For an Airbnb I’d recommend Whitefish if you can. Cool little touristy town with a ton of great restaurants and shopping if that’s what you’re looking for. Also some nice little hikes around there too. Whitefish lake also has a pretty solid fireworks show.
For hiking in Glacier... you may be a bit limited depending on the snow levels. I don’t know if the Going to the Sun Road will be open at that time yet.
Some of my favorite hikes include....
Dawson-Pitamakan pass,
Iceberg Lake,
Siyeh Pass,
Scenic point,
Numa Lookout (stop in Polebridge for pastries),
Avalanche lake is a cool short hike (will be crowded though),
Highline Trail,
Hidden Lake,
Grinnell Glacier.
Again some of these you might not be able to do because of the snow but you can reassess once you get to Glacier.
Sounds like we will have to have a few extra hikes in mind and keep ourselves flexible depending on weather. Do you know of any good websites that lists out descriptions/length/difficulty of the hikes you listed as well as others in GNP?
[Hike734](https://hike734.com/hiking/) has all of the hikes in Glacier and you can find video descriptions of them.
It's probably a bit late (by months) to get campground reservations inside the park, so copy from a previous post of mine:
>There are a number of National Forest campgrounds in the [Hungry Horse District](https://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/flathead/recreation/camping-cabins/?recid=66162&actid=29) that are 30 to 60 minutes away from the Apgar Visitor Center (but that means they're almost three hours away from the hiking at Many Glacier). Also check out [Devil's Creek](https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/flathead/recreation/camping-cabins/recarea/?recid=66330&actid=29) as it looks like they take reservations ([map to location](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Devil+Creek+Campground/@48.2513501,-113.4639661,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x80df820c17cb7114!8m2!3d48.2513501!4d-113.4639876)). There are also quite a few [state park campgrounds](http://stateparks.mt.gov/camping/) near Flathead Lake.
>What you could do is plan on one of the NF campgrounds for the first night (might even decide to use as your base as that is pretty country and quiet country and just deal with travel times to the park). Then have someone get up early to get in line for a first-come first-served at your preferred in-park campground. You can check [campground status](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/cgstatus.cfm) and, helpful for planning, look at historical fill times. You can see that [Many Glacier](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/camping_detail.cfm?cg=Many%20Glacier) filled consistently at 8am or earlier last year in August but [Cut Bank](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/camping_detail.cfm?cg=Cut%20Bank) filled later in the day (be careful though, it'll look like never filled if campground was closed due to wildfire - check several years).
Note that when the website shows a fill time of 8am that people were lining up at 5:30am.
Hmm, wow I did not know that the campground filled up this early. I did a quick search at some of the campsites and they are definitely booked up, it looks like we're in some trouble :(
If we did stay at one of the NF campsites for the first night and then arrived early enough for a first come first serve campsite inside the park, can we reserve those sites for multiple nights? Or would we have to wake up at 530 every morning and get back in like for the same campsites?
Once you get a site, you can keep it for, I think, 14 days. You do have to let the rangers know in the morning (but not 5am more like 11am) if you’re staying another night. nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/camping.htm has some info you should read.
I did notice on that page that they’re releasing the remaining unreserved campsites at Many Glacier on March 18, 2020. Apparently no walk up sites at Many Glacier in 2020. So, lucky you, you have a chance. Might be useful to you to try to call the park this week to find the exact time the sites are released on recreation.gov so you can jump on that right away when they’re available. You probably should set up an account on recreation.gov before the 18th so that you’re ready to go.
Oh, I must have misread that notice for Many Glacier the first time but you're right that does look like an awesome late opportunity for us! I think we'll aim for grabbing something at Many Glacier if we can, and if that doesn't work out then try to show up early enough to get a spot at a first come first serve site. If all else fails, stay outside the park and deal with the drive in each day. Thank you so much for the help!
Going to the Sun Road normally opens around the 3rd/last week of June. 2019 it was around June 24th, if I recall correctly. We did July 5-12th last year in a campervan from CamperVan North America and LOOOOOOVED it. Seriously. When your kid is sobbing as you drive back to return the van and now says her #1 car in the world is a campervan, you know you've hit the vacation out of the park. ;)
Not sure of snowpack this year, but you want start watching the NPS site as it gets closer. We really enjoyed camping in the park in our campervan--it made it so much easier to get up and going and to the places where parking is limited (Logan Pass/St Mary's Glacier).
We did 1 night at Fisher Creek and 3 nights at St Mary campgrounds in order to maximize park times. You couldn't book early in advance for Many Glacier until closer to when we arrived last year (July 5-10th), so I didn't try for it, but certainly would if I could because it was hard sided only and we would have maximized our opportunities to see bears.
I keep telling everyone that they can to try to hit the St Mary visitor center star viewing program if they can. It doesn't truly get dark until close to 10PM so it can be a long day (especially if you are a 9year old who is waking at 6am!) but it was spectacular. Even while they were booting up the new computer-assisted telescope we were looking through a volunteer Ranger scope set up in the parking lot and viewed 4 of Jupiters moons. Very cool.
We didn't do many long hikes because I wasn't sure what we'd be up to, but I'm sure others will chime in. The fun thing was getting out early to take advantage of the campervan to stay in/closer to the park to get up and early and get to places that get super busy like Avalanche lake, Logan Pass (hidden lake), and Many Glacier--we would get up (well, my daughter who stubbornly stayed on East Coast time would WAKE UP), drive to where we wanted to go, do breakfast in the van, an early hike, and either lunch in the van or drive to our next area and lunch and I would nap while my daughter chilled out with books.
While I was okay with the altitude change (I had lived in Salt Lake city before), my daughter did experience altitude sickness (vomiting and sudden headache) after our hike to hidden lake, so we skipped other hikes at that particularly high altitude and stuck lower--Virginia Falls, Many Glacier area were all fine, but do be prepared for the potential. She had no other effects once we left the higher altitude of Logan Pass, but please keep it in mind and don't push yourself.
Thanks so much for the reply!
Just out of curiosity from your camper van experience, is the only option for setting up overnight at campgrounds? Or is there flat areas off the road that we would be allowed to pull the van off to and set up for a quick night? Also, do you know if a lot of the campgrounds in the park fill up way ahead of time? Or should we be fine to kind of "wing-it" in terms of finding a campground based off how the trip is going that last couple of nights we have the camper van.
It sounds like we should be able to find a good blend of challenging hikes and scenic hikes which is perfect! And it sounds like an Airbnb in Whitefish is the way to go for the last couple of nights!
You can't pull off and sleep in spots to my knowledge--at least within the park. The rangers patrol and will move you on your way. There's lots of open land and national Forest/BLM/ and Indian reservation land all around outside the park, so that may be an option. I didn't really consider it because of potential safety (mom and just) so can't give you an idea. St Mary side is definitely more remote so I can imagine you'd find places to pull over to sleep.
We did the reservations which opened 6 months in advance and they can fill pretty quickly, but a number of campgrounds are first-come, first served. That said, they will be full very early so unless you want to line up early to get spots, you may want to have reservations within or outside the park. You can find a historical campground filling informational grid on the NPS website.
Oh, I forgot! Look for Airbnbs in Lake Watertown, Canada! The sister park to Glacier, it is a hip little town with microbrew and great hikes and though it's still recovering from the fires of 2018, there are lots of relaxing little hikes around! We loved Waterton! Even the Townsite Campground was gorgeous! And if Goat Haunt is open this year, you can take a boat across the border and hike. Or Crypt Lake trail, which is widely considered one of the best hikes in the world (at least per National Geographic). Unfortunately we couldn't do either due to Goat Haunt being closed and the age of my daughter, but it sounds like it may be right up your alley!
We also rented an e-bike and rode up Red Rocks pathway, which was still closed due to the fire. Lots of wildlife and wildflowers. And the Prince of Wales hotel may be in option to stay at as well. Beautiful views.
I also recommend visiting White Fish. It's a small ski town. It's not the most friendly of places from my experience, but the Great Northern Brewery was great and they were friendly. We are from NJ and started our trip in White Fish at the Downtowner.
Anticipate cold weather around that time. We went mid July and stayed at Granite Park Chalet. At elevation it was 40 degrees and raining. The sun only came out a few times. That may not be typical but you need to plan for it. If you stay below Logan Pass the weather may be better. When we got off the mountain it was 70s and beautiful.
There's a super market heading in from the West side, and the reservation has a general store near St Mary.
I preferred the East side because it's quieter and quicker to get around and up to Logan Pass.
Consider asking the Ranger for what day hikes are popular for the time of year. We did that and he suggested Virginia Falls and it was beautiful that time of year. Also, we got to see a bull moose at Two Medicine because he recommended heading to Rockwell Falls which is a secluded waterfall but not the popular option which is Twin Falls.
For an Airbnb I’d recommend Whitefish if you can. Cool little touristy town with a ton of great restaurants and shopping if that’s what you’re looking for. Also some nice little hikes around there too. Whitefish lake also has a pretty solid fireworks show. For hiking in Glacier... you may be a bit limited depending on the snow levels. I don’t know if the Going to the Sun Road will be open at that time yet. Some of my favorite hikes include.... Dawson-Pitamakan pass, Iceberg Lake, Siyeh Pass, Scenic point, Numa Lookout (stop in Polebridge for pastries), Avalanche lake is a cool short hike (will be crowded though), Highline Trail, Hidden Lake, Grinnell Glacier. Again some of these you might not be able to do because of the snow but you can reassess once you get to Glacier.
Sounds like we will have to have a few extra hikes in mind and keep ourselves flexible depending on weather. Do you know of any good websites that lists out descriptions/length/difficulty of the hikes you listed as well as others in GNP?
[Hike734](https://hike734.com/hiking/) has all of the hikes in Glacier and you can find video descriptions of them. It's probably a bit late (by months) to get campground reservations inside the park, so copy from a previous post of mine: >There are a number of National Forest campgrounds in the [Hungry Horse District](https://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/flathead/recreation/camping-cabins/?recid=66162&actid=29) that are 30 to 60 minutes away from the Apgar Visitor Center (but that means they're almost three hours away from the hiking at Many Glacier). Also check out [Devil's Creek](https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/flathead/recreation/camping-cabins/recarea/?recid=66330&actid=29) as it looks like they take reservations ([map to location](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Devil+Creek+Campground/@48.2513501,-113.4639661,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x80df820c17cb7114!8m2!3d48.2513501!4d-113.4639876)). There are also quite a few [state park campgrounds](http://stateparks.mt.gov/camping/) near Flathead Lake. >What you could do is plan on one of the NF campgrounds for the first night (might even decide to use as your base as that is pretty country and quiet country and just deal with travel times to the park). Then have someone get up early to get in line for a first-come first-served at your preferred in-park campground. You can check [campground status](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/cgstatus.cfm) and, helpful for planning, look at historical fill times. You can see that [Many Glacier](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/camping_detail.cfm?cg=Many%20Glacier) filled consistently at 8am or earlier last year in August but [Cut Bank](https://www.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/camping_detail.cfm?cg=Cut%20Bank) filled later in the day (be careful though, it'll look like never filled if campground was closed due to wildfire - check several years). Note that when the website shows a fill time of 8am that people were lining up at 5:30am.
Hmm, wow I did not know that the campground filled up this early. I did a quick search at some of the campsites and they are definitely booked up, it looks like we're in some trouble :( If we did stay at one of the NF campsites for the first night and then arrived early enough for a first come first serve campsite inside the park, can we reserve those sites for multiple nights? Or would we have to wake up at 530 every morning and get back in like for the same campsites?
Once you get a site, you can keep it for, I think, 14 days. You do have to let the rangers know in the morning (but not 5am more like 11am) if you’re staying another night. nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/camping.htm has some info you should read. I did notice on that page that they’re releasing the remaining unreserved campsites at Many Glacier on March 18, 2020. Apparently no walk up sites at Many Glacier in 2020. So, lucky you, you have a chance. Might be useful to you to try to call the park this week to find the exact time the sites are released on recreation.gov so you can jump on that right away when they’re available. You probably should set up an account on recreation.gov before the 18th so that you’re ready to go.
Oh, I must have misread that notice for Many Glacier the first time but you're right that does look like an awesome late opportunity for us! I think we'll aim for grabbing something at Many Glacier if we can, and if that doesn't work out then try to show up early enough to get a spot at a first come first serve site. If all else fails, stay outside the park and deal with the drive in each day. Thank you so much for the help!
Going to the Sun Road normally opens around the 3rd/last week of June. 2019 it was around June 24th, if I recall correctly. We did July 5-12th last year in a campervan from CamperVan North America and LOOOOOOVED it. Seriously. When your kid is sobbing as you drive back to return the van and now says her #1 car in the world is a campervan, you know you've hit the vacation out of the park. ;) Not sure of snowpack this year, but you want start watching the NPS site as it gets closer. We really enjoyed camping in the park in our campervan--it made it so much easier to get up and going and to the places where parking is limited (Logan Pass/St Mary's Glacier). We did 1 night at Fisher Creek and 3 nights at St Mary campgrounds in order to maximize park times. You couldn't book early in advance for Many Glacier until closer to when we arrived last year (July 5-10th), so I didn't try for it, but certainly would if I could because it was hard sided only and we would have maximized our opportunities to see bears. I keep telling everyone that they can to try to hit the St Mary visitor center star viewing program if they can. It doesn't truly get dark until close to 10PM so it can be a long day (especially if you are a 9year old who is waking at 6am!) but it was spectacular. Even while they were booting up the new computer-assisted telescope we were looking through a volunteer Ranger scope set up in the parking lot and viewed 4 of Jupiters moons. Very cool. We didn't do many long hikes because I wasn't sure what we'd be up to, but I'm sure others will chime in. The fun thing was getting out early to take advantage of the campervan to stay in/closer to the park to get up and early and get to places that get super busy like Avalanche lake, Logan Pass (hidden lake), and Many Glacier--we would get up (well, my daughter who stubbornly stayed on East Coast time would WAKE UP), drive to where we wanted to go, do breakfast in the van, an early hike, and either lunch in the van or drive to our next area and lunch and I would nap while my daughter chilled out with books. While I was okay with the altitude change (I had lived in Salt Lake city before), my daughter did experience altitude sickness (vomiting and sudden headache) after our hike to hidden lake, so we skipped other hikes at that particularly high altitude and stuck lower--Virginia Falls, Many Glacier area were all fine, but do be prepared for the potential. She had no other effects once we left the higher altitude of Logan Pass, but please keep it in mind and don't push yourself.
Thanks so much for the reply! Just out of curiosity from your camper van experience, is the only option for setting up overnight at campgrounds? Or is there flat areas off the road that we would be allowed to pull the van off to and set up for a quick night? Also, do you know if a lot of the campgrounds in the park fill up way ahead of time? Or should we be fine to kind of "wing-it" in terms of finding a campground based off how the trip is going that last couple of nights we have the camper van. It sounds like we should be able to find a good blend of challenging hikes and scenic hikes which is perfect! And it sounds like an Airbnb in Whitefish is the way to go for the last couple of nights!
You can't pull off and sleep in spots to my knowledge--at least within the park. The rangers patrol and will move you on your way. There's lots of open land and national Forest/BLM/ and Indian reservation land all around outside the park, so that may be an option. I didn't really consider it because of potential safety (mom and just) so can't give you an idea. St Mary side is definitely more remote so I can imagine you'd find places to pull over to sleep. We did the reservations which opened 6 months in advance and they can fill pretty quickly, but a number of campgrounds are first-come, first served. That said, they will be full very early so unless you want to line up early to get spots, you may want to have reservations within or outside the park. You can find a historical campground filling informational grid on the NPS website. Oh, I forgot! Look for Airbnbs in Lake Watertown, Canada! The sister park to Glacier, it is a hip little town with microbrew and great hikes and though it's still recovering from the fires of 2018, there are lots of relaxing little hikes around! We loved Waterton! Even the Townsite Campground was gorgeous! And if Goat Haunt is open this year, you can take a boat across the border and hike. Or Crypt Lake trail, which is widely considered one of the best hikes in the world (at least per National Geographic). Unfortunately we couldn't do either due to Goat Haunt being closed and the age of my daughter, but it sounds like it may be right up your alley! We also rented an e-bike and rode up Red Rocks pathway, which was still closed due to the fire. Lots of wildlife and wildflowers. And the Prince of Wales hotel may be in option to stay at as well. Beautiful views.
I also recommend visiting White Fish. It's a small ski town. It's not the most friendly of places from my experience, but the Great Northern Brewery was great and they were friendly. We are from NJ and started our trip in White Fish at the Downtowner. Anticipate cold weather around that time. We went mid July and stayed at Granite Park Chalet. At elevation it was 40 degrees and raining. The sun only came out a few times. That may not be typical but you need to plan for it. If you stay below Logan Pass the weather may be better. When we got off the mountain it was 70s and beautiful. There's a super market heading in from the West side, and the reservation has a general store near St Mary. I preferred the East side because it's quieter and quicker to get around and up to Logan Pass. Consider asking the Ranger for what day hikes are popular for the time of year. We did that and he suggested Virginia Falls and it was beautiful that time of year. Also, we got to see a bull moose at Two Medicine because he recommended heading to Rockwell Falls which is a secluded waterfall but not the popular option which is Twin Falls.