Glacier National Park: Day 1

And so continues my adventures in Glacier National Park! We arrived by train early in the morning, and the first thing I noticed was the smell! This may seem odd, but the smell of pine and fresh air was overwhelming as we stepped off the train. Incredible! We stayed at the Whistling Swan Motel in East Glacier, and the owner was wonderful! They set us up with a rental car, and had everything ready to go for us every step of the way. The rooms were small and simple, but clean and comfortable. Exactly what we needed for crashing at the end of a busy day. East Glacier is a very small town, but has a nice strip of restaurants and shops along the main road. We could walk to everything, which was great.

To start day 1, we drove around south of the park and over to the west entrance. We stopped at Apgar Village to look around the shops (a really neat area!), and then drove East on Going to the Sun Road. We drove just to the edge of Lake McDonald on this day, and did two day hikes along the way:

Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake

Trail of the Cedars is a short trail that is kind of like a boardwalk. It is accessible and goes through a beautiful cedar forest. If you continue past this loop, you can follow the trail to Avalanche Lake. The trail follows Avalanche Creek, which is a loud, rushing stream down in a little gorge: 

The trail is beautiful, and was a great way to start our trip! We saw multiple mule deer:

And if the trail wasn't great enough, this is your reward at the top:

This is a great place to eat lunch or stop and take a load off. It was pretty busy, but by walking away from the main "beach," we had plenty of space to ourselves for lunch. I would put this hike on a "must see" list for Glacier National Park for sure!

John's Lake

Okay, there really isn't much to tell here. John's Lake was not impressive, and our plan was to go on to McDonald Falls, but we couldn't figure out where to go (we didn't have a good map with us - we thought we knew where we were going), and we eventually gave up. Note: we were not the only ones on that same path looking for McDonald Falls, so I guess the moral of the story is, "If you want to go to McDonald Falls, make sure you know where you're going!"

Our day ended with a dip in Lake McDonald:

I highly recommend doing this whenever possible during your trip! It really eases the muscles and joints at the end of the day. I have bad knees and did not have any problems during this trip. I credit this to 1) knee braces, and 2) "icing" them in mountain lakes/streams whenever possible!