We entered the park from West Glacier and traveled a
round Lake McDonald. There are so many lakes in this park, but the 2 largest lakes are truly huge (which is hard for Tonya to admit, you know being from Texas and all). Lake McDonald is the largest lake in Glacier National Park. It is approximately 10 miles long, over a mile wide and 472 feet deep.
After leaving Lake McDonald we continued our adventure up “Going to the Sun Road”, which is very appropriately named. This scenic drive is the gem of the park (in our opinion). Going-to-the-Sun Road is the only road through the park. It was completed in 1932 going over the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. A fleet of 1930s red tour buses "jammers", were rebuilt in 2001 to run on propane, offer tours on the road. We found it surprising that up to 80 feet of snow can accumulate on top of Logan Pass i
n the winter. It is quite narrow and winding especially west of Logan Pass. Prior to the construction of this road, it would take the earliest visitors 3-4 days to cross the park.
After winding our way over Logan Pass we headed eastbound toward St. Mary Lake. This lake is the second largest lake in Glacier and is located on the east side of the park. The Going-to-the-Sun road parallels the lake along it's north shore. Here, the great plains end and the Rocky Mountains begin in an
abrupt 5,000 ft. altitude change with Little Chief Mountain above the west end of the lake. It has a surface area of 3,923 acres, is 9.9 miles long & almost 300 ft. deep. During the winter, the lake often is frozen completely over with ice up to four feet 
thick.
It was a great day, one to behold and definitely on our “gotta do again” list.
2 comments:
Cool! I would love to visit Glacier National Park someday. Definitely on my bucket list. Thanks for the recommendation.
Oh wow! Those are super pretty!
Post a Comment