Day 1 - Saturday June 7

With anticipation, we headed to the airport at 6am.  These early morning wake-ups are still hard to do on the first day of vacation.  We flew on Alaska Airlines at 8am and arrived in Seattle at 10:20.  Very good flight - comfortable, good service, and smooth flying.  We had coffee and a sandwich at Starbucks for lunch and needed to wait until our flight to Kalispell at 1:15.  Our plane was a "Bombardier" meaning that it was a "prop job" with 2 seats on each side of the aisle.  As we took off, we flew east and enjoyed good views of the Cascades and Mt. Rainier.  It was a little cloudy but you could see the top of Mt Rainier pretty well.  Geographically, it's a lot closer to downtown Seattle than I remembered.

As we were flying in and leaving the airport in the rental car, my first impression was that the valley looked much like Denver with similar mountains, homes, ranches, and lakes, except for the absence of a large city.  We drove north out of the airport and seven miles later, we arrived in the town of Columbia Falls and the Meadow Lake Resort.

Meadow Lake has their own golf course, townhomes, and residences.  Their onsite restaurant was a nice experience with good food and was convenient. The supermarket was only one mile south of the resort and had everything we needed, except for one thing - bear spray.  The front desk staff strongly suggested we buy some for our hikes.  It comes in a pressurized bottle costing $50 which we can hang from a pack or belt.  I want to see a grizzly bear, but only from a very considerable distance away.

Sunset wasn't supposed to occur until 9:30, so we decided to take a walk around the area.  We could feel the 3087' altitude, especially after dragging our luggage up three flights of stairs.  (There is no elevator in the condo building.)  At least it will be easier taking the bags downstairs later!  What I noticed was that the sun is higher in the sky and more to the northwest later in the day.  Also, the sunset happens more gradually than at home.  By comparison, Kauai sunrise/sunsets happen very quickly and that they're done before you know it.  Here in Montana, the time between actual sunset and dusk was about 45 minutes.

Tomorrow we head into the park for a driving tour.  We see a restaurant nearby called the Huckleberry Patch which has a breakfast menu and sells jellies.  Huckleberry pancakes sounds good!  After that, we head into Glacier NP.  The "Going to the Sun" highway is partially open due to excessive snow, but they hope to have it all plowed and opened by the end of the week. Once that happens, we'll be able to drive completely across the park.  Today, we would have to drive in part way, then return out and take another route south to get to the other side.

Here's a video from our first morning, Sunday (YouTube):  http://youtu.be/QnGqyB7bbUk