July 15 through 18, 2022
Glacier National Park is an amazingly beautiful place and certainly can't be covered in just 4 days but we sure did our best to try! We were fortunate that the Going-to-the-Sun Road through the park opened up just two days before our arrival (it had been closed because of too much snow 😲). Thanks to the Red Bus tours, we were able to see quite a bit of the eastern and southern parts of the park without having to navigate the roads by ourselves.
We did have a rental car though (our one and only time this year) and one day we drove to Many Glacier to explore and hike. We wound up on a trail to Apikuni Falls which was only 0.8 miles but with 650 ft in elevation gain it felt a whole lot longer 😅. I'm happy to report that the view at the end was definitely worth it (see photo below). The most exciting part of the hike happened on our return when we saw many folks in the parking lot excitedly waving to us. How nice and friendly that was! As it turned out, they were actually waving to warn us about the large bear that was just 15 ft to our right lurking in the trees. Although we didn't see the bear, we saw it on the cameras of those nice friendly folks, and obviously we made it back safely (but just bear-ly!).
Other highlights of Glacier included trying bison burgers and huckleberry ice cream, standing on the Continental Divide, walking on snow in mid-July, viewing wondrous waterfalls, and enjoying long hours of daylight (past 10pm). Finally it was time to head north back to Calgary for our flight to Croatia. We made sure in advance that the border crossing was open (see previous blog post for that snafu) even though their road signs are still wildly unhelpful. This time we encountered a different issue at the border: we hadn't filled out our ArriveCan app for this visit (the one that seemed so irrelevant last week 😑) so we had to turn around and re-enter the US and then fill it out (with spotty wifi no less) and then re-enter Canada. And all of this had to be done in short order to make it to our flight on time. Just a teeny bit stressful. All went well, and thanks to no traffic, we made it (and by the way that was the last and only time that we plan to be in the US this year)!
Our long day of travel involved flying 8.5 hours from Calgary to Amsterdam, a layover for 2 hours, then 2.5 more hours of travel to Dubrovnik whose time zone is 8 hours later than Calgary. We started our day in Calgary at 8am on Sunday and landed in Dubrovnik at 1pm on Monday. Good thing we're so young 😄 and flexible with traveling. Even with all that, we did a bit of exploring this afternoon/evening, taking a gondola ride to see the view of Dubrovnik from above, enjoying some local cuisine, and finding our way to the Old Town. (Disclaimer: we're not Game of Thrones fans but we're told much of their filming took place here... maybe we should watch an episode??) We're looking forward to seeing more of this Gem on the Adriatic in the next few days, including some side trips further afield.
Art and Deena
Red Bus tour at Glacier
Waterfall at Glacier
Glacier National Park sights
Lookin good! Glad you didn't get mauled by a bear!
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