Montana/Glacier National Park Road Trip – July 2022

July 3 – 13, 2022

Day 1 – Bozeman, Montana – Peter and I are on the road again! Buckle up for a Montana adventure across Glacier, North Yellowstone (hopefully), and lots of cool downtowns and breweries in between. We left Dalton at 7AM and it was smooth sailing both driving to ATL and though the airport. All the articles were talking about the air travel meltdowns for the 4th weekend, so we feel lucky.

Got into Bozeman around lunch and checked into the Lewis & Clark Motel – a cute little locally owned joint with a spa-like pool and eucalyptus steam room in the basement (on the list for our evening wind-down). We popped next door to the locally-owned Bozeman Co-op grocery store next door for lunch and to scout out some snacks for the road.

Afternoon rain showers led to The Museum of the Rockies. This cool little Museum is part of Montana State University and has an impressive dinosaur fossil collection (Peter was loving it!) By the time we got done the rain had mostly passed, so we headed to Downtown Bozeman for some shopping. We parked at their impressive library – complete with Greenway trail and sculpture garden and walked from one end of town to the other. The weather is absolutely perfect!

Then we drove over to Map Brewing to grab dinner & local beer with a great view (the double rainbow was a neat bonus). Funny enough we ran into some classmates of Peter’s from Georgia Southern / Shaw co-worker at the brewery – totally unplanned. What a small world it is!

Day 2 – Butte, Anaconda & Missoula, Montana – Grabbed some snacks at Bozeman Co-op and headed north toward Missoula. We crossed over the Great continental divide on our way to Butte. Butte was nicknamed the “richest hill on earth” because it got its start as a mining boomtown and at one point, produced more copper than anywhere else in the US. At that time it was home to over 100k people, now it’s Montana’s 5th largest city with a population of 35k (similar size to Dalton). Butte is also home to Montana Tech.

We drove up to the Con Mine Headframe – one of 12 surviving frames on Butte Hill. The original mine shaft went down for over a mile! The park also has a great overlook to see the historic downtown. One of the more strange attractions in town is the Berkeley Pit a massive water-filled open pit copper mine. It is pretty, but the water is extremely toxic. For only $3 admission, it was worth the quick peek.

Our next stop was in Anaconda. As you approach town, you can see the Anaconda Smelter Stack on the horizon – what remains of a copper smelting operation. It’s apparently the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world, at ~585 feet tall (taller than the Washington Monument!). We stopped at the Old Works Golf Course – designed by Jack Nicklaus and has black sand traps (a byproduct of all the smelting).

Anaconda has a cute main street, decked out in flowers and American flags. We popped in Smelter Brewing Company, while we waited for the American Legion 4th of July parade to start. Their brewery cat, named Taps, was napping on the bar. The parade was great, especially with the beautiful setting!

Our final stop was Missoula for the night. Home to the University of Montana (about 1/3 the size of Georgia Tech). Most things were closed for the 4th, but we walked along the river and through Downtown. We finally found a restaurant open – Pie Hole, a funky little pizza joint. We grabbed a couple slices before heading back to the hotel for the night (AC Hotel by Marriott – nice, but not unique).

Day 3 – Arlee, Polson, Kalispell, Whitefish & Columbia Falls, Montana + Glacier National Park! – We got up and headed north toward Glacier this AM. Our first stop was in Arlee at the Garden of 1000 Buddhas – a beautiful statue garden run by a local Buddhist group. They were a little late opening…the monks apparently stayed up too late learning to lasso on the 4th (per the guy at the gift shop, haha)

A quick stop in Polson on Flathead Lake for a huckleberry scone and a stroll around town. We spotted a Shaw truck driving though and said a quick hello – the driver is one of 3 Shaw drivers in Montana! We heard about the Flathead Lake cherries, but we were a little too early for the season.

We continued north along the western shore of the lake to Kalispell. We had a late lunch at Bonelli’s Bistro and checked out some of the cute stores downtown before heading on up to Whitefish for another cute downtown to explore.

Our hotel is Wonderstone at Glacier in Columbia Falls, about ~20 mins from the west entrance. We headed into Glacier after checking in. Going To The Sun Road requires a $2 pass in addition to the National Park Pass, but after 4pm you don’t need one. We stopped at the Apgar Visitors Center, Apgar Village, Lake McDonald Lodge, saw a couple of waterfalls, and drove as far as we could up the GTS road. The road is closed to vehicles after Avalanche Campground right now – but bikes can go a little further depending on where the snowplows are working. Stay tuned for that adventure tomorrow!

Day 4 – Glacier National Park – We embraced the digital nomad lifestyle this AM and did a little work before grabbing breakfast at Montana Coffee Traders in Columbia Falls.

After breakfast, we headed over to Glacier Guides to grab our rental e-bikes and a shuttle up the Going To The Sun Road to the road closure at Avalanche Campground. From there we biked 23 miles round-trip up to the Weeping Wall and back. The rental/shuttle was somewhat pricey – but totally worth getting to go up the GTS road with no cars. The elevation climb was just over 2350 vertical ft – so definitely still a workout, even with the e-bike!

We saw several deer and possibly a bald eagle (we think it was one), but thankfully no bears (just some fresh bear poop). We rented some bear spray just in case! After the shuttle dropped us back off – we drove around the bottom side of the park on Hwy 2 to our hotel.

Glacier Park Lodge is located in East Glacier Park Village, just outside the park. The hotel opened in 1913 and the rooms are historic – so no frills, but the whole property is very charming. They have a large front lawn with beautiful flowers and a golf chip and putt course. People are playing lawn games and rocking on the verandas. It feels like we stepped back in time to a Catskills-style resort. We’re here for a couple of nights.

Day 5 – Glacier National Park – Today we drove up to St Mary Village and hopped on a Red Bus for a tour of the East side of the park. We originally planned to take the full GTS road, but they rerouted us due to the closure.

Our bus was named “Milton” and was built in 1936 (and the guts have been rebuilt a couple of times since). The drivers are known as “jammers” because the original busses had a manual transmission and the drivers could be heard jamming the gears going up and down the mountain roads!

Due to an especially snowy winter and spring, the GTS road will not be open all the way through Logan Pass until after 7/13 at the earliest – which would be the latest the full road has opened in its 90 year history. They have to dig out the “Big Drift” – a section where snow can be 80+ feet deep and then prep the road and reinstall guard rails before they can fully open. Today we drove from the East entrance up to the road closure at Jackson Glacier overlook.

Glacier used to have 100+ glaciers when it became a national park in 1910. Now there are less than 25 remaining, and the park service believes they’ll all be gone by 2030. That could impact local wildlife and the beautiful teal color of the lakes in the park – turned that unique color by rocks crushed into dust by the glaciers and that dust mixing in the snowmelt runoff.

We saw Wild Goose Island, famous from the opening scene of The Shining. We went in the Two Medicine entrance to see the valley and Running Eagle Falls.

After the red bus tour, Peter and I drove up to Many Glacier Lodge to see the Swiss chalet themed hotel and beautiful view of the lake before heading back down to East Glacier. The east side of the park is much less crowded, but also has less amenities outside the park. Both sides are beautiful though!

Day 6 – Great Falls, Montana – A quick breakfast stop at Brownies in East Glacier before hitting the road. Most of the property on the east side of the park is part of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. We saw lots of cows and rolling plains on our way south to Great Falls.

We checked into the Historic Hotel Arvon – a small boutique hotel with cool local art, in an 1890s building. Great Falls is the 3rd largest city in Montana (~58k people). They have several highly rated museums, but we honestly needed a day of rest – so we skipped the museums.

We ended up taking a walk by the Missouri River and though Gibson Park before heading over to explore the downtown area. We had lunch and a flight at Mighty Mo Brewing Company. They had several cute craft and clothing shops in Downtown Great Falls, but some of the downtown feels a little sketchy.

Capped off the day at the Sip ‘n Dip mermaid tiki bar (located inside the O’Haire Motor Inn ). Unfortunately the mermaids were off for the night due to pool maintenance issues, but we enjoyed the tiki bar atmosphere and tropical drinks.

Day 7 – Helena, Montana – Great Falls has an awesome farmers market! It was conveniently right across the street from our hotel. We picked up some baked items for breakfast (and snacks for later). The “chocoapocalypse” cookie made by a retired pastry chef was to die for. We also bought zucchini bread from one of the Hutterite colony booths (similar to the Amish or Mennonites).

From there we headed to Lincoln, MT to see the Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild. I ran across an article about this unique outdoor sculpture garden at some point and we made sure to add it to our route. The setting and art is incredible – large-scale natural sculptures set in the Ponderosa Pine forest (state tree of Montana.)

Roughly 20 minutes north of Helena is Gates of the Mountains – an area on the Missouri River where Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis & Clark expedition) camped in 1805. In Lewis’s journal, he detailed the limestone river gorge and deemed it “the gates of the rocky mountains.” Boat tours of the Gates have been operating for 126 years. We took a very informative cruise up the river on the Sacagawea 2.

We barely got off the boat before the bottom dropped out. It started hailing as we headed into Helena. Waves of thunderstorms are rolling through the area, so we grabbed dinner at Saigon Alley (delicious Thai food) and drove around to see what we could of town and the Montana State Capitol building.

Day 8 – Helena, Butte & Livingston Montana – The Last Chance Gulch is where a group of “Four Georgians hit a gold strike in 1864 – thereby founding the town that would later be known as Helena. Ironically, only one of the men was from Georgia (Acworth) but they may have been called that because of the mining technique they used. The area is now a walkable downtown shopping district with lots of cute shops and restaurants.

In 1888, Helena claimed to have the most millionaires per capita in the world (thanks to the local gold rush). It’s evident by some of the beautiful Victorian mansions that still remain. These days, Helena is the 5th LEAST most populated capital city in the U.S. at around 32k people (similar size to Dalton).

We drove back through Butte to meet up with friends and to check out the Montana Folk Festival. The 3 day festival is free (they strongly suggest donations) and features diverse acts from all over the world. We heard Celtic, Appalachian, and Haitian music while we were there. Seriously, a very cool festival – highly recommend.

We arrived in Livingston this evening and grabbed a beer at Katabatic Brewing before dinner at Livingston Bar & Grille. Most everything was closed tonight, but it seems like a cool little town!

Day 9 – Livingston, Montana – Today we got up (slowly) and had breakfast at Faye’s Cafe. You just tell her a few descriptive words and she whips you up the breakfast of your dreams. It was delicious!

We spent the afternoon floating down the Yellowstone River – looking for unique rocks and wildlife while cruising through the beautiful scenery. The river flow has apparently shifted significantly in some spots from the flooding in mid-June.

We made a quick stop at Neptune’s Brewery once we got off the river. We’re all pooped and a little sunburnt, so we ordered pizza and stayed in tonight. A great day in Livingston!

Day 10 – Gardiner & Livingston, Montana – Last full day in Montana! Caught up on emails this AM before heading out. Got a quick breakfast at Crust and Crumb Bakery in Livingston (hidden between the Ace Hardware and the gun store, haha). The iced cinnamon bun was delicious!

We drove through Paradise Valley down to Garnier, MT. Gardiner is normally a gateway town to Yellowstone, but unfortunately the North entrance has still not reopened from the flooding in June. We had originally planned on doing the upper loop of Yellowstone this trip (we did the lower loop last year), but decided to go visit and support the local towns impacted by the flood instead.

On the way down, we stopped at the Pine Creek Lodge – a small hotel with shipping container rooms and music venue (owned by David Cook’s cousin). It was very close to where we put in the river for our float trip yesterday. It wasn’t open, but we got to snap some photos.

Our next stop was in Pray, MT at Chico Hot Springs – a cute little resort centered around a historic hot springs. We wandered around and hit the shops. It’s a very cool place!

On into Gardiner, where we took photos with the iconic Roosevelt Arch and Yellowstone Park signage. We did some shopping and grabbed some Wilcoxson’s huckleberry fudge ice cream (made in Livingston).

Park employees and guided tours can access the park via the unpaved Old Gardiner Road, but the North entrance is closed to all other traffic. Part of the original road into the park washed out in the flood, so they are working on widening the old unpaved road to hopefully allow temporary access for visitors.

On the way back, we stopped back through Chico Hot Springs to relax in the pools for a while. Lots of kids and the sun was blazing, but still a cool experience!