Glacier National Park

We woke up at 2:50am ready for the trip! We arrived at Bush International Airport in Houston (IAH) before baggage and security opened at terminal E, a little before 4:00am. This included parking and taking a shuttle from Eco Lot 2. Security finally opened at 4:30 and we were probably in the first 10 through. Our United Airlines flight to Denver left at took off at 5:40am so we were still at the gate with plenty of time. The flight up to Denver was fine. We effectively killed the battery on Emily’s iPhone by watching movies on the flight up there on United’s wifi. We had a 50 minute connection in Denver for the flight up to Kalispell, Montana but that flight took off about 30 minutes late due to a late connection from St. Louis I believe. We were only 10 minutes late into Kalispell though and was treated to the sunny sight of amazing mountains as we came into the small airport of Kalispell.

We found the shuttle to the Enterprise location and picked up our Chrysler C200. The drive over was fairly short and it seemed like most of the rental agencies were off site from the airport. We had lunch at Subway in Columbia Falls on our drive to West Glacier. We enter Glacier National Park and got our season pass (because we would be there 8 days so a 7 day week pass wouldn’t work). We then proceeded up to Apgar Outfitters in Apgar Village, just inside the west entrance and picked up our Bear Spray rental. Grizzly Bears are very prevalent in Glacier National Park and it is recommended to hike to Bear Spray. We rented the canisters for our spray since we would have no use for it back home. We also hit the Apgar Visitor Center where Emily got her nation park passport book. We then hit the Glacier Conservatory store that was in the West Glacier (Belton) train depot.

We then got back on the road and drove Highway 2, which forms the south boundary of GNP, to Essex, MT and visited the Izaak Walton Inn. The Izaak Walton Inn is a historic in that was founded by the Great Northern Railroad in 1939. We chilled there for an hour for photos but no trains showed up but the property was beautiful!

Back on the road, we hit the Goat Lick pull off (first GNP trail). Goat Lick provided a wide view of the valley and a spot that the famous goats would come down to the lower elevations to get salt. However on this day, we didn’t see any goats. We then flew over Marias Pass without knowing we were passing through the summit and ended up at Bison Creek Ranch which was just on the west side of East Glacier.

We checked in and got to our room, a little A frame cabin. It was pretty dated and run down but the family that ran it were super nice and the place was homie!

With still daylight left and the excitement of the first day of our trip, we decided to go over to Two Medicine, the entrance to Glacier National Park that was at the south east corner of the park and close to where we were staying. We looked around a bit at the boat launch area and even with looking into the sun, the views were fantastic! There was supposedly a bear across the lake but we didn’t see it. We checked out the gift shop and then hiked Running Eagle Falls which was also known as Trick Falls. During high flow times, it looks like water fall with another behind it. The water was only coming out of the bottom falls during out time but it was still spectacular. A great starter hike!

We were getting tired so we headed back to Bison Creek Ranch. East Glacier was a very small town so we decided to eat at the Ranch, which was the correct call. It was some of the most home made and tasty food we had the entire trip! We slept with the windows open and we could hear the trains now rolling over Marias Pass all night, as the maintenance of way that we saw earlier but of now been clear. However, I was too tired this early in the trip to venture out to railfan them.

Running Eagle Falls - 0.6 Miles round trip; 15 ft elevation gain

Safe Travels,
B&E

To Day 2