One of my most favorite things to do is travel. I don’t care if it’s the beach, Disney, a national park, or a baseball stadium, I LOVE exploring new places.
When we left the house, our plans were to do Glacier for a few days, then drive into Banff for a few days. But we changed our mind after our first full day in Glacier and decided to drive to Yellowstone for the second half of our trip instead.
Getting to Glacier was quite the mess. We were supposed to be flying with American Airlines out of HSV at 5:23am. So we woke up at 3:00am, got to the airport, boarded the plane….and had to sit there for two hours due to bad weather in Dallas. The delay caused us to miss our connecting flight in Dallas and they automatically rebooked us on a flight to Kalispale for the next day. Luckily, Leslie that works for American Airlines worked her magic and got us on a flight with United to Denver, then from Denver to Kalispale. We actually met up with my parents and grandmother in Denver and flew the last leg of the flight with them.
Because of all the delays and switching airlines, our luggage got lost. We had NOTHING. No sleep clothes, no diapers for Kobe, no toothbrush. And the airport didn’t open til the next day around lunch. Thankfully, they found our luggage and delivered it to our house in Whitefish around 2:00.
Our first day, we did Lake McDonald in West Glacier. We drove up Going to the Sun road to see McDonald Falls, went to the base of the lake and let the boys throw all of the colorful rocks, and did the Lake McDonald Boat Tour. This time of year, the sun doesn’t set here til after 10pm! If you are coming to Glacier and plan on doing anything on Going to the Sun road, you need two things. You have to have a National Park Pass, first to get into Glacier. Then, to continue up Going to the Sun road, you need a vehicle reservation. The park pass can be purchased at the gate, but the vehicle reservation has to be made in advance. They open up reservations at 7pm the night before your travel day. Or, you can book a tour, like the boat tour that we did, and that counts as your vehicle reservation for the day.
Day two was spent exploring all the things we could in East Glacier. Unfortunately, our time got cut short so we missed a few things that we really wanted to do.
Our first stop was at Appistoki Falls. It was a short hike in which was perfect with us having the littles. We saw lots and lots of wild goats (or sheep?!) on the trail to the waterfall. When we were about 200 feet from the top, a mama and a baby came running down the mountain straight towards us. We thought we were goners. They stopped about 10 feet from the front of our group and turned and ran through the woods.
From Appistoki, we drove to Two Medicine where we had a picnic lunch, played in the water, and a few of us did the row boats around the lake. There was a hike to do there, but the views from the base were absolutely breathtaking and we decided to just let the boys play in the rocks by the water. I think they would have been happy throwing those rocks all day long.
Our next stop was St. Mary. We hiked the Sun Point Nature Trail to the overlook. On the way, we got up close and personal with a deer. Then we drove over to the parking area to hike to St. Mary Falls. The hike itself was a little over a mile long, but it was fairly easy in my opinion. It was absolutely beautiful.
We missed Fishercap Lake, which was in Many Glacier. Everyone told us that’s where you see the most wildlife. However, part of that area was still closed. The park ranger said that some parts in that area were still under about 80 feet of snow.
Day three was our travel day. From Whitefish to our AirBnB in Island Park, Idaho was a 6 hour drive, which with two little ones was more like an 8ish hour drive. We made several little stops along the way, but the best stop was for lunch at Big Sky Sasquatch Grill. It had a cute little souvenir shop and really good lunch options.
We finally got to our AiBnB around 8:30 and it is THE CUTEST house! They literally have everything you could need and it’s absolutely perfect for families with kiddos.
Click here to go to Part 2 and read all about our days in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons.
Also, I’m so thankful I brought my camera, tripod, and cute clothes!! We rode around with them in the back the whole time we were in Glacier just waiting to find the perfect spot 😍
THE SMALL TOWN MAMA 
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