Glacier National Park: the Sights - August 25th Post

Note:  I wrote this yesterday but the internet connection was so hideous that I got discouraged and quit trying to load it.  We are now back with internet so here is the post and lots of pictures and I added pictures to the August 24^th post too.

Today was our sightseeing day.  We had breakfast and headed out to the boat launch to take one of the boat tours- this one was a tour of St Mary Lake.  The naturalist who accompanied us gave us a lot of information about the geological history of Glacier including the fact that some of the rock we were looking at was more than a billion years old.

Boat at St Mary Lake and Going to the Sun Mountain from the Lake

The boat tour dropped us off near Baring Falls and some of our companions went on to participate in a 3-mile hike out to St Mary Falls and back – another boat would pick them up.  We had chosen to stay with the 1 ½ hour tour. 

Raised valley, mountains from the Lake, and, yes, the boat did fit through this tiny gap

When we landed, we headed west on the Going to the Sun Road across the park.  We wanted to see if the St Mary Falls trailhead was open so we could do the shorter hike – but it was not.  So we drove on to see if we could park at the visitor center at Logan Pass.  We drove around the parking lot for 15-20 minutes but were unable to get a parking space, so we continued west on the Going to the Sun Road and stopped at some of the turnouts to get photos. We turned back and noticed that traffic was thinning so we stopped in the Logan Pass parking lot again and were blessed with a parking space.  We went to the visitor center; looked at the wildflower garden; took pictures at the Continental Divide and crossed the street to see what the Highline Trail looked like.  We were not going to hike it because it is 7.6 miles one way, but I wanted to see some of it. 

 One of the two fabulous tunnels on Going to the Sun Road

 Description of construction and picture of results along with picture of photographer

 Happy travelers at Logan Pass

 View of Going to the Sun Road from the Highline Trail

Dennis waited for me as I went down about two tenths of a mile and shot photos of various scenes.  I turned back to rejoin him and climbed the hardest two tenths of a mile I have ever walked.  When we relinquished our parking space, we headed back toward St Mary Lake.  As we slowed down for the Falls trailhead parking lot we found one space left – yay!  The hike was eight tenths of a mile down to the falls.  It was well worth the effort.  Our one complaint about sightseeing is that it is hard to get great photos because all the other tourists clutter up the picture and get in the way.  Still, as you can see, we managed to capture a few good scenes.

St Mary Falls

We were tired when we got back to the motel and I was proud of Dennis for sticking with our plan and hiking with me even though he has a hard time with downhill trails.  Tomorrow we will go the whole distance on the Going to the Sun Road and see Lake Macdonald, West Glacier, Whitefish and then on to Missoula.