Road Tripping to Glacier National Park

Is anyone else feeling antsy from being home during the pandemic for so long!? Zach and I have found the perfect solution for safe and nearly hassle-free travel (no wild airports, extremely long waits for rental cars, etc.!). Road trips! Back in 2020, we road tripped to Moab with Zach’s family, and during the summer of 2021 Zach and I visited Glacier National Park.

Zach had visited Glacier as a child and remembers loving it, but I had never been. It has such diverse landscapes, incredible lakes, and rivers, but really it was the 700 miles of hiking trails and potential to see wildlife that drew us there.

* Please excuse the low-quality cell phone photos — we chose not to take a DSLR camera with us so we could focus more on living in the moment.

Our trip was planned for August — when all the hikes at the highest elevation have melted out, but also when wildfires are the most likely to happen. Of course, wildfires were raging during our trip, but we made the most of it!

From the Seattle area, it’s a nine-hour drive, so we split the drive into two shorter, more relaxing days. We stayed in Coeur d’Alene, the halfway point in the drive, but it was the second day of the road trip that the fun really began.

It was on this leg of the trip that we bought our first huckleberry milkshake at Hucks (a great place to pick up souvenirs) — where I made my intentions clear (jokingly) of having one huckleberry milkshake every day of the trip. Afterward, we stumbled upon the National Bison Range.

After minimal research online what we thought would be a quick roadside attraction ended up being a two-hour self-driving tour through meadows seeing bison, elk, white-tailed deer, and pronghorn sheep. We loved it all! We ended our time there at the start of a thunderstorm and it happened to be the perfect spot to watch lightning for miles.

Unfortunately, the storm brought heavy rains. More rain than Zach or I had ever driven through, and that’s saying a lot since we’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest our whole lives! It was a stressful drive to our Airbnb in Whitefish, but we loved staying up at the Whitefish ski resort. The drive up the mountain was so relaxing. 

On our first day in Whitefish, we woke up at 6 am to beat the crowds into Glacier and drive the Going to the Sun Road (which you now need a permit for, as well as a special permit to enter the park on top of your national park pass). Our goal was to pass up all the crowded nearby activities and views in favor of visiting the far side of the park. We figured we were feeling fresh, and we weren’t sure how bad the air quality would get (potentially cutting our weeklong trip short), so we’d make this a long day and circumnavigate the park.

We didn’t have clear views for the drive, but I’m using that as my excuse to go back and see it all again someday soon! We hiked to St. Mary Falls and Virginia Falls, but it was the unnamed waterfall just a short way past Virginia Falls that was our favorite. Along the trail, we ate handfuls of wild thimbleberries and serviceberries while stepping over bear scat.

Next, we stopped by St. Marys general store for souvenirs and drove around to see all the cabins. It would be the most peaceful place to stay inside the park if you’re able to snag lodging here. Afterward, we headed to Many Glacier where we had a boat tour the following day. We were so thankful to have visited to check out how long it would take us to get there because there was unexpected construction and parking was even tighter than we imagined.

As soon as we left the park, we saw a black bear alongside the road! We were thrilled to be just hours into our trip and already have spotted one of the animals we were really hoping to see. We stopped by Two Medicine Lake next. It had my favorite campsites in East Glacier and a beautiful nature trail to Running Eagle Falls.

We continued our drive, looping around the park on highway 2, before returning to Whitefish after most restaurants closed. We’d been seeing stickers, magnets, and shirts of a man with lots of hair and glasses all over the place. It turns out that Glacier is very proud of its fast-food joint called Mud Man Burgers. It seemed to be the only place open, so we swung in and were pleasantly surprised at its accommodating menu. The kicker though — their huckleberry shakes were better than the previous day’s shakes from the cafe. In all, we spent 12 hours exploring and hiked 4.5 miles on our first day in Glacier!

We spent our fourth day driving the Going to the Sun Road again, but this time with the intention of going at a slower pace and stopping at more of the sights. I also remembered I purchased an audio tour from Guide Along, and it was the perfect tour guide. From now on, I’ll be checking for their guides on all the road trips we take from now on.

Our first stop was at Lake McDonald Lodge. It was amazing. When the park was first created, it was the second lodge built. Visitors would ride a train to the Apgar lodge at the start of the lake, and then catch a steamboat to the Lake McDonald Lodge. It was a beautiful experience, even being surrounded by crowds, so I couldn’t even begin to fathom how the first visitors must have felt being so secluded. Zach and I also agreed that if we got the chance to kayak on one of the lakes, this would be the lake we’d choose.

We had our boat tour scheduled for that afternoon, so we drove through the park to Many Glacier again. It took 25 minutes of circling the small parking lot to get a parking spot as someone was leaving, but we were thankful to be there plenty early. We wandered through the lodge and walked the nearby trails while we waited for our boat.

We chose to boat at Many Glacier because it was the only tour that included rides on two lakes (Swiftcurrent Lake and Lake Josephine). On the way to the second lake, we saw a large moose in the water! They love to eat underwater vegetation and can swim for miles.

Once we got to the second lake, we boated to the other side and chose to walk to Grinnell Lake. You can also reach Grinnell Glacier from here as well (an excellent way to cut down the mileage), but we’d scheduled our boat ride a bit late in the day for that and hadn’t thought to prepare for that hike since we’d originally thought we’d be hiking 12-15 miles of the Highline trail (too smokey to attempt).

The lake was beautiful, of course, but when we got back to the boat launch, we realized we’d be waiting at least 45 to 90 minutes depending on which boat we’d be able to fit on. After asking around, we learned the trail to the lodge was nearby, flat, and only a couple miles. We chose to walk, ate more berries along the way, and got a better view of the moose we’d seen earlier. We beat the boat back by an hour. We weren’t in any hurry, but after the previous day’s drive, we knew exactly how long it could take us to get back to Whitefish and we had so much more to see on the Going to the Sun Road!

Wizened by the previous day’s experience, we knew to find dinner in East Glacier before heading back over the Going to the Sun Road (it’s recommended to drive it each direction because the views are different). We stopped at the Two Sisters Cafe for takeout and huckleberry shakes, of course. Little did I know, this would be our last shake of the trip, but it was the best!

On our way back through Glacier, we saw a small herd of elk, a grizzly bear, and two bighorn sheep. Two days is all it took to spot every animal we’d hoped to see!

We finally had a chance to stop at Logan Pass as well. Go extremely early or very late in the day to find parking here — even at 7 pm the parking lot was full. The hike to Hidden Lake Lookout was my favorite trail of the trip. The trail is made of boardwalks, which I love. From the lookout, you’re on the continental divide, and it was incredible to watch the clouds and smoke moving on either side of us. Somehow, we ended this day after 14 hours of adventuring and logged another 7 miles of hiking!

The following day I slept 11 hours, so if you’re worn out just reading this, know that I was, too. By now the poor air quality and smoke was really affecting me. We knew this would be our last day in Glacier, cutting our trip four days short.

We decided to explore outside of Glacier and headed to the Hungry Horse Reservoir. There were so many small campgrounds, but our favorite part of the drive was observing a golden eagle and its babies in their nest.

We made our way back to Glacier, finally hiking the renowned Trail of Cedars. It’s known for its beautiful forests and river, but after spoiling ourselves with the forests in Washington, only the river impressed us (I felt spoiled thinking that at the time, and even more so writing it!). Our final two stops were at the Falls Overlook, (so worth waiting for a parking a spot!) and Apgar Village, which had beautiful campgrounds but was SO busy.   

We drove straight home the following day, simply because out of everywhere within driving distance, Western Washington was the least smokey. As soon as we had somewhat clean air again, I started feeling better.

When we make it back to Glacier, I hope to visit Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada (the borders were closed) as well as Polebridge, which was inaccessible due to wildfires.

Once home, we couldn’t let our last three days of vacation go to waste, so the very next day we drove another three hours to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. We enjoyed scrambling up Mount Angeles — usually a very popular weekend hike — on a weekday and after the being around all the crowds in Glacier, we especially appreciated the solitude the Olympics nearly guarantee on a weekday.

We certainly made the most of our time off and Zach and I both look back and laugh at how busy our trip was. I can’t wait to go back and see everything with clear skies.

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