Glacier National Park – August 1st

After Yellowstone National Park, we stayed at a little rundown RV park in Livingstone, just north of the park, and then drove and drove the next day towards the north west corner of Montana, towards Glacier National Park. We stayed the next night in a very cheap but nice campsite in the overflow area at a massive campground in Kalispell, south of the park, then headed into the park the next day.

We got very excited when we passed a drive through bear park (to finally have a guaranteed chance of seeing them, regardless of in the wild or not!), but it was almost funny (repeat, almost…) when we discovered that it’s closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays (this day being Thursday of course!) – so we bought some fresh huckleberries from a road side seller in consolation, and continued on to the park.

Closed bear park...

We were both really impressed with Glacier National Park, and its very steep and sheer mountains, as well as the Going-To-The-Sun road which winds its way up and down across the mountains, on the side of some pretty hairy drops! Considering the road was completed in 1932, it was quite a feat! Still didn’t see any bears, which are reasonably common to see here (black and grizzly), but we saw a deer and its fawn as soon as we drove into the park, and later saw heaps and heaps of ground squirrels, marmots, some big horn sheep, and heaps of mountain goats close up, which was awesome!

Colourful rocks under the oh so clear water of McDonald Creek & Lake

Views from the Going-To-The-Sun road

Going-To-The-Sun road

Ground squirrel chirping away on a rock

Although the road only covers a small area of the park (ie. It goes across the short direction), the rest isn’t accessible except by foot on multi-day backcountry hikes which require permits and a lot more energy (and preparation/supplies) than we had, so we basically just drove the fairly spectacular road, stopping at almost all of the stops, and did one 6 mile (9.6km) walk to Hidden Lake – this was where we saw an abundance of mountain goats and marmots, including one baby marmot with its mother (and the same with a mountain goat kid! J)

On part of the walk to Hidden Lake

One of the many mountain goats we saw on our walk :)

Hidden Lake

On the shore of the lake...

Hoary marmot and baby - SO cute!!

As we couldn’t find any free campsites in the park and it was getting on to late afternoon, we found a nearby Koa Kampground and settled in for the night, planning to head on to the Canadian side of the park just over the border (Waterton Lakes National Park) the next morning.