Susie had been keeping track of the progress of work crews responsible for clearing Going to the Sun Road. The long and short of it was that we would not get to go clear across the park on the road because crews were still busy clearing snow and debris from the road. That said, we would still get to see even more beautiful sights in and around the park.
The Amtrak package includes a Going to the Sun tour hosted by a member of the Blackfeet Nation. I recommend if you have an opportunity to visit Glacier and you can book the actual National Park Service Going to the Sun tour that you do that instead. While our tour was interesting, the tour varies GREATLY based on the driver you get and we did not get a great driver. The National Park tours, from what we heard from others around the hotel, do not have this same variation in quality problem.
We loaded on the bus around 8 a.m. and headed out with our driver, Kimma. A second bus also headed out at the same time.
Today's post is mostly going to be photos with just a few details thrown in to orient you to where you are in the park.
We spent a lot of time around Grosse Pointe Lake. This is just one of the 131 named lakes of the 700 lakes in the park.
One of our stops of the day was at the entry to the park where Susie and I both finally picked up National Park Passports.
These little books are about $12. They have a map of all of the national parks and a spot where you can add stickers and stamps from each park/landmark. I'm going to throw mine in my bag when I head to DC later this summer to see if I can get a few landmark stamps.
We also saw our ONLY wild animal of the trip - a marmot.
I will absolutely admit that these photos might be out of order of when we actually did things. That said, next up was "Sun Point". Susie did a little hike down the Sun Trail. Dad and I started down and then decided to head back to the parking lot.
Here are some photos Susie got as she continued on.
But, have no fear, dad and I had some cool stuff to look at as well.
We finished off our morning in the park with a visit to Jackson Glacier and the furthest point on the road we could go. There were some beautiful water "falls" and rushing water areas.
We ate lunch at a hotel restaurant just outside of the park. Continuing with our huckleberry theme, I got the huckleberry lemonade.
The afternoon was spent driving around with Kimma, our driver, telling some stories. We did stop at one area outside of the park that is a memorial of sorts to the Native American people in the area and we saw some white bison.
It sprinkled rain on and off during the day but we managed to stay mostly dry.
When we got back to the hotel, we decided to walk over to East Glacier for dinner. It is about a half mile walk from the hotel.
We had a tasty dinner at Serrano's Mexican Restaurant. Our water came in an old tequila bottle.
We headed back to the hotel and played some cards in the big sun porch/breezeway as we waited for our final sunset over the mountains before we head out tomorrow.
