Day 7: Glacier National Park

I’m going to keep most of my ramblings short and sweet today, because the pictures will tell you everything you need to know, but this is a blog after all, so some ramblings are mandatory.

The morning started off a little rocky. We got up at 5:15 and left the hotel just before 6am. Our hotel wasn’t serving breakfast until 6:30 and we didn’t want to wait around, so we figured we would swing through McDonalds and grab some coffee and a breakfast sandwich. After waiting 20 minutes for our food, and then mine being wrong, we were less than happy, but we just ate what we had finally received and went on our way.

We arrived at the entrance to Glacier at around 7:30, and were surprised when there was no one taking money or checking passes, apparently if you get there early enough, you get in free, but since we had already bought an annual parks pass, it didn’t benefit us, but that’s okay, it was totally worth paying for anyways!

The best part of getting there early was that traffic was minimal, and every time we wanted to stop and see something the pull off’s were empty, and we didn’t have to sit and wait for traffic to pass when we went to move on. The first spot we stopped at was a waterfall with gorgeous blue water. We had the entire area to ourselves because no one else was stopping there, and it was incredible.

From there we continued on, stopping every time we saw a pull-off with a great view. At one of the first few pull-off’s we met a really nice couple from New York and their son and daughter-in-law who live in Idaho and we chatted with them for awhile. It turned out they ride too, and had been a lot of places that we’ve been. I gave them one of my cards with my blog address on it, so if you’re them, I hope you enjoyed your day in Glacier!

We rode all the way through the park from the West entrance to the East, and then we rode back through. On the way back through, things had gotten drastically busier, and all of the places we had stopped were now packed with people. I repeatedly told Dwayne how thankful I was that we got there early and that we were lucky enough to enjoy the first couple of hours without the madness. Sure, the sun was just coming up over the mountains in a lot of places, so our pictures probably didn’t turn out as good as they may have later in the day, but that’s okay, because it was worth it to get to take our time and not be rushed and not have to deal with tons of other people trying to see things at the same time as us. I highly recommend going early if you go, especially if you go on two wheels.

It was slow moving for the second half of our retreat, but we didn’t mind too much since it just gave us more time to take in the scenery. As we left the park there were two lines of people waiting to get in, and it was backed up almost to the welcome sign, which is a long way. Again, I was so thankful that we got right in with no wait at all, and that we didn’t have to sit in that line.

Once we got out of the park we stopped at a gas station to use the restroom and regroup, and while we were there a man approached us and wanted to know if I was riding my own bike or if i was a passenger. I kindly informed him that it was indeed my bike, and that I don’t ride pillion. He thought that was awesome and told me, “That’s right honey, don’t trust a man!” which made me laugh. He wished us a safe ride, and we started getting ready to leave, when all of a sudden he got back out of his vehicle and came back over to us and explained that his friend who was in the vehicle with him is a preacher and that he had never married a couple on motorcycles before, would we like to get married today? We laughed and declined, and as we pulled away we both started cracking up and wondered how on earth we find ourselves in these situations.