August 9th Day one in Glacier National Park

inWe hooked up and left Choteau City Park right around 8:00am for our 2 and 1/2 hour tow to the east side of Glacier National Park. We traveled via rural route 89, which is a lonely drive through hilly ranch land where we saw many pronghorns and few cattle. Towards the end of our run we entered the Blackfeet Indian Reservation which borders the park and discovered that many of the stock animals and some beautiful horses were not fenced in, in fact they were grazing by the side of the road (or trotting down it) so extra caution was required on our part to insure we didn't hit any of them. We finally entered the park via the St. Marys entrance and inquired about the availability of a campsite and were please to hear there were plenty of openings. The Ranger at the entrance recommended we select a site at St. Mary's campground which is about 1/2 mile from the entrance / visitor center due to the length of our rig so we took her advice and found a lovely pull through with a beautiful view of the mountains. After we set up camp and enjoyed lunch we decided the first thing we'd do was to visit the Many Glacier area to attend a Ranger led historical tour of the famous Many Glacier Lodge and to get my National Park Passport stamp at the Ranger Station for the Many Glacier area. At first I thought it was a bit weird that we needed to exit the park and drive about a half hour through the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to get to the Many Glacier area but after I thought about it I realized that the mountains were in the way so exiting the park made total sense. We arrived at the lodge just in time to take the tour. Our Ranger was a friendly young gal who has spent the last two summers working for the park service during her college break. She walked us through the beautiful lobby, event room and dining room providing us with nuggets of the lodge's history and at the end of the tour we stood at the edge of the lake where the lodge is located and admired the breathtaking view of the glaciers on the mountains in the distance (not much left of them by the way). After the tour we rushed out of the lodge to try to make it to the Ranger Station before 5:00pm in order to get my National Park Passport stamped but bummer for us we arrived at the station at 5:03pm and it was locked up tight. We returned to camp, had some dinner and then attended a Ranger talk at the campground up the road which was about the park's trees and animals. After the talk we returned to camp and retired as we wanted to get an early start the next morning.