The adventure began on Saturday July 27. We started driving around 5:30 am, arriving around 4:30 in Whitefish, MT. Here we rented a 5 bedroom cabin all together. It was a nice cabin and about 30 minutes from the park. We spent the evening shopping for groceries, eating dinner, and then celebrating grandpa's birthday. I made 2 cakes to bring with us to eat tonight. Happy 76th!
Sunday-
First off we stopped at the Apgar Visitor's Center to get ranger's opinions on our planned activities for the day. She had a few suggestions that modified our plans. We started off at the Rocky Point Nature trail that goes along part of the shoreline of Lake McDonald. The water is unbelievably clear! During a hiking stop we skipped rocks in the glassy lake.
Hayden and McKinley got their feet in a little bit. McKinley said it was too freezing! Hayden said it felt fine and a bit like Jordanelle.
Per the ranger's suggestion, we then parked back in the Apgar Visitor's Center parking lot and rode the shuttle bus up to Logan Pass via the Going to the Sun Road.
We saw some bighorn sheep up near the Logan Pass parking lot.
The wildflowers are in bloom! My favorite was the Beargrass flowers. I didn't get a close up picture of those though.
We did the 'easy' hike here to Hidden Lake Overlook. Supposedly 1.5 miles each way. It was challenging but most of us did it!
We got to see lots of mountain goats! I'd say around 8-10+ when the hike was all said and done.
Overlooking Hidden Lake
Then we took another shuttle back to the visitor's center and drove back to Whitefish for dinner and relaxing before bed.
Monday--
Rise and shine!
The parking lots fill up early here, so we had to be up and arrived to the parking lot by 7-7:30. The rest of the family missed seeing the parking spots, so they had to go back to ride the shuttle. We found a spot so we headed out to hike The Trail of the Cedars first.
At the end of Trail of the Cedars is the trailhead to go to Avalanche Lake. It's 2 miles of hiking each way. Plus the additional 0.7 mi our family did to reach the other side of the lake.
Three beautiful cascading waterfalls emptying into Avalanche Lake
The view from other side of the lake
The side view walking around the lake was more turqouisey green looking. Very pretty.
We met up with the rest of the crew at Avalanche lake. But then they had to wait for stragglers, take the shuttle back, and eat lunch, so we went on ahead of them. We took our time going up Going to the Sun Road on our way to the St. Mary's area and pulled out for the vistas along the way!
We hung around the Sun Point parking lot to wait for everyone to catch up. We ate lunch, relaxed, then got very bored waiting for everyone. We thought they weren't going to make it, but two hours after Lake Avalanche they did.
We hiked to St. Mary's Falls. It had beautiful blue glacier water. We dipped our sore feet in for a bit.
Then our little crew went in search of Virginia Falls another 0.7 miles down the trail.
We thought we made it...
but we didn't. This was NOT Virginia Falls. It was further down the trail than we went. Oh well.
Done for the day, we drove back to the Whitefish cabin.
Tuesday--
We've only got 1 full day left in Glacier! Grandpa and Grandma joined our excursion to Many Glacier while the other families chose different paths.
Many Glacier is faaar away. By the time we made it over there around 11:30 or so, the area was closed to any more entries. Glurp! They said they'd open back up around 3:30. To wait or not to wait?
We went back to the town just outside of Many Glacier area, ate our lunch, reserved a boat ride for tomorrow, browsed the gift shop, got ice cream, and tried to waste time. Grandpa and Grandma headed back to Whitefish. We decided to try the park entrance at Many Glacier again. It was open!
Wild Goose Island on St. Mary's lake on our way to Many Glacier.
Reading the plaque while wasting time waiting for the entrance to open again. Good Glacier information!
Here are the Glaciers pictured in the plaque above
Once in the park, we hiked to Apikuni Falls. Steep ascent for the short hike. We stopped and rested a few times.
Apikuni Falls
We drove down the road afterwards. A few Sierra Club volunteers we encountered on our hike said they had just seen 4 bears down by the lake!
We saw one! Grazing in a mountain side meadow up the mountain off the side of the road. Cute medium-sized black bear.
After our successful bear hunt, we started back for our long drive.
We saw another bear! This time a little grizzly in the meadow. He was eating and running and jumping. He looked so happy! He even stood on his hind legs to check all the people out who were staring at him.
Further up the road was a bit of a slow down. A slow moving big horn walking down the road!
Wednesday--
Last morning at Glacier, then off to Canada. We had to be up at the lake by 9:30 am. That meant we had to leave Whitefish at 6:30 am.
Our boat left from the waters behind the Many Glacier Hotel.
Many Glacier Hotel
The first boat jaunt was on Swiftcurrent Lake.
Then we got off and hiked 0.2 miles to our next boat on Lake Josephine.
There is a small glacier located below that big glacier you can see in the picture. The small glacier is called Grinell Glacier. It was my intention to hike the 3 miles each way to end up ON the glacier. But alsas, time didn't work out, so we just looked at the beauty from the boat.
Good-bye Glacier! We're off to Canada! We're about 4-5 hours away from our lodging in Canmore.
Thursday--
First up in Banff...Johnston Canyon!
Beautiful paved canyon trail. Lots of people (so no bear worries). We're headed to Upper (1.5 mi) and Lower (0.7 mi) Falls.
Lower Falls. We waited in line on the walkway here to enter through a little tunnel to view and hear the falls up close.
Cool geologic stuff at Upper Falls.
Top view of Upper Falls. At Upper Falls. Again, we waited in line on the walkway to take our turn to view the falls.
Next stop is Lake Louise. We're not very optimistic about parking, but we actually got in! We didn't have to walk much!
Such beautiful blue glacier water here. We meandered, took pictures, and relaxed on the lawn.
Then back to our individual condos to wind down.
Friday--
We were warned by many people to arrive at Moraine Lake by 4:30-5:00 am. Oh boy! It's a 1 hr 15 min drive from our place. And our family had to be picture ready for our family pictures here. Needless to say it was an early morning. We left just after 4 am and arrived around 5:20. But we got a parking spot for the beautiful sunrise.
I really hate mornings, but it was so beautiful! At first look from ground level the lake looked like nothing out of the ordinary, but after climbing up "Rock Pile" to view from the top...WOW!
When we first arrived, people were climbing up "Rock Pile" to view from the top. We didn't notice the trail just on the other side of the pile. We clambored over the floating logs and up the rocks too. Josh loved it and was so mad when I made him take the trail down instead of the rocks. Kent's lower legs got soaked on the way in when he overestimated the size/sturdiness of some of the logs he stepped on.
We were on our way out of that lake before 7:00 am. Our family decided to head up the Icefield Parkway and take in the sites.
Grandpa and Grandma had the same idea and we met up with them at Peyto Lake. It looks like a wolf.
See the rock flour drizzling in to the lake here.
We made a few roadside detours to view the sites.
So many pretty wildflowers to see,
and lots of impressive glaciers along the way.
Saskatchewan river crossing. Near this area is the triple continental divide off Snow Cap mtn. The waters melting there empty in to the Pacific, Atlantic AND the Arctic oceans.
We arrived in Jasper National Park to see the Columbia Icefield and Athabasca glacier. Our family decided to pay for the Icefield tour to break up the hiking rhythm.
We're glad we did (despite it being grossly overpriced)
When we got up on Athabasca Glacier we were able to fill up water bottles with pure glacier water!
It was sooo cold!
We're having fun in Canada! Most of us tried Poutine and ketchup chips (not together of course).
Glacier water run off.
We rode in these Ice trucks onto the glacier.
The tires were taller than Josh.
This rock person is called an Inuksuk in Canada. I'd only ever heard them called cairns before.
Our ticket included passage on the Skywalk. So we checked that out too. Not something to pay separately for in my opinion, but still fun to do.
A view of Athabasca glacier from across the street at the Discover Centre (that's the Canadian spelling). If you zoom in on the little black dot on there you can see an ice truck like the one we rode. It's a massive glacier. I really liked learning all about glaciers on this trip!
After the glacier we went back to the condo. Our family left Canmore just after 10:00. We drove to Helena for a layover for the night. The next morning we drove the 7 more hours back home.
