Day 3&4 Travel Day and Glacier National Park

The real destination for our trip was Glacier National Park. After our day at Craters of the Moon, we headed off for 4 days of fun exploring the beautiful scenery at Glacier. For our first day in the park, we decided to start with the drive across the park on the Going to the Sun road. Of course, we had to stop and get a picture at the park entrance.

We took our time driving along this road and stopped when we wanted to have a chance to look a little closer at our surroundings.

At the highest elevation point along the road, there is a visitors center. We had planned to get out there and maybe do a hike. However, the parking lot was full. So Danny dropped us off while he circled the parking lot waiting for a parking space to open up(biggest frustration of the trip for him). We saw what there was to see at the visitors center and when he still hadn't appeared, we went back down to the parking lot to find him still circling(45 minutes later). He was super angry by this point, so we hopped back in the car and continued our drive across the park. I did get this picture of the kids while we were waiting.

This was the only glacier we actually saw while we were there. I did not realize this before planning the details of our trip, but the many glaciers in the park are not actually accessible unless you are willing to hike 10+ miles(which we were not). The glacier is the white on the mountain behind them, right above Ashley's head. This one was called Jackson Glacier.

After driving all the way across the park, we headed south towards the Medicine Lakes area. We found a kid friendly hike with the help of a park ranger and started off. Our destination was a waterfall about a mile each way.

There was a moose in this pond along the trail which we only caught a glimpse of. It was hiding behind some tall grasses

We thought this bridge was fun.

When we got to the waterfall, most of us took our shoes off and dipped our feet in the water. The girls posed for us.

Camden was Danny's hiking buddy. He really did not like sitting in that hiking backpack for very long.

On the hike back to the car, we spotted this white tailed deer. We stopped to watch it for a bit. The boys even stayed nice and quiet so that we could watch it. It didn't seem to mind us and walked pretty close to us before heading deeper into the woods.

After the hike, we went out onto this dock and enjoyed the view.

We considered day 1 in the park a success. Beautiful scenery, wildlife spotted, and Camden even got a nap.