greg willis

So for all the itinery, photos, and blah blah blah, what's worth the effort in Glacier? Well, to sum things up, here's my top 5:

1. Stay Overnight at Granite Park Chalet - You can experience the solitude of backcountry camping, but you don't have to haul your camping gear across the country. And meeting the folks who are staying there with you is always interesting -- and I don't esecially like meeting people. There's also Sperry Glacier Chalet. We hiked the Highline Trail to get there and the Swiftcurrent Pass trail to exit - world-class hikes on their own accord.

2. Hike to Grinnell Glacier - It's a great hike and you end up on a glacier - while it's still there. Good views of scenery and wildlife.

3. Visit Waterton - After the isolation of the US park, it's nice to visit a town. It has a good variety of restaurants and shops. Keep focused on the quaint and you'll like it.

4. Stay in the Many Glacier Hotel - Get a room on the lake side - it's a bit pricey, but you get your mony's worth. In other NP lodges, we've paid as much for an obscured view of Old Faithful or a view of Crater Lake through a window the size of a porthole. Here, you get a balcolny with the whole dang valley laid out before you.

5. Eat at Two Sisters - I've already written about this restaurant. Seriously, go there.

Food in US national parks sucks. And if it doesn't suck, it's because you've paid way too much for it. Each national park allows one company to run food and lodging (and by allow I mean pay for). So it's a monopoly. No matter who the concessionaire is -- Glacier Park Inc, ARAMARK, Xanterra -- the monopolistic nature of such an arrangement means that you have no alternative but to eat their food, and they have no incentive to make their food better.

Luckily, Glacier NP is not as isolated as, say, Yellowstone. Small towns dot the periphery of the park, and allow the visitor to circumvent the monopoly and taste real food. So here's my take on where we ate. Your mileage may vary.

Great Falls, MT

Brian's Top Notch Cafe
718 Central Avenue
Lives up to it's billing. We ate breakfast and the food was quite good -- imaginative and huge. And the banter between Brian and his mom provides the floor show.
Recommended

Dante's Creative Cuisine
1325 8th Ave N
OK. The dinner we had here wasn't bad -- and it's not a chain, so that's good. But it kinda left me flat. Even though everyone was very friendly, it had a vibe of pretension. "Creative cuisine?" Really? Maybe for Great Falls. Or maybe I was tired and at the end of the trip.

East of Park

Serranos
29 Dawson Ave
East Glacier Park, MT
Solid Mexican food, nice atmosphere in the restaurant.
Recommended.

Park Cafe
3147 Hwy 89
Saint Mary, MT
Popular place so either eat a bit early or be prepared to wait for a table. Decent sandwiches, but oh the pies! Their slogan, Pie for Strength, could not ring more true -- at least with their pies. I think mine was mango-raspberry - mmmm.
Recommended.

Two Sisters
Hwy 89, near Babb, MT
Easily the find of the trip. The food is creative (really), the service friendly, the beer cold, and the decor funky. We ate here three times, 2 dinner & 1 breakfast, and would have eaten more, but we had reservations across the park. I can't say enough good things. If you are within 2 hours drive, go there -- you won't regret it.
Highly Recommended!

Italian Gardens Restaurant
Swiftcurrent Motor Inn
Many Glacier
I have a photo here so that you can positively identify it and avoid it like you would roadkill. It's the kind of restaurant that makes you never want to eat again. Crappy decor, crappy service, crappy food. They screwed up pizza, how can you screw up pizza? Go to the adjacent store and buy a prepackaged sandwich and eat it outside. I'm serious, you'll thank me.

West of Park

Spruce Park Cafe
10045 Highway 2 East
Coram, MT
Oh sure, it's in a Exxon. But there are few places in this country where you can get this combination of folksy local hangout, comfort food, and great pie. Yes, this another decent food, great pie place that seem to pop up in Montana. Well worth the trip from Lake McDonald Lodge.
Recommended.

Waterton

Zums
116B Waterton Avenue
Waterton, AB
Had dinner. Average food. Nothing much else to say.

The Lamp Post
Waterton, AB
Even though we just had lunch here, the menu seemed thoughtful and the food was excellent. Definitely a more sophisticated place.
Recommended.

I love to create itineraries. I research the internet and the library to find out what's worth seeing and doing. Then I get out maps and figure how far it is to drive or hike, and which direction of travel would be best. And finally I write it all down on a grid of days to make sure that all the times are realistic. I do take great pride in my trip itineraries. No one else really cares, but I do.

So here's my hand-crafted itinerary of our trip to Glacier. The only thing I would change would be the staying in Great Falls. Due to inconvenient flight times (arriving late, leaving early) we had to stay there. But it's fairly underwhelming, so I wouldn't recommend it. Otherwise, it's solid. Good timing - plenty to do but not overwhelming - nice little rest at the end.

Work was so busy in aught-seven, that we had a whole family vacation that I didn't have time to write about. We went to Glacier NP for a little over a week.  I'll have a couple of write-ups shortly, so for now you can enjoy the Glacier NP photo album.