The alarm was set for 5am but I woke up at 415, closed my eyes and it was 430, and then opened my eyes again, hearing Griffin’s alarm at 4:50 – which he swore he would use his shaking alarm because he insisted on staying out so late after his grad celebrations, and we wouldn’t hear it. Lies.
Sam told me later that his alarm was going off since 4:40 and she woke up and went into his room and flicked his lights 5 times until he got up.
Anyway, Kerrie picked us up at 530 and we got out of the driveway and I realized I had printed our itinerary and didn’t get it out of the printer!
We went back.
Except my printer was out of paper and only printed the last page and not the 3 copies I had set. I threw paper in but after 30 seconds nothing was happening so I left. Sam told me to make my Google doc available offline and Kerrie said do screenshots.
I had PTSD from cell data going down in France. Ahh well. We would manage.
Flight was good. A little bumpy.
We flew through a storm cloud and then landed in Kalispell.
The line to the rental car was sooo long but JJ and J hung out, I went back and forth, and we got both rental cars and drove to J’s preferred lunch spot: Mudman Burgers!
Cute little joint and the fries were yummy. Gregg disappeared somewhere.
We did a stint at the grocery store which I tried to stay out of the angst of “what do we share” and I got a few looks but I made J discuss it with his Mom.
Was it “Super 1 Foods” or Super Foods 1″? Difficult question to answer.
We got to our house and immediately saw a deer pooping. We would see them frequently pooping in the meadow next to our house! The place to go, I guess.
Our house was delightful. The firepit was lovely, minus all the bugs. I wish I could sit here alllll day but I sat here for 5m reading and then I had bugs all over me so I bailed.
We unpacked and relaxed (hence the reading above) and then went to our first dinner joint about 10 minutes away in West Glacier. The oldest building in the area! Belton Hotel!
They had NO TVs. ANYWHERE on property. Which made Gregg sad because Game 5 of the Knicks/Spurs were on and… well. Oh well.
We enjoyed ourselves! I had the ribeye which I saved half for my lunch the next day. It wasn’t anything super special but it was really nice.
But once we went home, we were sad that even though we had DISH network, it did not have live cable! So we did as anyone would, and Sam found us a LIVE feed on TikTok, where someone was filming their screen of the game, while their dogs barked and roosters crowed where ever they lived. And where we crowded around my phone watching the last 4 minutes.
Go Knicks!
Then it was bedtime.
The next morning, we had another visitor with her baby! Ahhh so adorable. Right out of our window.
I have the cutest video of her licking her fawn for about 5 minutes. But I got this great screenshot from it.
This was our “long” day. Because “Going to the Sun Road” was closed, we drove 2 hours around to East Glacier. Yes, we did know it probably wouldn’t be open and this was the road to see but… well, we didn’t really mind. If the road was open, it would have taken 2 hours to drive over it because of all the twists and turns anyway.
J had wanted to grab sandwiches from this place called Sunflower Cafe. He wanted to go to where he knew it was but the Maps said we had to go to the street after.
I said, go to the street after but… haha. We ended up on a road that was barely a road, turned into mud, and I had to redirect everyone around. JJ’s car was following us and I had to get them out first.
Sam had her “kill me” face on but this was the slightly nicer one. Zoooomed in.
The cafe was ADORABLE. I wanted to go camp there and enjoy breakfast, and go have afternoon cocktails. So seriously cute. I just left them a review on Google.
I bought the cutest earrings.
But alas, we had to be on our way to go to St. Mary’s lake, which was on the East Side of Glacier. J was so antsy. We left our house at 9 but we didn’t leave Sunflower until 10. And we were getting TAKEOUT! The drive. The turn around. Corralling everyone to go to the bathroom at the same time before we left.
The drive was beautiful.
About 20m into it we realized there was NO SERVICE. At all. Luckily Mom was following us and she had the address of where we were going.
We stopped about 11:45am at the St Mary’s Village. Right before the actual national park. Thankfully! Better bathrooms and then we all dove into the gift shop. I almost bought a shirt but I didn’t love it.
We thought about having lunch there but it wasn’t a cute outside and I said, let’s keep driving and find a picnic table!
And WE DID.
Rising Sun was SO CUTE! They had about 6 picnic tables spread out and we really enjoyed our lunch. There was a little path down to the water so Sam and I explored first.
AHHH! We did a photo shoot with Sam and then she took a few of me. I love this one!
We walked a little further and we did more photos for her. I kept telling her to ‘lean against the tree!’ or ‘kneel down’ – anyway, I loved this one too.
Everyone slowly found there way down there.
OMG, keeping 8 people on track is driving me a little mad.
Gregg is not here. But we took a group photo without him.
We walked back up and found Gregg!
Nap time, I guess.
We continued on our way. J really wanted to do the St. Mary’s trail hike which was 3 miles and moderate so the “elders” (I don’t think they liked me calling them that) could do that. But he also wanted to go and see how far we could drive before the road closed.
We passed St Mary’s trailhead and eyeballed a few potential parking spots but still decided to drive… BUT, we had a ranger with his lights/siren on and pulled up… We heard “she fell” and some other things but decided to keep going… Dun dun dun…
Still no cell service at all. We should have brought walkie-talkies.
Anyway, about a mile above, we saw a huge group all taking photos of this gorgeous ice glacier. Google says Sexton Glacier. We did not get out because there was NO parking AND the road ended.
So we turned around and decided to head back to the trailhead and get parking. We (I), very sternly told my Mom that when we pointed to the first parking spot, they were to take it and we would take the next one we found and would come back for them.
We saw the St Mary’s waterfall in the WAYYYY distance as we were driving. This was a zooooomed in video.
So anyway, I point them out when we see a spot. We drive another .25 miles and barely find a parking spot for ourselves. Two more rangers were zooming around and I quick-footed it up to their car and LUCKILY I found the elders chatting with some other tourists. They didn’t really know if we were coming back but luckily stayed there. haha.
They were not ready so we got them ready – walking sticks and all – and the walking sticks that I put NEXT TO MY BAG, Truck picked up both of them. And put one down, and took the other to his car. Did he tell me that? No. Was it by my bag? No, it was not. Did it make it to the car… No. Sigh.
I told Gregg to bring his water but ‘nahh, I don’t want it’. GREGG. ZOMG. I stuck his in my bag.
So anyway, we are all walking one more section up and… Gregg takes a hard fall. Ooh, he was upset. His hand was incredibly scraped up and so was his leg. Ouch.
J had his first aid kit. The water I was carefully preserving was quickly washing out his wounds. I switched over to his water. Sigh.
We get him kinda cleaned up and slightly bandaged. We walk to the trailhead and…
The trail was closed! The scoop was a woman leaned against a tree and the tree uprooted, and she fell down the hill? Into the water? We had no idea but at this point it was 45m after we saw the first ranger. The ambulance was now there.
We could wait it out…
Well, we took a picture first before we lost any one else. Poor Gregg’s leg.
Then we gave up and then we walked back to OUR car to take the lower entrance.
It was so beautiful though! This was next to a waterfall, or a gorge? I dunno what it was, it’s below.. this is J trying to take a selfie and failing as he cut off Truck and Gregg, Sam was rolling her eyes.
He tried. We went to a higher section and took a group photo with someone nice.
So pretty!!
Here was the tunnel where the creek/river was flowing. SO LOUD!
At this point, Sharon and Truck had walked almost a mile. 3 miles was Sharon’s limit. They were already slightly struggling. They said they would continue a bit but didn’t want to slow us down so I said – kinda sternly probably – that they either needed to STAY HERE after their walk or take Jerra’s car keys and stay in the car. No where else!
No cell service is so fun!
Gregg went with us but very quickly gave up. The hill was fairly steep down and filled with rocks and slippery. My Mom almost stopped but she wanted to go with us.
We were so glad we continued! This was Baring Falls.
So super awesome! G had such a fun time climbing on all the logs and walking across the water.
The water felt super nice.
G and Sam climbed up the steep incline on the left.
It was really fun. J really wanted to try walking over to St. Mary’s to see if it was open but it was 2:30 at that point. We had to leave the area – be in the car – by 4ish – to make our dinner reservations. St Mary’s was another 1.3, it was probably closed, and it would take too long.
J reluctantly agreed – he was so bummed because we were not going to make this drive again. But we went the other way to Sun Point.
SOOOO GORGEOUS!
The views off this point were epic!
We all agreed that it was the better decision and the path above the lake was just gorgeous.
Also, we saw the emergency helicopter at this point so we knew the trail would still be closed. We never did hear if that women was okay.
No leaning against trees! (Not counting the tree I stood on in the lake earlier… whoops.)
I think this may have been taking earlier but it really shows off the lake.
It was a really nice day.
The 5 of us headed back and did the 0.8 back, with the steep incline up! We didn’t see the group under the tunnel but we DID find them back at the car!
We drove JJ back to the group. They were seated in the car having arrived there about 15m ago. They stayed most of the time under that tunnel! Oh well. They figured it out. We got them a little more water and I fed them apples from my cooler. LOL. Thank goodness for snacks.
We drove back to St Mary’s Village, took a bathroom break, and then headed out to our dinner reservations at Summit Mountain Lodge!
It was really funny. They had just opened for the season 4 days ago and all of their waitstaff was from different countries. We had Valle (short for Valentine, he was born on Feb 15) and he was from Romania.
The food wasn’t too spectacular, they were basically not working with unique stuff but the setting was so lovely. Cold in the shade but such a cool view.
The train tracks behind us had trains every 20 minutes so we were fairly well entertained.
It was another 50m back. G REALLY wanted to drive but I said no and I was glad. The sun was in my eyes most of the way home and the curves felt a little dangerous. I’ll probably have to let him drive at some point, he really wants to!
But it was such a lovely day! G was so excited to be exploring Glacier.
On to the next few days…
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