After our time in Yellowstone, we powered up though Montana to Glacier National Park, which has been on my dream destination list for many years. This summer was a great time for us to choose this destination, since northern Montana (along with Washington) was one of the few areas is the lower 48 states not experiencing drought conditions and associated fires and smoke.
We arrived in the evening and found a nice place to camp in the truck, on a dirt road in a burned forest area with a great view of the mountains. The first things to greet us in Montana were the mosquitos, which we would become well acquainted with over the next few weeks! In the morning I hopped out of the truck to snap the sunrise shot above.
On our first day there we did a little day hike up Swiftcurrent Creek to Bullhead Lake. I could tell right away that this would be an awesome trip!
These ground squirrels are all over these mountains, always looking for a handout or spilled food.
We soon realized that it would take some serious strategy to spend our time in Glacier National Park. For one thing, we’d be camping at the campgrounds most of the time, and since they are all first-come-first-serve, this means that any night spent in a campground would require an arrival at about 10am – after the previous campers started leaving, but before the campgrounds filled up completely. Secondly, and most importantly, backpacking permits are also hard to come by, with half of the designated campsites already taken by reservations, and the remaining half available on a first-come-first-serve basis for the following day. So, this meant repeated 7am visits to the ranger station, lots of planning and backup plans, and good old fashioned luck-of-the-draw. Fortunately after much frustration we did manage to get some nice backpacking trips lined up – more on that later!
