Glacier National Park

Towards the end of the summer I took a nice long road trip to the National Parks of the Northwest U.S. I was planning on going a week with friends, then meeting up with my family for a week. My family backed out and so did most friends. Kevin and I decided we would go anyways and someone would be able to come, then the morning we were leaving Sean decided to come with us. 

So... the Tucker boys and I headed out on a few week road trip, with little idea of where we were going. We filled my poor escape to the brim with camping, climbing, backpacking, and any other kind of gear we could think of.

Our first, and maybe my favorite stop of the trip was Glacier National Park. I think Glacier is the most under-rated state park in the U.S. It is absolutely amazing. I would go back in a second. We only spent a few days in Glacier, but I could have spent much longer.

We started the day off really slowly. We woke up early to leave the morning after I got back from NYC. Kevin and Sean drove up from Provo to get me, and by then it was lunch time so we had to stop at The Pie Pizzeria and get cheese pull-a-parts, by this time it was about 2:00 in the afternoon. 

Since we had a late start we decided to drive straight to Glacier National Park, and forgo all the little stops we had thought of on the way. The highlight was of the drive was seeing the HUGE Jesus on the mountain in my dad's home town of Butte, Montana. 

Montana is one of my favorite states, everything is so green and beautiful, and the weather was perfect.

We ended up driving 10-12 hours to the North part of Glacier, pulling over onto a creepy little turn-off, throwing out a tarp and falling straight asleep.

We woke up early the next morning and got a permit so that we could go on a little backpacking adventure through a more secluded part of the park that Kevin had been too.

We picked a campsite that was next to a lake which was about a 10 mile hike. We thought that was all we could make in a day, so we decided to hike in and out the same way because otherwise we would be hiking about 27 miles in two days.

We ended up hiking about 16-18 miles the first day anyways. We hiked 10 miles in with our packs, still felt pretty good, then sat them down and hiked 3-4 miles further up the trail. We never quite hit our destination because it began to get dark, so we hiked the 3-4 miles back to our campsite to spend the night.

The hike in was beautiful. It's amazing how many lines of sight you can follow in a short amount of time, we passed through so many different scenery's and terrains in the first ten miles.

Sean broke his glasses towards the beginning of the hike.

The fields and flower's were amazing on this hike. Very dreamy.

We took one little rest stop at about 6 miles, we were pretty excited to just get to our destination.

I felt like I was in the movie Into the Wild, other than I had two very funny and entertaining boys instead of my own solitude. The rivers that we would pass looked just like the ones in the movie. That movie is one of my favorites, and I've always wished I had it in me to do something like he did, other than not die.

There were several lakes up where we were camping, all of which were huge and amazing. It felt very surreal.

The flowers that we would pass on the trail were really pretty, and way big. It's hard to tell how large these are, but they are bigger than my hand.

All of our photos are kind of funny because we took them with the timer. We never seem to look very collected in them. Mostly I never am. Sean and Kevin were usually just being funny, and doing something weird.

I like this photo of Sean. It show's how relaxing and serene this place was.

The last mile of the day, I didn't think I was going to make it. I've never had such bad legs ache's, and I'm pretty weird and get them all the time. My legs killed. I couldn't walk. I also was wearing hiking shoes that I decided I hate. My feet hurt. It had never felt so good to lay down. I had to apply a ton of pressure to my legs and take some medicine.

Once the medicine kicked in I was so relaxed and tired. We ended up eating some tuna and horchata, we weren't hungry all day, but new we needed energy. Then pretty much went straight to sleep. It was an amazingly deep sleep for backpacking.

The next morning we woke up and hung out for a little bit around camp, then ate the worst thing we could of for breakfast, Top Ramon. We didn't pack much food because we figured it was two days and it wasn't worth carrying more weight. Top Ramon in the morning is awful, and I had to force myself to eat it. Bad idea.

Then we hiked out 10 miles out. Since my feet were hurting so bad, I decided to wear some great Old Navy flip flops all ten miles. Some how that was way better than my shoes, although the few people we passed on the trail did tell me I was crazy. Everyone looked super hard core with their boots and walking sticks, then there was us with a little packs, flip flops, and whistle's instead of bear mace.

We saw BEARS! Well Kevin and I saw a bear. Sean saw a bear and it's cubs. It was so cool. It was about 20 yards up the mountain from us, just staring at us. When your see a bear with cubs you are supposed to not look at it or let it see you, and slowly back away. We looked straight at it, then went crap when it looked at us, and tried to slowly move on, but were transfixed. Bad idea. But it was so cool, and so close to us. Seeing a bear that close 10 miles from the nearest road was a little intense.

We also saw a huge moose, and some dear and other wild life. It was quite the hike.

Aren't these two great looking boys. They were so much fun to go with, and making me laugh the entire trip. Most of the jokes were directed at me, but sadly I still couldn't help laughing.

As much as I loved the entire hike, it felt extremely good when we finally made it back to the car after a few day's in the wilderness.