on the road: More Glacier National Park - Lake MacDonald and Going to the Sun Road

Apgar Campground in Glacier has many advantages and a few disadvantages. It is right near Lake McDonald, which is extremely beautiful and wonderful to swim in. It is near the town where you can buy VERY BASIC things, find ice cream, a beer or a pizza. It is right near the Visitor’s Center where you get all your information for hikes, etc. It is really close to the shuttle for the Going to the Sun Road. The disadvantages are too many people, a big, full campground and not much privacy. We signed up for 3 nights but stayed only two.

Lake MacDonald

Boo is not allowed in the water nor on the trails nor on the shuttle. So, (this is how much we love this dog!), one day I did the shuttle to the top of the pass and the next day, Jim did. Actually, this doesn’t really bother us all that much as we have so much time together that a little alone time is not a bad thing.

I cannot exclaim enough about this road. First, it is the only road that runs through the whole park, from east to west for 52 miles (and there is no north to south road). It is an engineering marvel. From Apgar, it runs up the side of Lake McDonald, the largest lake in the park, to the top of Logan Pass. It makes Trail Ridge Road in Estes Park look like a walk in the park! I would never even think of driving it, though plenty of people do (see what happened to one unhappy couple, below). The views from the top are incredible and the hikes are amazing-there are mountain goats everywhere, even the parking lot. The day Jim went up, the front page of the local paper had a picture of a hiker on a very narrow part of one of the hikes coming face to face with a grizzly bear-he managed to scramble over the side of the trail behind a boulder. Although you must be careful and are advised to carry bear spray, most of the bears around here have other things to be concerned about than hurting one of us.