Glacier National Park - Peaceful

One of the most beautiful National Parks in the U.S. is Glacier National Park in northwest Montana. Our visit was in August of 2002 and I recommend it highly if you like remote areas and great scenery.

You can still see remnants of glaciers with a few of the mountains still having white snow on their peaks and valleys. It was said that these year-round glaciers were melting and would disappear entirely in the summer months during the next 15 years.

Quick Tips:

Take the train, Amtrak's Empire Builder. The station is within walking distance of Glacier Lodge in East Glacier and they will pick you up. You can also drive, as there are more places you can go in Montana on your own.

Best Way To Get Around:

If driving, U.S. Highway 2 runs around the southern rim of the park and there are several entry points. To view many more photos of this area as well as other parts of our western driving adventure, click here: Montana Adverntures 2002

We stayed at Glacier Park Lodge, on the eastern part of Glacier National Park in East Glacier. You get to East Glacier from U.S. Highway 2, then turn to the right in the middle of town, going under the railroad bridge to Glacier Park Lodge. Parking is plentiful.

Glacier Park Lodge is one of the old grand lodges built by James Hill of the Great Northern Railroad at the end of the 1800s to lure tourists to the area. The train station is within walking distance of Glacier Lodge, but the lodge will pick up Amtrak passengers and take them right to the check-in counter. You can also walk through a beautiful flower garden from the train station to the lodge. Next time we go, we plan to take the train.

The lodge itself has a grand and huge lobby. The rooms are small, however, and if you have a lot of luggage, you may have trouble storing it. The bathrooms are small as well, and there is no air-conditioning, although it isn’t needed. There are NO television sets, as you are supposed to be experiencing the beauty and seclusion of the area without outside stimulation. Each room does have a telephone, however. Also, there are no elevators and you have to climb several flights of steps with your luggage, or pay a bellhop to do it, in order to get to your room.

The restaurant in Glacier Lodge is supposed to be famous for its steaks, but I found the steaks only normal and not outstanding. The restaurant’s breakfasts were super, though. But lunch and dinner meals were better at restaurants in the town of East Glacier.

Their email address is: info@glacierparkinc.com

We took a tour of Glacier National Park/Waterton National Park (in Canada) via one of the 1936 tour buses, refurbished by Ford in 2001 but originally built by White Motors for the park in 1936. Both parks together are called the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. We went on this tour August 28, 2002.

Scenery as seen from the open-air buses was fantastic. It is highly recommended that you take this bus tour should you visit Glacier. They leave several times a day from Glacier Lodge and the tour lasts 8 hours.

Marias Pass is the lowest-elevation crossing of the Continental Divide in the country. The Great Northern Railroad laid its tracks here in the late 1800s, and U.S. Highway 2 parallels the tracks. We crossed Marias Pass on August 29, 2002 while on a bus tour of Glacier.

On August 29, 2002, we took a bus tour along the ‘Going to the Sun Road’ through Glacier National Park. The day was relatively clear, so I got some great photographs. The Going to the Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide at Logan Pass and is a narrow and winding road. It is only open a few months a year due to frequent snowstorms 8 or 9 months of the year. I don’t recommend driving it with an RV or large vehicle and highly recommend taking one of the many bus tours - that way you can spend more time enjoying the sights instead of fighting the curves.

On our bus tour of the Going to the Sun Road from Glacier Lodge, we also saw Lake McDonald and Mary Lake, some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere in the country.