Family Driving Vacation- Day 3: Glacier National Park

Day 3: Glacier National Part, East Side

Today we covered from St. Mary to Logan Pass in Glacier National Park.  We started off the day in our hotel room with a nice doughnut breakfast after a decent night of sleep. I couldn’t sleep that well, starting around 5:30am, but I realized that it’s been quite a long time since I went to bed at 9pm, so my body was just used to that amount of sleep.  After an hour of tossing and turning, I was able to fall asleep and Woodrow woke up around 8am.  Theo was sound asleep while Woodrow was up attempting to fill his tummy-which seems to be impossible these days. 

Eventually we were packed up and on our way for the day.  Our hotel is less than 2 minutes from the St. Mary Entrance to GNP on the East-side of the park.  We took the map they gave us at the entrance as well as some more detailed trail maps from the hotel lobby and decided to attempt the hike to St. Mary falls (“0.8 miles –one direction- with gradual slopes…I think the descriptions were a little wonky).  Mason carried Woodrow again in the backpack carrier, and I carried a back-pack with stuff we’d need along the way.  Theo also mostly came along with me too.  He’s quite the chatter along the trails, and is about my pace, so we let Mason and Woodrow lead the way. 

The path had some beautiful views.  The hike wasn’t too strenuous, just contained more “gradual slopes” than I was expecting.  Woodrow was less fussy today, but we’d also learned from yesterday to fill him up frequently.  We didn’t see much wildlife along the path, and there were several other hikers who crosses our path, again commenting on how cute the boys were and always telling Theo how much they liked his binoculars.  To pass some time, Theo and I even sang some songs.  At his request, “The Muffin Man,” “Wheels on the Bus,” “ABCs,” and some random others.  I think this also amused other hikers. 

When we reached the waterfalls it was BEAUTIFUL!  There weren’t too many other people there when we arrived so Theo took a snack break (Fruit snacks and some water) while Mason snapped pictures.  A group came along and 3 of their members decided to go for a swim in the waterfall.  It was somewhat amusing to watch at they jumped off the bridge into the freezing glacier, but I also couldn’t help but think that this is how accidents happen and that it was a little unnecessary.  Maybe it’s more common when the weather is warmer which is why I had less of a time understanding why they thought it would be a great idea.  Judging from the looks from other hikers, I was not the only one feeling this way. 

We had heard and seen on the map that the Virginia Falls weren’t supposed to be too much farther so we decided to continue down the path to check them out.  It was just a short ways, and the view was very pretty.  Turns out when we got back to the car you could actually see those falls…which made me feel a little bit more convinced the 0.8 miles was a little off.  By the time we got back to the car it was around 1ish.  We decided to drive further in to the park and look into some different trails or check out the Logan Pass Visitor Center.  We pulled over at the Jackson Glacier Overpass where we were able to see quite a few glaciers on the mountains.  Honestly, I guess when I was thinking Glacier, I was thinking masses of floating ice, instead of ice up on a mountain (it just kinda looks like snow up there).  Anyways, we pulled off at the perfect spot because there were several people with their binoculars out facing the opposite direction looking up at the Going to the Sun Mountain.   I’ve learned that this can sometimes result in seeing something, and other times you can see how one person was looking and then all these other people assume that person sees something cool and they all look too creating this domino effect. 

There's a waterfall just above my finger, it's the ones we hiked too!

Well, in this case, there was a GRIZZLY BEAR up on the mountain.  One man was nice enough to let me look through the binocular/lens that he had set-up on the hood of his car.  It was pretty cool to see “up close”.  Mason took out his zoom lens and was able to snap a few photos, but I think they might be a little blurry since it really was so far up the mountain.  We ended up having lunch in the car (yay mom for bringing sandwich rolls and meat).

After lunch we headed onwards to the Logan Pass Visitor Center.  I wanted to see what was inside and the next set of trails were in that area.  Let me just say here, I’m really terrible at driving on the narrow-there’s a cliff right next to you-road…I was so nervous!  When we got to the LPVC it was raining and the wind was blowing and it was COLD!  Theo and I ran inside to check things out while Mason and a dozing Woodrow stayed in the car.  There wasn’t too much to see.  We ended up skipping the hikes and Mason took some photos when the rain/wind died down, but since we didn’t want to get soaked or freeze (and Theo already had wet feet at this point from some failed creek crossings) we decided to take a slow drive back the way we came.  We pulled over several times and Mason took photos.  We also got out again at the Jackson Glacier pass and walked down a little trail, but ended up turning around since we didn’t know how longs it would be and Mason was just carrying Woodrow and we hadn’t brought anything with us.

Just East of where we had hiked in the morning, we stopped to get out and hike towards a Gorge and the Barring Falls (“0.3 miles and an easy walk”).  I’d say a little farther and a little steeper.  This was a very pretty walk and Mason took lots of photos.  I was picturing it as a spot Mason’s dad would really enjoy stopping to take pictures or to paint.   The walk was really nice, and although it started out cool (but not raining), it ended up being warm at the end of the walk, and we could see the appeal to wanting to hop right in to the river. 

On our drive back out of the park, we ended up seeing THREE BEARS on the side of the road.  They were near a spot that was marked off as a construction area, but since they were near the road, I put on our blinkers and we pulled to the side of the road.  Well, a park ranger was there in seconds to shoo us away, so not a lot of great photos, but it was still AWESOME to see them up close, yet from the safety of the car. 

After that end of the day excitement we headed to a pizza place (Rising Sun Pizza) that was practically next to our hotel and we grabbed some pizza to go.  While I was inside waiting for the pizza, it appeared that a small herd of horses were running down the street.  Mason later said that from the car he saw the owner with his truck herding them back to where they belonged.    Just easier in our hotel room with the little ones.  Pizza was good, baths were taken, and bedtime was before 9pm for the little guys, and here I sit with our balcony door open listening to the stream trickle by, cool air breezing in our room, and little people asleep!