Glacier National Park, MT- post numero uno

We camped at a KOA "campground" just outside of the park in St Mary. Our original camping reservations at the park's St Mary campground were cancelled due to flooding- our site was one of many that flooded due to heavy rain. Our friend Jesse alerted me to the snow and rain action that was going on the 2 weeks prior to the start of our trip so I was on alert and did some recon to scope out other camping options in the event the park's campground was still flooded. Glad I did because as soon as I got the call from the park, I booked a site at the KOA that is only a mile away. We've never stayed at a KOA before. It was the fanciest camping I've ever done. Apparently KOA's are mostly for RV-ers. Um, there was a super nice swimming pool and hot tub! Showers AND laundry! Ice cream! A dining pavilion with breakfast and dinner options! Many dumpsters for garbage! And NO bear storage regulations. Apparently the bears haven't ventured that far yet, if they did, it would be easy pickins!

Anyways, we lucked out and were assigned an awesome site that was mostly private and had an electrical outlet in the site! There was a water spigot about 20 feet away, score! Our site was nestled between some little cabins with great views of the mountains. It was awesome to wake up and see the continental divide!

The view from the tent

Our first morning I was up early due to high winds moving and popping the tent. I got up and decided to shower while the camp was still quiet. I enjoyed a wonderful hot shower, then made myself some coffee, wrote in my journal and browsed the guidebook. What an awesome and relaxing morn! Daveed eventually got up and we decided to hike to St Mary and Virginia Falls. It didn't occur to us that it was the 4th of July until we got to the trailhead and couldn't find a place to park... No wonder why it was so busy! We joined the crowds on the trail to St Mary falls, which was really pretty. The wonderfully cool spray felt so good! Most of the families stayed at St Mary and did not go on to see Virginia Falls which was another 3 miles or so up the trail. We headed on up and stopped for a snack break at the lower fallout of Virginia falls, then headed up to the proper falls. We stopped at the lower look out to see the falls, took some pictures then headed up to the base of the falls. We ventured out to the splash pool and got soaked with freezing cold spray! Felt awesome as it was super hot and sunny on the trail! We had a good laugh as we stood in the super strong wind and spray of the falls. When we could actually hear each other again, we both said "that was fun!!".

Splash Zone!

Here is a short video of the lower fallout from Virginia Falls, where we stopped for a snack break

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRttdUYK8JA&feature=youtu.be

After the falls, we decided to drive the rest of the Going to the Sun road. Wowzers. I've never seen anything quite like the views on the GTTS road. And I used to live in Alaska, and have driven across Canada and seen the Canadian Rockies. Don't get me wrong, these are drop dead gorgeous places, but the GTTS road captures all that jaw dropping scenery and condenses it into a short distance. You drive along the side of the mountains, in between the mountains and down into the valley. It's every bit as spectacular as everyone says and how it looks in pictures. Chris from the gym told us that there is a 60-80 foot snow drift that must be cleared every year before the road can fully open. We drove through that section and marveled at the 20 ft high walls of snow on both sides of the road! Wow! Anyways, we stopped about halfway through the road and had a lovely trunk lunch with views of Bird Woman falls. Turns out looking at mountain streams/falls cascading down the side of mountains and into the valleys became one of my favorite things to do!

Bird Woman Falls

We stopped toward the end of the road at Lake McDonald, took a look around, cooled our legs in the lake and relaxed. Then we drove back to the east side of the park on the GTTS road, which was cool because we got to see views we did not see looking the other direction! We stopped at the St Mary "grocery store" to find some meat to make for din, the only suitable thing we could find was a tube of breakfast sausage...it was delish! Cooked it up with an onion, some mushrooms, sweet potaters and spaghetti sauce and served it over rice. We devoured the entire pan of it! Yum! It was so good we made the same thing for dinner the next night :)

There were fireworks going off everywhere around the valley and we could see the main show right from our tent! Happy 4th of July!

Our first day in Glacier was awesome, we got to see the whole GTTS road in both directions, got to see 2 pretty falls and hung out in Lake McDonald! Welcome to God's country!