Friday, July 16th: Glacier National Park

We got up real early, packed up and hit the road approximately 7am. The intent was to get to our next destination, Glacier National park in a timely fashion. Our luck ran out. We got a flat on the side of the highway. It was quite a challenge to change
the tire while trucks and cars whizzed by. The jack we had, although quite a good one, was a little too high for most parts of the undercarriage so it took a while and plenty or maneuvering to successfully change it. Luckily we had planned for such problems with a full spare tire in the car.

Back on the road, we headed for Calgary, gassed up and spent the remaining Canadian $$. We drove across the border into Montana. We arrived in Glacier around 1PM. Being a busy place, we headed straight for the Rising Sun campground and acquired
one of the last 2 spots. The wind was very strong, which made it very difficult to put the tent up. We finally got it up, secured with tent pegs and multiple large rocks! We took a trip into the local town, St Mary's and toured part of the main road, and main scenic highway, the Going to the Sun road. We stopped at the Sun Point turnout for some great views and made our way back to the campground for dinner. It was still windy, but considerably calmer. The ranger informed us that a bear had been in the campsite that am looking for food, so we stashed our food away for the night.

The next day, we took the free shuttle, to avoid the ongoing road work on the Going to the Sun road. We decided to ride the bus as far as possible and double back on it. We took it as far as McDonald Lake and had a quick look around the very scenic, clear lake. We got back on the shuttle and got off at Avalanche Creek. We hiked the Trail of the Cedars trail to the Avalanche Lake trail, which was quite scenic. A stream ran along the walk , with the hike eventually leading to a beautiful waterfall flowing to the lake. We sat at the lake quite a while and hiked back to the shuttle.

We took the shuttle to Logan Pass, where we hiked up the snow-covered Hidden lake trail. It was an awesome trail with great scenery and people-watching. We saw all kinds of people hiking the trail in all kinds of footwear on the snow including flip flops (brrrr!). We even saw a bride and groom, with wedding party in tow. The bride and groom had just married in the park and were heading to ski for some photos. We also saw a family of cute marmots near the Logan Pass visitor center. The rest of the
going to the Sun road is populated with stunning mountain/glacier view and just about every type of mountain terrain and waterfall possible. We headed back
to the campground for some chow and a nice fire.