First time at Glacier National Park: Going to the Sun Road, St. Mary Falls, Lake McDonald, & more!

Yesterday we drove to Glacier National Park with a few fun stops along the way. We visited Flathead Lake, tried Flathead Cherries, did some important chores, and ended the day sort of making campfire pizza. Disaster, absolute disaster. Today is our first day at Glacier National Park, the 10th most visited U.S. national park with 3 million visitors annually, which is pretty crazy since the park isn't even fully open the whole year. The park is home to 762 lakes, most of which are unnamed, beautiful mountain views, waterfalls, and 26 glaciers, all of which are shrinking in size. And today's goal is to see as much beautiful scenery as we can. It's 4 30 a.m. and we are pumped and jazzed because today we are finally going to Glacier National Park. And today's plan is to drive the Going to the Sun Road, which is said to be one of the most scenic drives in the U.S. The Going to the Sun Road is 50 miles long each way, with many viewpoints and hikes along the way. And it's only open part of the year, typically late June or early July until October, depending on the weather. And as we mentioned on yesterday's vlog, only vehicles 21 feet or less can drive on the road due to the steep, windy, and narrow nature of it. So that's why we traded our van for this fancy rental car. All right, let's hit the road. All right, we made it to Logan Pass and the views on the drive were incredible. It's another one of those cases where I don't do a ton of research, so I'm like completely blown away. And I knew it was going to be epic, but it still blew my mind. And it was pretty dark at first, but it's getting a lot lighter now. And oh man, you guys, today is going to be so epic. So our original plan was to do a sunrise hike to Hidden Lake, which is actually one of the spots I was most excited to visit here. But thankfully, I did some research beforehand, and I've heard that in the past like week or so, it's been closed because of bear activity. I think grizzly bear activity. So we were hopeful maybe it had opened for today, but it's still closed. So unfortunately, we will not get to do that. Maybe we'll check later and see if it opened. But we're coming back to Glacier anyway to do the east side since that's closed due to COVID. So we'll do it next time. It's kind of a bummer, but how can you be mad when these are the views? This is ridiculous. So we're just walking on some little path of the visitor center. We're just going to see what views we can get from here for sunrise. The sun hasn't risen yet. Getting close though. It'll still be beautiful. It's getting better and better by the minute. I'm so excited right now. Oh my gosh. We've had very high hopes for Glacier. Already exceeding them. Absolutely epic. First five minutes. Even just from this paved trail at the visitor center. So far, this is the most epic parking lot of my life. How do you view this? It's 360. Ridiculous views. Warning. This vlog is going to be full of a lot of, oh my gosh, this is beautiful. Crazy. Cool. And just lots of views like this. That was our first ever bighorn sheep. Going to the sun road and we are heading east. And we're making a quick pit stop at a little overlook called Jackson Glacier, which from what I remember is the seventh largest glacier in the park. All right, back on the road. What I think I was saying is that we came to the Some Point Nature Trailhead to visit Some Point, which is a super quick walk from the parking lot and overlook St. Mary Lake. From there, our plan is to hike to St. Mary and Virginia Falls, which are two really popular waterfalls in the park. And instead of taking the main trail to get to them, we were going to take the trail from Some Point, which passes a third waterfall called Bering Falls along the way. We think that this route would be a total of six miles round trip. This trail is really interesting. There's a ton of wildfire damage, so the trees are all really dead. But then there's tons of pink, beautiful wildflowers. And it sounds... This is a very deep thought I've been having as we've been walking through, but it's kind of like life and death all together. I don't know. It's just a really interesting contrast. And then the lake, St. Mary's Lake, is so clear and blue. It's a beautiful day. That was deep. Whoa, man. We made it to Bering Falls, the first of three waterfalls on this trail. Next up, St. Mary Falls. We've gotten pretty lucky with the wildlife so far. We saw those bighorn sheep in the parking lot at sunrise. And now we've seen two moose in the water down here. One was really far. You could barely see it. But then there was one in a body of water that's a lot closer. Super cool. I think we're almost there. Look at how... It's making me so thirsty. And now we're off to Virginia Falls. What about this one? St. Mary Falls had the Gatorade blue water. The water here is still extremely clear, but the rocks underneath are this really nice deep orangey-red color. That's a totally different vibe. It's really pretty. All right. We made it back to the car. This area we're in right now is about as far as you can go east on the Going to the Sun Road this year. Normally, you can go farther, but it's closed the rest of the way. So we're actually going to turn around and revisit some of the spots we drove by this morning in the dark and check out the Visitor Center because we have some purchases we need to make. All right. We made it back to the Visitor Center parking lot. And man, it is way busier than when we were here for sunrise this morning. We had to do a bit of a parking lot stalking where you go up and down the aisles trying to follow people for their parking spot. But we lucked out because a lady waved us down to give us her spot. So shout out to that lady. We actually just saw a fight happen in the parking lot because one car thought another car stole the spot they wanted. And there was some foul language and some rude hand gestures if you catch my drift. These spots are high demand, that's for sure. The stakes are high. Stakes are high. It's heated. I don't know. But we made it into the gift shop and we got a couple purchases. First off, we got our national park pass so we can hang it up. Park patch so we can hang it up in our inn. We also got some postcards for our patrons and our family. We've been getting quite a few new patrons lately. So we just want to say a huge shout out and thank you to them. We super, super appreciate it. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Patreon, it's another way that you can help support our channel or you don't have to. And in exchange for supporting our channel, we'll send you guys postcards. We film special vlogs just for patrons. We have one we're trying to upload right now from Seattle, but we can't find good Wi-Fi. And then some tiers get to see every vlog one to two days early, sometimes much earlier than that. It kind of just depends. But we'll put a link below if y'all want to check it out. All right, we're back on the going to the sun road going west towards Lake McDonald, which is our next big stop. But we may stop at a few cool viewpoints along the way. So we stopped at this awesome pullout. I think we think it's near the weeping wall, but I was I overheard a ranger talking to someone over over yonder and saying that the face of this cliff or mountainside over here is it's like a straight up and down. That's like a telltale sign that the glacier that was once here was basically all the way up to there, about 2000 feet of ice. That's ridiculous. So it turns out we asked the ranger. This overlook is called the Big Ben Lookout, which pretend you haven't seen it yet. We're going to come back here for sunset. And right across the street from the Big Ben pullout is the weeping wall, which looks kind of just like a rock face wall. That's just crying a lot of tears. It's weeping. Our next stop on our going to the sun road tour is Lake McDonald, which is a humongous lake at the beginning of the road. It has these epic mountain views, has crystal clear water. It's like clear. Then it's kind of like a greenish bluish and it gets really deep blue. It's just amazing. And we're going to get in. So we go to a lot of lakes and sometimes we swim. Most of the time we don't. And many moons ago, we bought this floaty and we just have never gotten around to using it. And we think this is going to be the perfect time to blow this sucker up, jump on it and float around. Two hours later, time to see how cold this water is. It's pretty cold. We were a lot warmer earlier and this sounded really nice, but we were in the A.C. for a while. So now this is a bit chilly. Oh, it feels nice now, though. All right, I'm going in. No, it feels really good now. The sun when the sun's hitting the water, the water actually feels perfect. We had a nice swim in Lake McDonald, but now we're going to head back to the RV park for a special dinner. Today is an extra special day because it's this special lady's 28th birthday. She's my favorite human in the world. I love spending every single second with you. You make me cry. Let's do a taco cheers. Oh, you're the best. I love you. So what better way to celebrate my birthday than tacos? Here's to 228 more years of sharing tacos and ice cream. The steak is super soft and the tortilla is crispy on the outside, but still soft. It's our favorite corn tortillas. They're the kind you make on the pan. So it's kind of like the dough. The brand is Tortilla Land. They're the best. They're so good. The flour ones are super good, too, but we go with corn. This is, I think it's ribeye steak and I cubed it this time. I don't normally do that. I usually just cut it in strips, but it's super soft and good. And you cooked it over the fire. Yeah, I cooked it on the cast iron. Crushed it. Yeah, it's super good. Basic taco, just salsa cheese and meat. Wow, one more thing to say. We're going to Disney World. I wish. Everybody leave a comment below and wish Katherine a happy belated birthday. By the time you see this, I will be... It'll be a few days old. I will be 28 and maybe a week and a half. So for dessert, we bought a couple weeks ago, we bought a pint of Frankie and Joe's California Cabin ice cream. Frankie and Joe's. Oh man, these candles are like in my nose. Frankie and Joe's is our favorite ice cream spot in Seattle. We vlogged it on our Seattle vlog before we moved into the van. So if you don't know what we're talking about, go check that out. But it's so good. It's vegan gluten-free ice cream, but don't let that scare you away. If you didn't know, you would not know. It is so dang good. And I don't know how it lasted in our van freezer. It barely lasted. It's kind of melty. It doesn't look good. Physically, like how we didn't eat it yet. Yeah, it was really hard not to eat it. It's yeah, it's a little melty and weird, but it's still going to taste really good. But I got these really cool candles. They're in the ice cream. They're supposed to... Yeah, they're supposed to burn the color that they are. So this one's purple, orange. This one's blue. Red's back here. Red. So cool. I guess, make a wish. All right. So this California cabin flavor, in case you guys ever go to Frankie and Joe's, this is a really good one. It's one of their everyday flavors. They always have it. We typically get their seasonals. But this last time we tried to branch out and get some of their everyday ones. So the description says, imagine yourself by a cozy fire. Here we are. We are in a cabin deep in the pine forest of California, Montana mountains. The flavors of smoked vanilla and pine are infused in our homemade cashew milk and gum-free creamy coconut milk base with chewy gluten-free black pepper cardamom shortbread cookie chunks nestled throughout. Our way for you to enjoy the beauty of the Californian forest wherever you may be. It's basically perfect. Oh, there are so many chunks in here. Oh my gosh, it's very melted. We had kind of a little bit of a power mishap with the van today. Didn't get enough solar. So we think the freezer might have started to melt. Really good. Doesn't matter that it's a little melted. Does not matter. It still tastes delicious. There's so many chunks in this one. We got, we picked a good one. We did. I don't even know how to describe this flavor. But the chunks are what make it. We love chunks in our ice cream. And these are just really good. The black pepper kind of scares me every time in the pine needles. But it just... This is gingerbread, you said, right? It says... Shortbread or shortbread cookies. Black. Black pepper cardamom shortbread. Super good. It's the best. What's really funny is Adam posted a very sweet Instagram about my birthday today. And when we finally got, had service later today and we saw some of the comments. Handful of people had commented basically saying, I hope you eat tacos and ice cream today and putting the emojis and stuff. And y'all were so right. You guys just know us too well. We're really predictable. Seriously, tacos. Favorite ice cream. Best birthday ever. Tacos have been devoured. Ice cream has been devoured. Now we're going to head back to Glacier for sunset. I can see why they don't allow large vehicles on this road. It's a little scary at times. Where we get really close to some like... There's drop-offs on the one side. But they have these rocks that kind of make a little barrier. But we get really close to those. Then on the other side, it's just like wall of rocks. And you get kind of close to those too. And then when people are coming both directions, it can get kind of tight. I'm actually, I'm mind blown how this road even exists. Just seeing the scenery around it. It's incredible. It's very fun to drive, but in a smaller car. We made it back to the Big Bend Overlook. The one we told you guys to forget about from before. But before that, we went up to the Logan Pass Visitor Center to fill up our camelback. And we saw about five or six more bighorn sheep like we saw this morning. But we also saw a mountain goat. Today has been a pretty crazy wildlife day. Probably one of our best ever. Awesome. Y'all, this view is crazy. Insane. Oh my gosh. I have no words for glacier. It's just magical. I had a battle in my head all day. Because Olympic's my favorite. Just because of the diversity. But this place is just too like in your face awesome to... It's my top spot now. Yeah, I think I would even go to say... And we love using superlatives on this channel. That this is the most beautiful place we have been to in the United States. Yeah, it tops Yosemite in that one. Yeah, yeah. Yosemite has always kind of held my number one. And I always kind of knew glacier wouldn't maybe knock it off. But yeah, I... It's blown my expectations way out of the water. I knew it was gonna be awesome like you said, but... Look at this. This is ridiculous. This is freaking magic. All day long. We had a beautiful day. So I mean, it's gonna be nice. But all day long was just... Just incredible. We were just like, oh my gosh, look at that. All day. I love it here. It's been an amazing first day at Glacier. But if you can't tell by our faces, we are exhausted. So we're gonna grab a few hours of sleep. I think at this point, it's gonna be four hours of sleep. Because we have a very big hike tomorrow. Just getting some sunset shots with our new friend here. Bambi. Cute. And he wags his tail. And he scratched his nose in the middle of the street earlier. The road, I guess. I'm just so afraid my birthday is gonna get ruined by watching this deer get hit.