Waiting on a brand new day: Glacier National Park

We made our first stop in Montana to see Matt's cousin Adelle. Unfortunately we forgot to get a picture but we did get to catch up with her at her cute place. We camped by the lake in poulson that night and made our way to glacier the next day.

We camped at McDonald lake campground. Loved this little spot, it was right by the lake.

The walkway from our tent to the lake

Montana lived up to its slogan land of the big sky as it down poured on us for a couple days straight. It did not let up at all and you couldn't see anything so we spent a lot of time at one of the lodges there and we also went in to town to watch "San Andreas" which was a really creepy movie to watch after you have just been to all of these places in California and then see them destroyed. It was a good action movie, but thankfully I don't think it is plausible for that terrible of an earthquake like that to happen to California... I hope!

The rain finally let up and we were able to take a bike ride up the "going to the sun road" which usually gives access from the west side of the park to the east. It was closed to vehicles from avalanche campground but you can hike and take bikes up to eleven miles on this road and then it's closed off completely. So if you find yourself there and it is closed be sure to hike or bike as far as you can because the views are totally worth it! It was a pretty flat easy ride up for a while and then it was a very steep climb up but it made for a fun ride on the way down.

The highlight of our bike ride was the black bear that we saw! He was just walking up just on the side of the road. Luckily Matt spotted him (he really has an eye for spotting animals) and at first we were scared he was a grizzly. Thankfully he was a pretty chill black bear and didn't even care that we were there.

our bear friend

We decided to get to the other side of the road as he got closer

This was when Matt Spotted him, just right on the side of the road.

Bye bear

We decided to make the long drive around the perimeter of the park to make it over to the east side of the park. We loved this side! You are right at the base of the mountains. It was gorgeous and there was barely anyone there because they were not opening everything up until that weekend when we were leaving. We stayed at many glacier.

our campsite at many glacier

High elevation = COLD!

A view of the lodge on the lake there.

It felt like we were in Austria

We rode our bikes to the trail heads around the park.

Love this profile and view

A waterfall we hiked to that was suppose to be easy but it was a steep climb.

My fellow hiker

The view was great though from there.

One hike we went on was to lake Grinnell. This is an easy flat hike past a couple other lakes too. The worst part of the hike came when we found out that the reason all these other hikers were putting their socks and shoes back on the trail was because they had just walked through the river to make it to the end of the trail. It looks like there was a bridge there at one point but now you have to cross the glacier water aka absolutely freezing river to finish the hike! We were just .3 miles away from the seeing the lake. The other hikers said the view at the lake was worth it so I said to Matt well we are here for adventure so let's do it! And oh my goodness that water was painfully cold, my feet were numb as I was trying to step on the rocks to cross over. The view was worth it when we got there but I knew we had to cross it again and the second time seemed worse. I started out trying to tell myself as I crossed that I was strong I could do this and near the end it was all I could do to not cry! I have no idea how the pioneers crossed so many rivers with actually floating pieces of ice in it still!