We had originally hoped to spend Friday, June 19, driving across Glacier National Park via the Going-to-the-Sun road, possibly stopping somewhere midway for a hike. But just after we’d arrived in St. Mary on Thursday night, we discovered that about 5 miles of the 53 mile long road were impassable due to heavy snowfall and an avalanche earlier in the winter.

That changed our mental plans somewhat, so we decided instead to enter the park on Friday morning at Many Glacier and take one of the trails departing from around Swiftcurrent Lake. The ranger at the entrance station suggested that the Grinnell Glacier trail offered the biggest “bang for the buck” in terms of its sweeping views of the surrounding valley. She also warned us about grizzly bears—everything warned us about bears: signs, brochures, other hikers—which seriously freaked us out. But we never saw hide nor hair of a bear (besides the two black bears we spotted along the road in Yellowstone). It didn’t stop us from making all sorts of noise as we passed through heavily wooded areas.

Even though it was pretty overcast in the morning on most days, the clouds would usually break sometime in the afternoon, offering a window for taking spectacular photos. Not this time. We hiked in the drizzling rain about three and a half miles up the trail, until it too was blocked off, due to an “unstable snow bridge”. So we didn’t make it all the way to the Grinnell Glacier. One gets the sense that Glacier National Park obeys its own seasons. Still it was an amazing hike, one I’d be happy to do again in better weather.

We woke up on Thursday morning, June 18th, in Mammoth Hot Springs, at the very northern entrance of Yellowstone. Before beginning the long drive towards Glacier National Park, we took our time exploring the springs. The cloudy skies lent a macabre feeling to the already eerie scenery.

If you can believe it, the last four posts, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Old Faithful, Beyond Old Faithful, and The Grand Prismatic Spring, as well as this one, all took place within a single day, Wednesday, June 17th, of our week-long road trip.

At some point in the middle of it all, we figured we’d try to see if there was any chance we could stay in the park that night. So we called the central reservations line, and lo and behold, they had a cabin with communal bathrooms available in Mammoth Hot Springs, at the very north end of the park. So with that destination in mind, we made a big 130 mile reverse-S through the park to see as much as we could.

This was probably one of my favorite stops as we were driving through Yellowstone, because it was so immersive and wet.

After seeing the satellite images showing Old Faithful surrounded by a semi-circle of parking lots, I was a little concerned that it was going to be one big tourist circus. But once I got there, I realized that Old Faithful the Geyser was just one attraction (and not even the most interesting) of the larger “Old Faithful Area”. Here are some of the nearby sights.