Notes on our trip to Glacier and Waterton National Parks
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Getting reservations inside the park requires long term planning. I made the reservations for the two lodges in November of 2011 for our September 2012 visit. Staying at Many Glacier is an ideal spot because it is the trailhead for so many great trails: Iceberg Lake, Ptarmagin Tunnel, Highline Trail via the Swiftcurrent Pass, Grinnell Glacier, Cracker Lake and Pigean Pass. Visiting over Labor Day seems to be the best timing - the summer crowds have mostly dispersed but the cold and rain (usually) have not begun. The hiker shuttle in Glacier stops running on Labor Day. This free shuttle is ideal for the Siyeh Pass or Highline Trail, which have different end points than the starting trail head. Note that bear mace is considered a weapon - if you cross the Canadian/USA border they will ask if you are carrying any weapons, and they specifically ask about bear mace. We didn't carry bear mace on any of our hikes. Swiftcurrent Motor Inn was a great place to stay. It's location is ideal. The rooms were quite large - we had two queen beds in our room. Plus extra blankets and a heater, which we enjoyed during the cool evenings. Mostly we just want a quiet, clean room so we can sleep peacefully before the next morning's activities. The walls do allow noise to travel between the rooms, but we only heard people on one night, and they quickly quieted down. There are no TV or refrigerator in the room. The rooms at Crandall Mountain Lodge are pretty small, the one queen bed fills up the space. There is a refrigerator in the room, and a TV too, but the TV only picks up two Canadian news channels, so it is only worth turning on to catch the weather report. The manager at Crandall is quite friendly and helpful too, plus they have a tray of homebaked Crandall cookies in the office. Noise travels easily between the walls of the room, there was one night that our neighbors carried on a boisterous conversation late in the night. The location is ideal, right in the town of Waterton. We got a rental car because our own cars are too old to be reliable on such a long trip - my car is a 1996, and Melanie's is a 1992 - not ideal vehicles for a 1500 mile journey.
All the graphic images are my own, but the textured background is taken from a site, EOS development, that offers non-profit users free use of their graphics. Click below to visit their site.
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