAT decision! The views along this road are absolutely breathtaking and Joe said he thinks this might be his favorite National Park so far. He loves mountains more than anything so I’m not surprised.

Action shot! Our van on the Going-to-the-Sun Road!

Mary bought a wildflower identification guide. I think these were a variety of paintbrush.

Three arches along the Going-to-the-Sun Road

It was surprisingly chilly up at Logan Pass. We also learned that the parking lot often fills up by 8am. Since we were there at the end of the day, we had no problem finding a spot. We plan to come back up here early on Tuesday morning to hike to the Hidden Lake Overlook - and now that we have already pulled over and enjoyed a lot of the views, we’ll be able to more quickly get to the visitor center to get a parking spot before our hike that day.

We got back to the campsite by roughly 7:30pm and fortunately the rain had stopped so we set up our tent. Unfortunately it soon started back up again, but we managed to get everyone ready for bed (hooray for flushing toilets at this campground!) and tucked in. It wasn’t actually raining very hard or very consistently at this point - just light rainfalls on and off - so not too bad. By the time we all went to sleep it had stopped raining I think for good, as the forecast was no rain overnight and even better, warmer weather and no rain for the next couple of days while we are here in Glacier National Park.

Total miles traveled today: 174
Total miles travled on this trip: 4539