We had heard from numerous people that getting a campsite in Glacier National Park’s first-come-first-serve campgrounds had been a nightmare recently, so hubby and I had made a plan the night before for how we would tackle this challenge. We got up early and drove the 30 minutes to the park. We entered the park, but instead of going to the visitor center, we went straight to the campground and noticed that at the front of each campground loop, there was a registration board. You were to take an envelope and fill it out with your info. There was a tear-off part of the envelope too. So you take the envelope and drive around and find an empty site, clip your tear-off receipt from the envelope to the site pole, and return to the registration board with your completed envelope with payment, and stick it in the secure slot. Our plan was to drive around the campground and find a spot where people were packing up to leave and ask them if we could tag their spot (instead of waiting until later in the morning for a completely empty spot.) My husband loves to talk to people, so we figured, what the heck. Sure enough, we saw some guys packing up and asked them if they were leaving. They said yes, but not for an hour, so we asked them if they minded if we tagged their site with our info and came back later after they were gone to park our RV – they said sure. That was in either the C or D loop, I forget, but in the meantime, we realized that Loop A was closer to the shuttle stop and the amphitheater, so we drove down the A loop. We found a perfect spot there and the people were leaving as well, so we asked them the same thing – could we tag their spot? They said sure, so we filled out that tag and clipped it to the post in A loop, then went back and removed our tag from the previous site we’d tagged. We told the guys thanks, but we changed our minds. They laughed and said no problem.
So, with site secured, we put our A-loop site payment in the envelope and put it in the payment box. We went to the visitor center to check it out and do the usual, then came back to claim our site, once the previous people had checked out. When we returned, we saw that the previous people were gone, so we leveled up, ate lunch, and got ready for some hiking. We walked back to the visitor center to see if we could catch the shuttle to Logan’s Pass. A worker there told us the wait for the shuttle was 1.5 hours, and that the ride to Logan’s Pass was 2 hours. Okay, we needed to reevaluate the plan for the day. There was an express shuttle to Logan’s Pass in the morning at 7am, so we asked the kids if they’d be willing to get up early again. They said yes, that getting up early the next day was better than waiting 3.5 hours just to get to Logan’s Pass where we would then hike a while and have to come back. So, instead of hiking around Logan’s Pass on the first day, we moved it to the following morning and decided to rent kayaks and paddle boards on MacDonald Lake instead. Our son wanted to do both kayaking and paddle boarding, and our daughter wanted to paddle board. I wanted to kayak and hubby didn’t care, so we got two of each. Luckily, they had enough equipment, so we didn’t have to wait! We got our gear and shoved off from shore and headed to the west side of the lake where there were some private homes and an eagle nesting area. Hubby and son tried to switch from kayak to board and vice versa – in the middle of the lake. So our son moved from the kayak to the board with success, so both of them were on the board. Hubby was going to go from board to kayak. I voiced my opinion that I didn’t think any of this was going to work, and that in order to switch, they were going to have to paddle closer to shore and switch there, but . . . (you know what happens next, right?) Hubby asks me to paddle over and help them stabilize the kayak so he can get in it. My reply? No way. I wasn’t going near any of that mess, because then we’d all end up in the freezing cold water. So, determined to make it into the kayak on his own, he holds on to the sides of the kayak like I told him to (I’ve had a little small craft training on kayaks YEARS ago on the lake near where I grew up, and with canoes as a girl scout leader – so I was trying to help him succeed, but not stupid enough to risk myself!) He placed his hands on either side of the kayak opening, stepped in . . and it flipped over and he went head first into the glacial lake. I filmed it.
After that, getting in the lake was apparently the thing to do because both kids got in and I saw other people all over the lake getting in. The boys took the board and kayak over to the shore, picked the kayak up to empty it and flipped it back over. Hubby got in while in the shallow water without incident and we were off paddling again. We paddled all the way up to the eagle nesting area, checked that our for a bit, then returned to the rental dock. The three of them jumped into the lake several more times throughout our paddling – they’re nuts.
After we returned our gear, we walked through the village and visited the shops. We attended a short Ranger talk about the history of the park and some of the first rangers there. We saw a girl scout troop there who was celebrating their bridging to Juniors ceremony in the park, so we congratulated them. We bought some items in the shops and browsed around before hiking back to the RV for dinner. While dinner was cooking in the oven, we relaxed around our campsite and made plans for the next day – we picked out which trails we wanted to hike and so on.
We went to the ranger show in the evening at the amphitheater. The topic was on how animals in the park survive the long cold winters there. We learned about the animals that can be found at Glacier National Park, including marmots, pikas, black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, ducks and other water birds, mountain goats, and big horn sheep. We hadn’t seen many animals on our trip this time yet, so I was hoping we’d see more tomorrow. We learned that some animals use migration as a means to avoid the harshest part of the local winter, while others hibernate. A third group stays in the park and resists winter with various forms of developed adaptations – such as winter coat growth, metabolic adjustments, and so on. Bears, who aren’t true hibernators, are able to sleep for 100 days straight due to metabolic adaptations that convert their body waste into proteins that allow them to maintain their muscle mass during their long naps. Female bears also have delayed conception during mating season – so while she might mate with a male during June or July, she won’t technically conceive until November in order to delay the birth of her cubs to April while she’s denning. Then she will nurse the cubs in the den for a while before they emerge in late spring, and she will teach them how to forage and hunt for food.
After the ranger show we went back to the RV and sat outside and played a game of Eucher. We noticed that the site next to us was for hiker/biker campers only – no vehicles. Several hikers were through-hiking through the park and were sharing the site. Each person pays $5 and they keep adding more hikers until there’s no more space for tents. There were about 5 or 6 guys in tents and hammocks all camping on that site next to us. We knew that we would be leaving in the morning early enough to catch the 7am express shuttle to Logan’s Pass, so hubby went over and apologized to them ahead of time for waking them up in the morning. We would be pulling the RV out and parking it at the visitor center while we took the shuttle and hiked. Then we’d come back for it and leave in the afternoon to head to our next destination. One of the guys ended up coming over to our site and talking with us for an hour or so. His name was Pem. He was Asian – from Taiwan, but grew up in the Philippines. He was traveling across the US by Amtrak train and hiking. He had seen many cool places and done some neat things. The kids really liked talking with him. He had just graduated from a university in Chicago and was getting ready to start Grad School at the University of Beijing. His girlfriend was in law school at Yale. We talked with Pem about his travels, and ours. One of the things we love most about traveling is meeting and talking with new people. Pem had an interesting outlook on life. He told us about his family and his work. He was going into Economics and Political Science after graduate school, or he was going to marry his lawyer-girlfriend and let her support him while he traveled – he wasn’t sure which, lol. He said he loved seeing the US by train, but wasn’t sure if he would stay here. He had a list of things he wanted to see in the states, and it was almost complete. He was quite bright and articulate. We enjoyed the time we spent with him very much.
Well after dark, we told Pem we needed to get to bed since we were getting up early to catch the express shuttle up to the pass for some hiking. We said goodbyes and settled into the RV for the night.
