We spent three days, Friday through Sunday, staying at the St Mary campground in the east end of Glacier NP.  I had taken the full week of July 4th off work, so this was the last three days before I had to go back to work.  Then we drove to the small town of West Glacier Sunday afternoon and stayed there until Friday.  So in all we spent a full week in the area.  Let me just state here that Glacier National Park provides some of the most jaw dropping mountain views of anywhere I’ve seen.  There’s no way pictures will properly convey the experience and the depth and expanse that is found in Glacier NP.  It is definitely a place I’d be interested in coming back to.

Here are some shots from our campground on the east side of Glacier NP

The Continental Divide cuts through the center of the park, so the east side of the park is noticeably different than the west side of the park and we were privileged to be able to spend time on both sides (something I would highly recommend to anyone coming to visit).  The east side is dryer with less vegetation which provides some cool views of the raw mountain peaks.  The west side is more forested and gets a lot of rain.  It rained most of the days we were on the west side, however, the rain never really lasted that long, so it didn’t really prevent us from doing things and otherwise was very nice weather.  The weather difference from out of the park in the lower elevations to up in the center of the park (Logan Pass area) is dramatic and usually about a 15 degree change.  While we were here the temperatures in the park were usually in the lower 50’s which may seem cold, but generally felt really good while hiking.

Glacier NP is very much a hiker’s park with tons of trail options of varying lengths and difficulty.  Given we were only here for a week and with four young kids, we only scratched the surface of the hiking opportunities.  It was fun hiking though, and just enough to really get me pumped up to come back some time and do some true back country hiking.

This was my first week to work from the road and it actually worked out very well.  The first day I didn’t have the best setup, but corrected that and the rest of the time was practically like being in the office.  I had brought my 24″ monitor and combined with my laptop screen and ergonomic keyboard it was business as usual.  It’s not taking long to get used to this three and a half day weekend thing….