Summer Vacation in Glacier National Park

July 2026

Rebecca and I celebrate 10 years of marriage this year in August. We wanted to go somewhere just the two of us, and after lots of thought (and some searching for flight costs) we picked Glacier National Park. It’s been a bucket list item for me for ages, and even though I’d really like to do some backcountry camping, there’s no way Rebecca would, so for this trip, I’d have to settle for hiking and a nice cabin as a base. Fine by me.

We first drove to Minnesota, stayed a day, then left the boys and flew to Kalispell. We arrived during record rainfall, so the recently opened Going to the Sun road was now closed again. So, we hiked where we could, and took photos of the massive and violent water flows. By day 2 more of the road was open, and we hiked Avalanche Falls Trail in the brooding fog – along with everyone else who couldn’t get further in to the park.

After that the sun came out, and we spent the next few days hiking all the places we had wanted to, except for Highline Trail, which was still under many feet of snow despite it being July. But that’s ok, plenty of other absolutely beautiful and tranquil hikes to occupy us. We ended up doing 30 miles in our 4 days. Saw plenty of wildlife, 2 grizzlies, and one momma grizzly and her two cubs, couple of moose, birds, mountain goats, and squirrels, didn’t see any black bears despite the ranger telling us there are more of them and we didn’t see any bighorn sheep. I can’t possibly do the park justice, I’ll let the photos do the best they can in that regard, but needless to say, it was absolutely stunning. Glacier is beautiful. I will definitely be coming back – maybe for some backcountry camping.