Montana and Idaho RV Trip + Glacier National Park
As many of your know, we love to do one big RV trip a year. Last spring we visited the Mid-West, but we thought why not try another one in the fall? Glacier National Park has been in my top 3 places to visit in the US for so long and I am so glad we finally made it happen. Between crowds and weather - it can be a tricky one to visit. I knew it would be a little rough taking off just weeks after we settled back into our school routine, but I had to remind myself that is why we chose this lifestyle…so that we can travel and do fun things like this. Was it rough coming back? Yep. Was it worth it? Yep.
OUR ROUTE & WHERE WE STAYED
We took 9 days and put about 1600 miles on our odometer.
Day 1: Salt Lake City, UT to Blue Dome, ID. We stayed at the Birch Creek Dispersed Campground.
Day 2-4: Blue Dome, ID to Kalispell, MT. We stayed 3 nights at Spruce Park on the River and drove into Glacier National Park from here. (More on this below.)
Day 5-6: Kalispell, MT to Coeur d’Alene, ID. We stopped at the St. Regis Travel Center to get lunch and huckleberry shakes. We spent an afternoon in Couer d’Alene swimming at Sanders Beach and then spent two nights at our friend’s property nearby.
Day 7-8: Coeur d’Alene to McCall, ID. We stayed 2 nights at the McCall RV Resort and absolutely loved it. We would say it’s in our top 3 best places we’ve ever stayed and we definitely want to go back. Here we spent the day walking around downtown, shopping, playing on the beach at Rotary Park, and we ate at Pueblo Lindo.
Day 9: McCall, ID back to Salt Lake City, UT.
Glacier National Park
We definitely planned to try to miss the crowds, but still hit good weather so we were hopeful we’d have good luck visiting the park a week after Labor Day and, really, I think we did pretty good! Turns out there were lots of wildfires (which we hadn’t even considered), but, fortunately the views were still good and we had fantastic weather. In fact, I packed winter clothes fully expecting cold weather and possible snow, but it was in the 80’s and we all wore shorts.
Logan's Pass
We really wanted to stay in the Apgar Campground, but it was all booked. We also looked into staying at the West Glacier KOA, but ended up opting against it because of the price. However, once we got up there we totally regretted not booking as close as we could to the park. Spruce Park on the River was about 45 minutes away, but it wasn’t anything great (the RV parking stalls were way too close). It’d be fine, but I wouldn’t stay there again if I had another choice.
We spent 1 VERY full day in the park and if I were to do it differently I would spend at least 2 days, but it’s hard because there is just so much driving and there aren’t a lot of roads in and out.
So, we came in through the West Entrance and spent the morning and early afternoon at Lake McDonald. This area is so pretty. We went to the Visitor’s Center and got our passports stamped and our Junior Ranger Books. and then took a short walking trail to Apgar Village where we looked around and then went down and spent some time on the lake. The kids took their shoes off here and played for awhile and it was just so pretty. We looped back to the parking lot and drove to Going to the Sun Road where we hopped off and spent some time at the lodge. We packed lunches in so we are here and then we rented a little motor boat for $35 and spent an hour exploring the lake.
This is probably where I would’ve done it differently - had we been able to camp closer to the park - I would’ve just spent all day at Lake McDonald. Then, the next morning retraced our path to go up further on Going to the Sun Road because once you go up that road - you either have to come back down it or go around a completely different way back to Kalispell or the east entrance. But, we still had a lot of hours left in the day so we just headed up Going to the Sun Road.
The Going to the Sun Road is a road I never want to go on again in my life. You climb from about 3100 feet in elevations to 6600 and the road is just two lanes, no barrier, very narrow and very steep. There are definitely vehicle restrictions on this and for sure no RVs. Let’s just say my 5 year old called this stretch the “Cliffs of Doom” and we had to pull in our truck’s side view mirrors. They must close this road when the weather is bad, but I just was so glad it wasn’t raining. Also, in Utah, we live at higher elevation so getting altitude sickness didn’t even cross my mind, but I was definitely feeling it and so was one of my daughter’s. It wasn’t too bad and we adjusted quickly, but just a heads up for sensitive stomachs.
Logan's Pass
Logan’s Pass is at the peak and we opted to the 2.6 mile round trip hike into views of Hidden Lake and I am so so so glad we did this. It was absolutely stunning. Had we come even a year ago I think my youngest (now 5) would’ve struggled on the hike because it is steeper, but all the kids did awesome. We were so hopeful we’d see a mountain goat and we didn’t here, but we did get an amazing view of a big horned sheep.
From Logan’s Pass you can either go back down Going to the Sun Road which I didn’t want to do, but we had already planned to go over to Many Glacier anyway so it was an easy choice for us. At this point we were all pretty tired and hungry, but there was no turning back so we kept chugging along and took the hour long drive over to Many Glacier. Fortunately we saw a mountain goat along the way and it was a really pretty drive through Mary’s Lake.
To be honest, as we were headed to Many Glacier and I was looking how long it’d be to get back to camp (2+ hours now) I was dying a little bit inside, but, oh, I am so glad we made it there. I didn’t realize just how amazing it’d be because we were right on the water. We ate a late dinner at The Ptarmigan Dining Room—which was expensive and not very good, but we were too hungry to care and the view was amazing. By the time we wrapped up the day it was 9:00 and we had a nice loooong drive back to our camp.
The next day we just had a down day (we needed it after 3 straight days of lots of driving). We relaxed, went shopping at Costco and then spent the evening at Foy’s Lake which was beautiful. For lunch, we ate at Moose’s Saloon Restaurant because someone had told us it was really good. I was juuuust a little taken a back when we walked in and it was reeeally dark inside. The pizza was cheap but incredible though — probably some of the best we’ve ever had. And, I think it was a good experience for the kids. One of them made a comment about how it was a totally opposite environment to where we dined the night before in Many Glacier — and they weren’t wrong.
The next day we headed to Idaho and worked our way down the state before heading home! (I shared more about that above.) On a final note, we didn’t plan this trip far enough in advance to get our passports. If we had been a little more on top of it and planned better —we would’ve gone into Canada. We were only like 10 miles from the border…but, I guess we’ll have to go back someday!
That’s a wrap! Let me know if you decide to go through any of these areas! I love hearing about other’s travel experiences.
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