Mountain High

I’m on a trip with my kids so I am re-publishing a 2024 piece on Glacier National Park. Enjoy!

At some point this spring, after organizing multiple trips for my kids, which all had their amazing, important, bonding, loving, adventurous moments, but were not a vacation for me in the sense of the word that indicates a relaxing, restorative experience, I teamed up with another working mom to plan a trip where we would leave our domestic realities behind and hike and talk all day somewhere beautiful. We settled on what many think of as the most spectacular of America’s spectacular territories: Glacier National Park in Northern Montana.

Readers it did not disappoint. I spent the first two nights solo, navigating trails and boat rides by myself before my friend arrived. She’s much more of a mountain mama and super fit - the kind of person who feels like going for a run after hiking for five hours - and together we hiked about 10 miles/day amidst changing vistas with far ranging conversation and lots of quiet, too. On our last day, we swam and splayed out on a rocky shore.

It is impossible to covey in words or in pictures how shockingly gorgeous Glacier National Park is. For days, my interior monologue sounded more or less like this: Oh my God. OH my God. Stone cold sober, blissed out. The high altitude perch views from the winding trails - the rare outrageous colors of the lakes - the freakin fresh ass air - the smells, the wonderful smells - the wild flowers and berries, many of them edible, the subtle changes in light and shadow - all of this exists in an immaculately maintained park full of meaningful, classy touches, like the small handmade boats that tour folks around, or the historic lodges that feel like you’re in Switzerland. Every park ranger we encountered was a knowledgable, patient ambassador of God. There was no cell service so no people on smart phones. Nearly every hiker we ran into was in the full happy dopey glory of nature. This earth is magnificent and so are the humans - this is the kind of thought you have at Glacier National Park.

Was it crowded? I was worried it would be. I’d seen reports that the national parks were mobbed this summer. But, no, it was not crowded. There was one parking lot that was full - so we used the free shuttle. I think people who complain about the parks being crowded are not New Yorkers. I’ll show you crowded: Soho on a Saturday afternoon, midtown at rush hour. This was more like northern Central Park on a Wednesday morning.

There are bears! The park is famous for them. Everyone carries bear spray - which I think is kind of a racket. Who wants to mace a bear? Not this happy camper. My friend spoke to a local who said Just be loud and chatty on the trails and the bears will keep away and we were naturally loud and chatty so this strategy appealed. And then, wouldn’t you know it, we saw a bear. About ten feet away. He was not interested in us. He was busy doing something, collecting berries maybe. We stopped in our tracks and quietly discussed what we should do. And then he started walking away in a different direction.

On the night before we left town we went gift shopping and there was a store that had a lot of t-shirts with bossy cowgirls on them that said “The hell I won’t!” I asked the sales person what it meant, and to please put the sentiment in context - I was that tourist. What I learned is that it’s basically the response a feisty woman gives to someone who says she shouldn’t do something. You know, like:

You shouldn’t leave your family to go hiking with a friend.

The hell I won’t!

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Glacier Park Logistics

I’m disclosing prices just in case you had the notion that you had to be a scum bucket bribe taking supreme court justice to go on a nice vacation in Montana. Not so!

Getting there: You fly in to Glacier Park International Airport in Kalispell. International, schminternational, this is a small airport with four gates. You’ll need to rent a car. (Tip: when I first made the car rental reservation, it was $200/day; and then a week before the trip it was down to $60/day so I canceled the old rez and made a new one.)

You will need a park pass ($35) and, for certain parts of the park, a vehicle registration ($2). The vehicle registrations sell out months in advance but there’s a work around: you can buy a ticket for a boat tour ($25) and it comes with a full day access to that part of the park. Then you can go on that boat tour or not. I stressed about this! Don’t stress about this. I took two of the boat tours - these are small handmade boats from the 30s, lovingly restored - I absolutely loved them! Especially the one at Two Medicine.

Which trails: You can tweak your itinerary to your fitness level - there’s plenty of beautiful things to see, even if you don’t hike, even if you have limited mobility. And the national parks, they have thought this shit out so thoroughly. Just get a map and ask a ranger. We did a couple of the “greatest hits” hikes: Logan Pass and Lake Grinnell. They deliver BIG TIME. The drive along Going to the Sun Road, it will blow your mind. Two Medicine - it’s all the way on the other side of the park, but go,

Lodging: You can camp, you can try and stay at one of the hotels in the park (they sell out quickly). We stayed in Whitefish, about a half hour outside the park, at an Airbnb that was located in a kind of subdivision ($400/night) - I hate being in one of those weird circular developments with dozens of identical houses but we each had our own bedroom and bathroom, the beds were extremely comfortable, there was a gigantic bathtub in my bathroom, and I just loved leaving the park after a day outdoors and going out to a nice dinner and then going to sleep in a big ass comfy bed after a long and unhurried bath. Damn.

The food in the park and in Whitefish is notoriously mediocre - but we were happy with our dinners and had one fancy meal and it was delicious, at Herb and Omni. And we got delicious, healthy, gluten free, vegan snacks and trail treats from a kind of perfect small health food store called Third Street Market.

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Thanks for reading and thanks especially to my paying subscribers.

I will leave you with this gem, my eight year old’s favorite song.

xo Lizzie

PS - Enrollment is open for my fall memoir and personal essay writing class on Zoom. You can find more info and register on my website here.