There’s no way for me to describe how beautiful Glacier National Park is in words. So this post will have a whole lotta pictures 😁.

Today was a down day – i.e. nothing planned. I have learned from traveling with these boys that while I like to maximize and schedule every vacation moment (when are you going to be here again?), they do not. Over scheduling = Grumpy Brown boys… thus, The Down Day.

Today, we wanted to explore Glacier some more. You could spend days here and not see it all.

First required purchase: Bear Spray! Yep, it’s a thing. It’s like super duper pepper spray.

We were able to snag shuttle tickets, so we hopped on and rode to just “see” some of the places. We decided to do one big hike on this side of the park, and one on the other. On the Apgar side of the park, we decided to hike the Avalanche Lake Trail. The scenery is so beautiful that it looks fake.

This was listed as a 2.5 mile (one way) moderate hike. It definitely wasn’t easy with the elevation changes, but the trail was well maintained (and no trail trolls (roots) constantly trying to trip you.)

The primitive toilets were, well, smelly is the nicest word I can use but better than trying to dodge an animal while using the potty.

We hiked and snacked on a Montana favorite: Buffalo Jerky… and learned that all buffalo in the United States is really bison 😉

We hiked with only minimal grumbling… mainly, it was hangry grumbles because we were having a picnic lunch at Avalanche Lake.

We rounded the corner and suddenly the hike was totally worth it!

Of course, we had to get IN the freezing cold water

We found an empty log bench with a little shade, and had lunch from Mom’s Restaurant – who knew they had a location in Montana?!

After lunch, we enjoyed just sitting for a while and counting waterfalls. We counted seven maybe eight if you counted one separate 🤪

Look at the difference in a similar picture from Calf Creek Falls in Utah 2 years ago… boys have grown so much!

We started our hike back which wasn’t nearly as hard since 80% of the hike was downhill or flat.

However, some of us thought it was incredibly difficult.

We hopped back on the shuttle (now realizing that once you use the shuttle pass to get inside the park, you can drive wherever you want because the parking lots were no where near as full as the Park Service led you to believe). We got our little Toyota RAV4 and off we went. First, we made our way to Apgar Village. Eddie’s Ice Cream was the biggest double scoop we’ve ever seen!

Seriously, they are almost as big as their heads!

We loved the sign at the village stor

And found the BEST shirt 🤣🤣🤣

We stopped at every plaque, overpass and turnout we saw. It took forever and it was completely worth it!

Again, the pictures are gorgeous but they just can’t do justice to Glacier!

So far, I really hadn’t seen what the big deal was about the park’s main road, Going to the Sun Road. Until we starting meandering UP the Going to the Sun Road – Holy Moly!!

Thankfully Mike was the driver because I don’t think I could have done it… bless him because the boys and I would say “oh, look at that!” And he’d say “if I do we are going to run off the road!” It was a little stressful 😬

But the views!

Finally we made it to Logan’s Pass, the visitors center at the Continental Divide. What exactly is the Continental Divide you ask? It is basically like a dividing line across the country… the rain and moisture on its west side flow to the Pacific Ocean, and on its east side, it flows to the Mississippi.

We really didn’t intend to go all the way up but, when are we going to be here again (which seems to be our mantra for this trip), and there was snow!!!

I really hope these videos load, because they are hilarious 😂

And not to be outdone, we snuck in our own selfie since we hiked it too 🥰

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Glacier National Park, like most National Parks, is known for its animal population. So far we’ve seen a big ol’ black bear crossing the River (from a very safe distance), deer (who clearly aren’t concerned with people),

goats, chipmunks and big horn sheep. The big horn sheep are the best at hiding in plain view… here’s a closeup

And here’s the view originally – Michael is the champ are spotting them from a distance in a car!

One big horn sheep in particular is my favorite. There were 5 or 6 of them munching on grass, and just as I tried to leave the trail, I stumbled. Of course, they scattered but then this guy came back… I think he wanted to check on me but boys said he came back to give a duck face 🤣 whatever potato-patato 🤷🏻‍♀️.

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We traveled on through the Park, and it was definitely different topography. You can see the remnants and regrowth from the wildfire in 2009

We left the mountains and transitioned almost immediately into flat plains

Driving along, or should I say racing along… the speed limit in some places is 80 mph! Of course, you can see for 10 miles ahead of you.

Anyway, driving along, and what do we see? A Plaque!

As we are driving along we FINALLY get a wifi signal strong enough to get my map app 🤣 to work on phone, and we reach out to our VRBO host about our arrival time for tonight. She gave us some suggestions for where to grab some dinner on the road.

I have to admit our eating schedule has been completely wonky since we got here. We either eat with the early bird specials or we are eating at saloons. Part of the problem is me trying to cram in as much as possible each day and the other part is Montana’s fault. It doesn’t even start getting dark here until 9pm so I’m still in Clark Griswold mode until then

Back to today, so we head into town but the first couple of places were closed (well, it is Monday at 9pm and several didn’t have enough staff). Finally, we saw Cafe Rio, checked the reviews and off we went. We were a little disappointed that their sign said fryer was down so no chips but then we saw the lady making handmade tortillas!

I think we each had something different and they were all delicious! Of course, the Cafe Rio staff has a special place in my heart because they commented on how polite and well-behaved my boys were ♥️. And they loved our accents 😀

We made it, finally to our little VRBO cabin at 10:15pm. It is a great little cabin – 2 bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and living room.

The only hesitation we had in booking is that there was no air condition. Montana homes don’t have air conditioning. Usually they only have a couple of weeks all year that are really warm (over 80°), but not this year. The good thing is that there is almost always a nice breeze and as soon as the sun starts going down (at 9pm) it starts cooling off.

Our host had cracked the windows for us, so once we opened the windows all the way and got the fans running (after a little redneck repair of one of them) it was really nice… probably 68-70°. We were exhausted so we unloaded, showered, and hit the sack… it’s actually getting chilly enough in here for a blanket 😀

Tomorrow starts early with a 6am (MST) wake up for fly fishing down the Missouri River 🎣