On the fourth day of our recent trip to Glacier National Park, we spent most of the day driving Going-to-the-Sun Road, a scenic highway through the Rocky Mountains commonly hailed as one of the prettiest drives in the U.S. It was definitely a breathtaking drive, and worth doing, but it didn’t strike me as significantly more breathtaking than other roads I’ve driven in the Yellowstone and Banff areas. It’s inherently cool to be driving in the mountains, and you can probably only do so much to make that fact even cooler with nice design features and good observation points.
We started early with one of the marquee hikes, stopped several times along the way to take in the scenery, once to do another hike, and then toward the end got lunch at Lake McDonald Lodge. Here are photos of the whole thing from beginning to end.
06:36
06:44: We arrived early at the Logan Pass parking lot, where the Hidden Lake Overlook trail begins. This parking lot has a reputation for filling up early, so we kept track of it on live webcams ahead of time and determined that this was a good time to park.
07:09: Starting to hike the Hidden Lake Overlook trail.
08:01: Arriving at a view of Bearhat Mountain, with Hidden Lake at its feet.
09:13: The gift shop back at Logan Pass. It was too crowded to buy anything.
09:28: Now we got properly underway with Going-to-the-Sun Road. We made our first real road stop at Oberlin Bend, which had some charming stone walls and a sort of balcony overlook of the valley below.
09:30
09:39: Back on the road.
09:40: Our next stop was at a rest area (approx. 48.7265732, -113.7221841) where there was a small line for a bathroom on the side of the mountain, next to a snow patch with inviting hollow crevices.
09:42
09:44
09:45: A deer was wandering through the traffic here.
09:46: Pretty scenic bathroom, though I did not go inside for a full evaluation.
09:49: In the hills above this area, a carved staircase led to a waterfall.
09:50
09:52: Looking back down at where we parked along Going-to-the-Sun Road.
10:05: Back in the car, we made another stop to get a look at Bird Woman Falls.
10:25: After another 20 minutes of driving, we’re getting down into the valley pictured above.
10:28
10:30
10:42
10:51: We’re stopping for another hike at Johns Lake Loop.
11:31: Here’s the destination, Johns Lake. It was pretty underwhelming — I stopped for about two seconds to take this photo and kept going, not even really realizing it was the trail’s namesake. I think this is about where somebody fell up to their shoulders into a pit of mud earlier this summer.
11:46: This boardwalk was my last view of Johns Lake Loop.
12:11: Stopping at Lake McDonald Lodge for lunch.
12:12
13:17: After lunch, we walked around the Lake McDonald beach outside. Lots of families were out playing.
13:18
14:18: Back in the car. We didn’t have any more stops from this point — we were getting pretty tired and eager to check in to our next hotel.
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