Location: Glacier National Park: Day 3; Epic Road Trip: Day 10
Attractions: Logan Pass, Hidden Lake Overlook, Lake McDonald Beach
Date: August 12th, 2018

We again woke up early to go on a hike. Aren’t I supposed to be on vacation? What’s with all the getting up early? Well, I guess when you are in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, you gotta drink it in. So we tried to soak up every opportunity we could. We were in hopes of finding some grizzly bears and we heard that there is a lookout up on Logan Pass where you can see the grizzly bears heading to Hidden Lake for a morning drink… from a nice, comfortable distance.

We had heard that the parking at Logan Pass was absolutely atrocious so we opted for the shuttle ride to avoid circling a parking lot for unknown amounts of time. I swear, that trip on the Going-to-the-Sun Road never gets old. Once we reached our destination, we checked out the visitors center for a bit and then headed out for our hike.

Hidden Lake Trail is what it was called and it was quite the spectacle. The wildflowers had started to bloom amongst the rolling emerald hills with snowcapped mountains in the distance and I felt like I was walking through a scene from The Sounds of Music. Much of the trail had a boardwalk so the trail was a nice easy hike. As we came over a hill, I noticed an animal in the distance. It was coming closer and when I pulled out my binoculars, I saw a bighorn sheep. It was a ram and he had a nice set of horns on him. We watched him for a spell, and to our delight, he came quite close. We pointed him out to a few of the other hikers to enjoy and then kept moving along.

The prize view for this hike was the Hidden Lake overlook. The beautiful lake below had a huge pyramid shaped rock formation rising out of it. As we gazed at the water below, looking for grizzly, we noticed a large column of smoke bellowing from a valley in the distance. There had been a storm the night before and the lightning had started a wild fire.

We didn’t see any bear on this hike, but there were some ground squirrels that were ruthless thieves. We had packed in a morning snack and as we sat enjoying our food and the view, one of the squirrels snuck a bite out of Charlie’s sandwich while she was looking the other way. These things are quick and stealthy and they wanted our food. We decided to eat standing up.

We made our way back to the parking lot to catch our shuttle and as we waited, we watched the chaos of people trying to find parking and an officer dishing out tickets. Once we got back to West Glacier, the heat of the day had set in and we wanted to find a beach. We heard there was a nice area on McDonald Lake, so we put on our swimming suits and set our sites on the beach.

The beach was a pebble lined paradise with crystal clear water. The water was frigid but refreshing. Across the lake, we could see another billowing smoke column due to a lightning strike from the night before. We sat and enjoyed the sunshine and cool water for several hours. Mattix made a friend with another kid that was playing at the beach and the two of them made an entire city out of some sticks and rocks laying around the beach. It was hard to leave, knowing it would be our last night in Glacier, but we were looking forward to Banff.

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