Glacier National Park is a stunning and diverse national park located in northwestern Montana, known for its dramatic landscapes, majestic glaciers, and abundant wildlife. It’s a haven for outdoor enthusiasts, offering a range of activities from hiking and scenic drives to wildlife viewing and camping. We have been here twice now and it is in our top 5 national parks in the U.S.
The going to the sun road is one of the worlds great roads.
There are amazing hikes, views and lakes to swim in.
This park gets very crowded, but it is one of our favorites.
We went back in June 2026 to explore the Many Glacier side of the park and drive the Going-to-the-sun road again.
Going-to-the-Sun Road is one of the great drives of North America — full stop. Stretching 50 miles through the heart of Glacier National Park from West Glacier to St. Mary, the road passes crystal-clear lakes, cascading waterfalls, and dramatic alpine terrain, crossing the Continental Divide at Logan Pass at an elevation of 6,646 feet. If you are driving south from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Glacier is a natural extension — the two parks share a border and together form the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, and the contrast between the Canadian and American sides of this landscape is something we found genuinely remarkable. The drive itself takes about two hours without stops, but budget a full day — you will want to pull over constantly. Keep an eye out for Heaven’s Peak, one of the most photographed mountains in the park, and watch the scenery shift dramatically as you climb from dense cedar forests on the west side to wide open alpine meadows on the east.
Many Glacier
If Going-to-the-Sun Road is Glacier National Park’s most famous experience, Many Glacier is its best kept secret — and the locals will tell you it is actually the better half of the park. Located on the northeast side of Glacier, accessed via a separate road from Babb, Montana just south of the Canadian border, Many Glacier feels like a completely different world from the crowded Logan Pass corridor. Many Glacier Hotel sits right on the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake, a historic 1915-vintage lodge with a dining room that looks directly across the water at the surrounding peaks — and even if you are not staying there, the breakfast buffet with that view is absolutely worth the drive. The landscape here is dramatic in every direction: glaciers, turquoise lakes, alpine meadows, and one of the highest concentrations of wildlife in the entire park. Come with binoculars because mountain goats and bighorn sheep are everywhere, and grizzly bear sightings are genuinely common.
The hiking out of Many Glacier is exceptional and arguably the best in all of Glacier National Park. The Grinnell Glacier Trail is the crown jewel — a 10-mile round trip that climbs to one of the few remaining accessible glaciers in the park, with views along the way that are difficult to put into words. The Iceberg Lake Trail is another classic, leading to a stunning cirque lake where chunks of ice float on the surface well into summer. For something shorter, the Swiftcurrent Lake Nature Trail is an easy loop right from the hotel that delivers big views with minimal effort. Wildlife viewing is outstanding on every single one of these trails — we would put Many Glacier up against any wildlife-watching destination we have visited anywhere in the world. Moose, bears, wolves, eagles — patience here pays off in a big way. We hiked to Grinnell Lake, the glacier hike was still closed due to bears and snow.
