![]() The higher in elevation you drove, the more color you would see. ![]() The trees & shrubs along the road & across the valley floors were just beginning to turn yellow & bronze, grasses were turning all shades of Gold and Rust. Clear blue skies.not even a hint of smoke, few crowds, 69 degrees, and fabulous colors all around. The first day of Fall 2022 was just glorious. Not enough to days to even cover a small portion of the park. Both St Mary and Two Medicine Lakes are stunning. We then drove down towards 2 medicine lake. Oh, we saw marmots and mountain goats on various parts of going to the sun road. The Highline trail is epic and even my parents who are over 70 did about 1.5 mile on it. After circling Logan pass parking lot couple of times, we found parking. We noticed a lot of cars leaving towards west entrance and the park relatively less full. We really wanted to hike at least a park of the Highline Trail which starts at Logan Pass, so we returned on Saturday. We ended up doing the St Mary’s and Virginia Falls hike which in itself is one of the best and popular hikes off of this road. We circled the a few times, couldn’t find parking and headed towards St Mary’s. We got to Logan Pass around 1 pm and as it’s mentioned plenty of times, the parking lot was full. After we passed The Loop which is the only switchback, we found a lookout area and picnicked. After driving past lake McDonald, the elevation starts picking up and the drive is not for the faint of hearts, however, every lookout that you could find parking at gives you an insane view of the park. We entered from the west entrance on Thursday. As for this road itself, there is no word to describe it. I had no problem and that worked out really well. Both NPS website and google search have been providing plenty of information that NPS was instituting a ticket system for going to the sun road, so I purchased the $2 entry ticket 60 days ahead. I had planned this vacation for a while and had done extensive preparation. This engineering marvel of a road takes top honors as the epic experience. We did GNP as a third leg of our vacation after Grand Teton and Yellowstone. This is an experience of a lifetime to be in the crown jewel of US national parks (in my opinion). We’ll be back and it’ll be hard to top what we saw! While circling the lot at Logan Pass for an extended time, we did experience sunrise which was totally incredible! Away from some of the busier sites, we found a lot of pull offs to take in the gorgeous vistas and breathtaking treasure that is Glacier NP. We will have to make another trip in the coming months/years and hopefully things are back to normal and allows us to take in the full beauty of GNP! There are several hikes we’d love to do, but we’ll have to wait until parking is back to normal. I’ve never seen a Nat Park this crowded! It was very difficult at times to navigate the precarious road due to vehicles being parked where they normally wouldn’t be and visitors hiking in the middle of the road because they had to park so far from the sites and they have no place to walk except the road which makes it dangerous for drivers and hikers both. ![]() The east side of the park is closed (thanks, Rona) and there were no shuttles or tours bringing people in, so vehicle traffic is heavier than normal I’m told. Being in the park an hour before sunrise still wasn’t early enough for us to beat the rest of the crowd. We arrived before sunrise because we’d heard crowds are continuing to get larger and larger and parking at Logan Pass and Avalanche area is filling up earlier and earlier in the day. One of the most amazing parks we’ve seen and the Going to the Sun Road is almost indescribably awesome. The goals of ticketed entry included shaving off the high peaks in traffic to reduce congestion on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and avoiding gridlock that could block emergency traffic, the news release said.Visited 9/11/20 and it was our first time to GNP. Highway 2 during construction and operate with reduced staff and services due to COVID-19 mitigations. The pilot ticketed entry system was implemented on Going-to-the-Sun Road to help manage high traffic volumes during a predicted high visitor season avoid traffic back-ups onto U.S. The park is holding discussions with stakeholders and hopes to announce a decision by late fall. Park officials will use the information gathered during the 2021 pilot to determine how to move forward in 2022. Vehicle entry during June through August at Two Medicine was up almost 33 percent, the highest on record, and the North Fork almost 20 percent over 2019 numbers. While Going-to-the-Sun Road vehicle entry decreased this year, alternate entrances to the park saw increased visitation, resulting in frequent closures. ![]()
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