glacier national park.
going-to-the-sun rd. and lake mcdonald

so, after the four days of full hookups, laundry, cleaning, and regular bathing, we headed north to glacier national park. we arrived on friday (and thankfully/surprisingly got a campsite, which i will detail later) and got busy exploring on saturday. glacier happens to boast one of the most beautiful scenic drives in the country, the going-to-the-sun road, so we figured we would check that out, taking in the scenery and getting our bearings for the next two weeks of adventuring.

i took about 8000 pictures and i tried to narrow them down, but still ended up with a bunch.
the first bit of the road from our campsite isn’t very exciting, following along lake mcdonald (without a view of it). then along a river. when we finally started ascending, the views started to pick up. 🙂

there were tons of wildflowers. wildflowers with snow capped mountain backgrounds. can’t complain.

when the road was being planned, the folks in charge wanted to preserve the wilderness of glacier as best they could. so, there’s just this one road, narrow and winding through through the park as unobtrusively as possible, with beautiful stone work,
like these arches that let the waterfall pass through.

it was saturday afternoon, so pretty much everyone was driving along with us and most of the turn outs and parking areas were full, but we did manage to find a couple to hop out and take some better pics.

we stopped at a spot where you can get a pretty good view of one of the remaining namesake glaciers. jackson glacier to be exact.

i busted out the fancy zoomy camera to get a better shot.

finally, we reached the other side of the park, saint mary lake.

the water was a perfect shade of aqua.

theannababy is the only lidkid who cares about beautiful scenery, so she hopped out to take some pics of her own and let me take some of her. 🙂

we stopped at the rising sun campground and village to have lunch. the restaurant was super fancy and expensive and i didn’t see any lidkid approved fare, so we went to the general store and bought (overpriced) lunch meats and eggs and cheese and chips to fill us up for the ride back.

we didn’t stop much on the ride home, i mostly just took pictures out of my window, which isn’t too hard, because we were traveling about 7 mph. waterfalls.

we DID stop at a spot where i thought we could wade into the creek to cool off. when we got out, someone told us there were two deer just up a little, so we grabbed the fancy zoomy camera and took off to get some pics.

i found a great spot to settle in for my photo shoot.

i think he was modeling for me.

it was a successful first day of exploring. on sunday, day two, we decided to just lay low and head over to apgar village on our bikes and do a bit of canoeing on lake mcdonald. our campsite is a quick little ride to apgar village, one we would take many times during our two weeks.

we rented two canoes. boys in one. girls in the other. here’s ike and derek departing.

happy paddlers.

i made them let me take some pics of them with the mountains as a backdrop before they rowed away to explore along the shores.

i didn’t get much paddling assistance in my boat.

i also made derek take a picture of the girls team, with aforementioned mountain backdrop.

my cute passengers.

since i don’t trust either girl with holding my camera in the middle of the lake, i took a selfie.

we made our way over to the boys boat and i attempted to get a pic of everyone. but one tiny person would not cooperate.

when we were done, we rode over to the little creek that flows out of lake mcdonald, to swim, explore, skip rocks, etcetera. the rocks all over glacier are these bright colors. so cool.

hazel and her lantern.

i busted out the fancy camera with hopes of getting some good shots of the kids. i managed a few okay pics.

ike…

anna…

hazel…

so, that was our first weekend at glacier. lots of scenery and exploring. but i was definitely ready for some hiking…