Glacier National Park

It was about right hours from Yellowstone to Glacier so we stopped halfway and stayed the night in Missoula. The drive from Missoula to Glacier National Park was beautiful. Up through some mountains and then around a huge lake. We could not make reservations for Glacier because all the campsites were full but they did have a campsite that was first come first server so planned on getting there around noon (which is usually the time they make you check out) so we could grab a site before the rest of the world got there. We were pretty lucky and got a really sweet spot under a bunch of trees. We went to the visitor center and checked to see what roads were open and what trail we could get in that day. We decided on a 6 mile roundtrip hike to catch a glimpse of almost the entire park. This hike was very interesting, first was the fact that there are grizzly and black bears all over the park. As we started on the trail I was a little freaked out that we might run into a bear (my brother and I ran into one when we were running a trail in Yosemite) so I had read some material that said to talk loud while on the trail to make your presence known to the bear. I am not sure that I told Joe that I had read this because he thought I was acting really weird talking really loud while on this trail. Then when we were going up the trial we ran into some people who had bear spray (yes there is spray to fend off bears, but it only works once, then run!) but the woman said that she did not see any bears on the trial and not to be worried because all the bear scat (that means poop) she saw was really old. That made me feel better but then we passed another group of people and asked how far we were (because Joe and I were huffing and puffing) and they told us the not so good news that we were still pretty far. About ¾ of the way up Joe and I swear we were going to die (you could tell we were at the end of the trip and we definitely out of shape!) But low and behold we made it to the top and got a really awesome view of Glacier park. After our long hike we headed back to our campsite and were too tired to BBQ so we just had a snack and went to sleep, hoping to get up early the next morning for a long drive through the park.
We debated on whether to take the free shuttle or to drive through the park on the Going to The Sun Road. We waited for the shuttle for a while and just decided that it would be easier for us to just drive the road. They had just opened the road the week before we got there, they had to blast out snow on many different parts of the road. In the middle of the journey we were stopped due to construction, during the snowy winter the snow can destroy parts of the road and when they blast it or it melts off they find the destroyed parts of the road and have to redo them. We were only stopped about a ½ hour, but Joseph ended up talking with a gentlemen who lived in Clovis near his sister and worked for a company based in San Luis Obispo, such a small world. After we got through the road construction we decided to drive all the way into Waterton National Park, which is actually in Canada. I think the total drive to the Canadian border took about 4 hours, but when we got there we had some trouble. Turns out that the day we were trying to get into Canada was Canada Day (July 1st) and the Canadian customs officials were not having a good day (it just so happened that neither were Joe and I). Well our first mistake was that we had firewood in the back of our truck, apparently you cannot bring any wood with bark from America in Canada, the American trees have some disease that the Canadian trees do not. Then they proceeded to ask us a ton of questions, like if we had any alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and weapons. Not only did they ask us if we had weapons, but the woman went into this long list saying almost every weapon in the book, like we didn’t know what she was talking about. They really gave us a hard time and we even had our passports! They then proceeded to tell us to pull over to the side and wait while they checked our ID’s. Well Joe was pretty pissed by this time, especially since all the firewood we had in the back of the truck he had just chopped all himself in Yellowstone. So he went into the office to ask if he could leave it on the US side so that we would be able to pick it up on the way back out. They gave him a hard time again and the woman was not even checking our ID’s she was just sitting there chatting it up. Joe came back out and then went in again and then they told him that we were not allowed to come into Canada because of a DUI he got 5 years ago, and not only were we not allowed in but would not be able to come in for another 5 years because of this. They were freaking rude, she even had the audacity to say that they were lenient on marijuana but not alcohol. So we got to turn around and head back into the US. Well we had to go through the US customs, and tell them why Canada would not let us in, even though they watched us not be let in. They even pulled the drug dogs on us, freaking stupid. Well as you can imagine our day was just getting worse. At least on the way back out we got to see a grizzly bear, a black bear, and a baby fox. Later on in the day when we tried to go check out a glacier Joe saw a moose! We drove back down the Going to The Sun Road and stopped to take pictures of some Glaciers, it was kind of hard to tell if we were looking at a Glacier or not, but we took pictures anyway. You could say our visit to Glacier National Park was not what we expected it to be. The next day we decided to leave and head to Idaho where we were going to stay the night and head into Washington where we were going to meet up with my sister and some of her family for 4th of July.
We spent 4th of July with my sister, her husband, my sister’s aunt & uncle, cousins, and he mom. We had a wonderful time eating delicious food, drinking, and playing Wii sports. It was really nice to have a hot shower, and be able to do some laundry. After 4th of July we decided to get back on the road and head towards Portland, OR and stopping at Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens along the way.