Grinnell Glacier Hike in Glacier National Park

Today we are hiking part of the Grinnell Glacier Hike at Many Glacier here in Glacier National Park. If you want to know more about the hike you can go here. www.hikinginglacier.com/grinnell-glacier.htm

​The full hike is approximately 5 miles if you take the boat across the lake. We arrived at the Many Glacier Hotel and this picture was at the top of the parking area. I just love what it says and how it is passing on the hat to the next generation of kids!!

Change is inevitable.
The idea evolves.
The mission remains.

What profound words!!

We sure had an amazing view!!

We made it down to the boat dock. Garrett was excited about the hike and Tim was enjoying taking pictures!!

We all were just really enjoying our views!!

Garrett was just having fun playing while we waited.....

Teresa was taking lots of pictures as well!!

Garrett was enjoying just hanging out with Teresa!!

I was showing Garrett the kayakers coming in when he spotted a bug on the dock. 

You see this house? In the Summer it houses the workers here at Glacier. In the Winter a couple comes in and stays in the house to take care of the hotel. If you look up Many Glacier Hotel Caretaker you can find many articles about the people who have been caretakers here. Definitely not for the faint of heart!!

We were finally ready to board our first boat. This boat is called Chief Two Guns and it will take us across Swiftcurrent Lake where we have to disembark walk .2 miles to Lake Josephine and board the boat called Morning Eagle. We then take that boat across where we will hike the Grinnell Glacier Hike. Garrett was just pretty excited to be on another boat, and we all were excited to finally have a nice day!!

Here is our view looking at the hotel from the water. 

First animal of the day.....a bald eagle!!

Some cute little ducks!!

One of the glaciers still left....

Made it across that lake and now hiking to the next boat!!

Getting on our next boat!!

We made it across and are excited to start our hike!!

Lots of exploring happening!! 

Continuing on. It was like this with the boards for a little while and the brush was thick in some areas. We made lots of noise just in case of bears and always had our bear spray ready!! They actually tell you to never hike with a group of less than 3. We always made sure Garrett was in the middle. Thankfully this hike was traveled by a lot of people!!

The hike was all uphill and it was hard! You can see the little shack of where we were dropped off at the boat. We came a long way so far!!

This should give you an idea of how thick the brush was in this area.....plus we had a lot of switchbacks.

Lots of bees on the trail.....

Taking a break....it got hot quick!!

The bridge we crossed over and just look at that view!!

This was Garrett's first big hike EVER!! Little legs get tired quickly!!

Ummm I think that's bear scat....gulp!!

This is where the trail got harder. You had to climb up stairs that were huge. Poor Garrett, you could just see he was struggling. He kept getting high 5's from anyone passing him. They were all telling him what a great job he was doing and that was what was pushing him to keep going :)

We took as many breaks as we had to. Everyone had lots of water. To be honest I was getting just as tired!!

A park ranger coming down that we were able to talk to. He said no issues on the trail so far and no one has seen any bear. So that was good news. We did tell him about the scat we saw a little ways down and he said they are probably staying off the trail today because of how many people. Finally a crowd is something to be thankful for, LOL.

Garrett was really enjoying himself. He was finding things along the way and pointing them out to us.

We found a chipmunk!!

Gosh the view was unbelievable!!

We finally found a place to stop and have lunch. We were all pretty tired at that point!! During our lunch break we had a visitor show up ;)

I'm thinking it was some kind of squirrel, and it definitely is used to people being in this spot. He really liked Teresa!! He came and sat right next to her!!

We were going to continue hiking on a little bit more, and we did. Garrett was really tired though so Teresa, myself and Garrett went back and sat on the rocks while Tim went up just a little ways to get some pictures.

He found this cool looking caterpillar along the way.

It's just so beautiful. When Garrett gets a little older I wouldn't mind coming back and doing this hike in full. I'm told the views are outstanding.

We had an even bigger adventure on the way down.....we missed our sign and went further than we had to. Oh no!! At least we were going down and not up this time!!

Garrett even got to try a huckleberry off of a bush.

Garrett is so happy....we are almost back to the beginning!!

As we are walking on the planks heading back all of a sudden we see it. A freakin moose!!  I'm so excited for Teresa!!  This one was a male but it didn't have a rack. He gave us quite the show!!

To give you perspective of where we were at compared to the moose.

We were heading back to this dock that he is looking at and would eventually make our way there.

We made it back over to the boat dock so we are now looking at the area we just came from. Eventually the moose would hear some people over in that area and chase them. I'm just glad we weren't with that group!!

Some video Tim took of the moose.

I gotta tell ya, some people are morons!! Everywhere in the park it tells you to not get close to wildlife because they are unpredictable. Man these people were way to close and this moose was getting agitated because of it. You can see in this picture how far away we actually were. Tim was using his zoom quite a bit to get the pictures and the videos. These people are very lucky that they didn't get hurt!!

The moose finally decided to leave. So we were just enjoying the rest of our view!

In the meantime Garrett was making friends with a little girl from India. He was having a great time in the water!!

Woohoo!!  Here comes the boat!!

After we boarded and were on our way they told us to look to the left. That you would be able to see a black bear. Do you see it?

Wasn't too long before we were almost back to the hotel. 

We made the decision to eat here for dinner and headed upstairs to the Ptarmigan Dining Room. It was actually a really beautiful dining area!

We were one of the first ones in and they took us straight to a window seat. We couldn't have asked for a  better seat or view!!

After we were done eating Garrett and I headed out of the dining area. In the waiting area they had a piano and the sign told everyone that they could play the piano. So of course Garrett had to play. 

While we were having fun so were the dogs at the place we boarded them!!

After we finished dinner we headed back to the campground. What an unbelievable view we had on our way home!!

We had such a great day, but we are all extremely exhausted. We gave Teresa some extra blankets and she moved some things around in her tent so here's hoping she stays warm tonight and everyone sleeps great!!