Travel/Stay⌗

Spent three days in Glacier National Park this summer, and it was one of my favorite visits.

We flew into Kalispell and stayed in Columbia Falls. It was a great little town to stay in with a short 20 mintue drive to the park entrance.

During peak season with the Going to The Sun Road open, its critical to get into the park early. We’d pack a cooler with snacks, cold water (it gets pretty hot during the day) and head out as early as possible (Trying to park before 6:30am).

There are a few different fees you have to pay. I had paid these so long before our visit that the first day we drove in, I thought I hadn’t paid the West entrance fee only to drive back away from the entrance to get cell service and figure out I had bought it.

Hiking⌗

In the middle of the Summer an early start is definitely the way to go. If you’re doing a longer hike that might take a good chunk of the day, starting early will give you lower temperatures and optimal parking.

We planned on doing smaller hikes but more of them, which gets a bit difficult as parking becomes scarce during the day. Our best day consisted of doing Avalanche Lake early in the morning. If you’re doing the popular trails I would highly recommend starting early.

After this hike, we said screw it and decided to drive up to the Logan Pass visitor’s center (~10am) and fight it out for a parking spot. If we couldn’t get anything, we had some back-up less packed areas we wanted to check out and have lunch at.

After about 15 minutes of jostling in the parking lot, we got a spot. I think the best strategy is to wait at the end of a row, there were a decent number of people leaving and if you kept circling the parking it became difficult to time it correctly and snag a spot.

Establishing dominance in parking lot musical chairs allotted us the reward of doing the Hidden Lake Overlook Trail. The trail still had a bit of snow cover and there were tons of mountain goats. Hidden lake was “closed” due to too much bear activity, but the overlook was excellent (I would bring binoculars next time). It was hot, but not bad as we were at higher elevation.

You could spend a full summer here hiking, many of these trails are worth doing multiple times at different times of day. The glaciers in the park are slowly disappearing, so it was special to get to see them in their current state.

Flathead River⌗

We did a rafting trip on the middle fork of the Flathead river which was fun although the water was quite cold. There as a lot of history and wild life along the river, although we didn’t see any bears.

The river runs next to Columbia Falls. After a long day, Ally and I ambled down about a mile from where we were staying to the river. There was a cute little park next to the river with a decent sized community garden and open space with large trees. We slid down a small sandy embankment and picked up smooth river rocks out of the cool water. They had tons of color and unqiue patterns when wet. It was one of those days you already know is going to be a fond memory for the rest of your life.

Other stuff⌗

You can buy bear spray pretty easily in the park. You can’t fly with it, so you kind of have to find some place around the park to buy it. If you’re driving, you can actually get two cans of the stuff from Costco for like $45, I paid ~$55 for a single one in the park. Since I couldn’t fly with it home, I spent another $10 to ship it. The kid working at the UPS store actually didn’t know if he could ship bear spray, but after calling his mom he said it was fine and took it (lol).

Funny enough this trip actually occured during the CrowdStrike blue screen of death incident. As you might guess, bricking tons of computers running windows makes it hard for airlines to function. It actually worked out in our favor as we originally had some nasty connection from Kalispell -> Chicago -> Phoenix, AZ. We ended finding a direct flight from Kalispell -> Mesa, AZ and got home in a few hours. We checked our previous flights just for fun and with the delays it would’ve been a completely unneccesary 10 hour travel day.