In between finishing projects on my old house (I’ll still be working on them,) I’ll be posting about some interesting old buildings I have come in contact with. During our vacation we intentionally came in contact with many historic buildings including the Many Glacier Hotel in the Glacier National Park in Montana. The history can be found here: http://www.glacierparkfoundation.org/History/mgh.html
Yes, go. It’s so gorgeous the price is worth it. The rooms are not but as the saying goes, you pay for the view. I get goosebumps still when I think about the grandeur of the place, the views and the moose and the treat or threat of seeing grizzly bears. A person is dwarfed by the huge mountains and it really makes you take a step back and think about things, wonderful things. This is one place you really do drink in the view. Bears, nope, we paid just shy of $100 for bear spray for the 2 of us because you just don’t take chances with grizzlies. But the weather didn’t cooperate for too many hikes and we didn’t see any bears. We saw moose right outside while we were sitting on our balcony. A bull, a cow and a young baby trying to nurse. It made our day.
When we arrived the clouds and mist lowered onto the mountain tops and we only saw the bottoms but that was still breath-taking. Mountain goats greeted us. They just happened to come down from the surrounding mountains to munch on the hotel’s lawn. We didn’t see them again except for through a scope up on the mountain tops.
The hotel was big and on the shore of pretty Swiftcurrent Lake. We felt like we were in the Swiss Alps (we’ve never been there so…. ) The drawback was that the parking lot was way up on a hill. We read about that from reviewers of the hotel but thought that shouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t but it was a big inconvenience. It’s good exercise.
The only room I could get with a lakeside balcony was a room with twin beds and a shared balcony with 2 other rooms. I booked back in April for our September vacation. The rooms fill up fast. It had a clawfoot bathtub with shower and the sink was outside the bathroom and had a cold and hot faucet but the temperatures don’t mix. That wasn’t that big a deal for us. The bathroom was small but functional but I didn’t like the very thick plastic shower curtain that was too long and sat in the water when showering. There was a heater in there that worked good enough. The rooms are so badly decorated. Plastic-like fake paneling, totally out-of-period lighting and our room had an adjoining door to the room next door. There was daylight under the door. You could hear every word the neighbors said. There may as well of had a curtain between us. But who cares!!!? It’s all about the views and we weren’t in our room very much. I read somewhere that they will be remodeling next year. Perhaps we should have waited a few years to come but maybe the price would go up, too, and make it not within our budget. Really, the rooms just don’t matter when you are in a place like that.
Many Glacier Hotel from the side.
View from our Balcony.
View from the trail at Many Glacier Hotel
Looking straight out from our balcony. That shot almost looks like it is through a fish eye lens but it isn’t. That bowl effect if from glacier activity thousands of years ago.
But this isn’t a real shot. It is from my movie tracer to show a panoramic view taken from a video sweep of the area.
Nice roomy balcony for watching the sunset.
The trail around Many Glacier Hotel. We could only go half way around the lake because of trail maintenance.
Trail around the lake.
Sunrise, alpine glow, at Many Glacier taken by my husband. I sleep in 
Our room at Many Glacier Hotel. It’s pretty expensive but you pay for the view.
The balcony door on right, door to adjoining room (locked, I hope, I didn’t try it) on left. Also, our balcony door blew open in the middle of the night when the wind picked up. I thought my husband got hot and opened it, he thought the same thing about me. It turns out the door doesn’t latch well and really the only thing keeping people from the other 2 rooms that share the balcony out of our room was a small hook and eye on the screen door and honesty. I didn’t care for that, for sure.
The quaint old period-appropriate sink with single faucets each for hot and cold. The green on the tub was a bit “green” but the room was clean and the linens were fresh and that’s the main thing.
I’ll be posting the inside of the Many Glacier Hotel lobby on my next post. The lobby is awesome!
Looking back at towards the Many Glacier Hotel. It was gloomy but beautiful. The weather wasn’t our friend while we were there, just a few hours here and there was it sunny. We hated to leave but we looked forward to going to Lake McDonald (still in Glacier National Park) and then on to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I got so excited when I looked back and saw this view I had my husband quickly pull off the road and I jumped out of our Explorer catching my arm in the seat belt causing my camcorder to be thrown quite a ways onto the payment. The settings seem a bit off now but good enough. Later I also would get excited and in my hurry to capture, wolves, eagles and the like in Yellowstone and the Tetons, my camera went for some hard hitting rides again. I have to control myself
