First, click here to review our itinerary.

Like I said, it would have been very easy to plan a visit of Glacier's front country: Figure out what you want to see when and make any necessary lodging or hiker shuttle reservations. For Fish Creek or St. Mary Campgrounds, use the NPS web site. These are the only two campgrounds that will accept advance registrations. St. Mary on the east side of the park, Fish Creek on the west, both offer easy access to the going to the Sun Road and the interior of the park.

For those of you who need to have a shower close by, there are also KOA's in St. Mary, and one in West Glacier. We were very pleased with the West Glacier KOA (for a photo indicitive of their tent sites, click here), while we only drove in to the St. Mary unit to sneak a quick shower.

Speaking of showers, the only places within the park to grab a shower are at the Rising Sun camp store just east of St. Mary, and at Many Glacier. There are also showers available just south of Polebridge on the west side of the Outside North Fork Road.

For reservations at the park's rustic lodges, go the Glacier Park Inc. web site. Here you can not only find descriptions of all of the park lodges, but also information on their hiker shuttle services and park tours. If you want to get a room, my advice would be to reserve early. We were forced to wait until the end of April and almost got skunked.

The towns of St. Mary, East Glacier Park and West Glacier all provided gas, groceries and shopping. In addition, the camp stores located throughout the park carried an abundance of souviniers. Finding places to spend your money is not a problem. There are also several fine restaurants located in these towns and within the park itself.. Eating will not be a problem, either.

Adding a trip into Glacier's backcountry complicates matters greatly. In our case, we wanted to stay in park lodging the nights we got off the trail. The problem is that on April 1 of each year, backcountry reservations are first accepted, and applicants generally don't find out if thier trip is a go until the end of April. This, as you might imagine, could leave you out in the cold when it comes to reserving a room at one of the lodges. We got lucky and got the last room available at Many Glacier (a room with 2 twin beds), and the 2nd last room at Glacier Park Lodge (a room with 2 Queens)---neither of which was what we wanted and was more expensive, but took anyway. Beggars can't be choosers, right?

In my opinion, you can't go wrong with any of the lodges in Glacier, though you can't beat the sunrise on Mt. Gould at the Many Glacier Hotel.

Getting back to the backcountry. Download the backcountry guide found on the NPS Glacier Backcountry camping page and read it thoroughly. View the movie as well. This page should become your best friend as you plan your trip, as well as the What's New page. Everything you need to know can be found here with the exception of elevation gains and losses on the trails. For this I would recommend purchasing a Trails Illustrated map from the Glacier Natural History Association. These aren't as precise as the quads, but will give you a ballpark figure. The GNHA also has a variety of books which can help you pick a route.

Once you think you have everything figured out it's time to get your application to the park via mail or fax. One of the goofier things I've seen is the process in which the park goes about awarding trips. Every application received between April 1 and 15 gets tossed into a pile and shuffled. After the apps are shuffled the backcountry office begins the processing.

How, then, can you increase your odds of getting the trip you want? What I did (and others also recommend) is to not limit yourselves to specific dates. For example, I created a matrix with our available vacation days and the two trips we were hoping to make. In this way we were able to note on the application that we could start the 5 night trip between July 10 and 13, and our two night between July 20 and 22. We gave them windows big enough they had to fit us in---even if both were in reverse.

Even if you don't get the hike you want, there is also a very good chance you could walk up to a BC office at 8 AM and get your hike. Make sure you have your paperwork filled out when you step up to the counter. Remember, there are several offices within the park and it's first-come, first served.

Once you get confirmation of the all-important permit you can begin planning the logistics in earnest. There are very few loop hikes in the park which means you are going to either have to use two cars or get a ride from from a shuttle or hitch. We used the GPI shuttle without incident. They were on time and the van's were not crowded at least going from Many Glacier to Waterton.