What a beautiful place! We have been dreaming of coming to Glacier for years, and can’t believe we are actually here. Because the park is so big, we’ve decided to spend some time in different areas to minimize the driving. We stayed at a private RV park (Johnson’s) just outside the St. Mary entrance our first night, just to get some laundry done and to be close to the park so we could get to the campground early enough on Sunday to get a site. We had to take a short drive along Going to the Sun Road and hiked a trail to a waterfalls. It is every bit as lovely as we had expected.
On Sunday morning we managed to get a site at Many Glacier Campground, on the northeast side of the park. It’s about 12 miles off the main road, but feels like you’re in the middle of nowhere. No hookups, no cell phone ,TV or internet, but we are getting a good Canadian radio station. The campground is very wooded, and most of the sites are fairly private. We had a little trouble finding one big enough for our rig, which at 30’ is not huge, but maneuvering around the trees was a little tricky. Jim’s driving skills are excellent, though, and we only scraped a couple branches.
It is nice to be staying right in the park, as there are numerous hiking trails within walking distance. We hiked the Grinnell Lake trail yesterday, a fairly easy 7 mile round trip. Guess the beautiful scenery made the distance seem shorter. Just as we could see the lake, we came across a giant pile of snow blocking the trail. Had to climb over it and wade through some water but after hiking that far, we were determined to get to the lake. It was much colder there, guess from the icy water due to the melting snow runoff. Made for some nice waterfalls running down the mountains.
This is the Many Glacier Hotel, on Swiftcurrent Lake, about a mile from the campground, which we could see from the trail.
Took this from the hotel parking lot when we went over to check it out. What a great location.
Today we took a shorter hike, about 3 miles, on the Red Rock Lake and Falls trail, another beautiful walk. We met a couple who wanted to look at our Lazy Daze this morning, then we ran into them later on the trail. They had seen a moose and her baby near the water, but we didn’t see any wildlife. There are grizzly bear warning signs all along the trails, and a hiker was attacked earlier this month on a trail in a different part of the park. It was the first bear attack since 2005, though, so I think we’re pretty safe.
Lots of people are wearing bells while hiking, to make noise and scare the bears away. Wouldn’t it be funny if the bears figured out that they could just sit and wait for the bells to come by, and there would be dinner!
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