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June 2011
A Bucket List Must:
Glacier and Beyond
If you crave mountain vistas, thrive on fresh air (and huckleberry French toast), and prefer your ecosystems wild and intact, point your hiking boots towards the
Crown of the Continent. Surrounding Glacier National Park and reaching into Canada, the Crown region is a straight-out-of-National-Geographic land of rugged peaks, endless prairies, mountain towns and quiet forests begging to be
explored by foot, horseback, raft, bike or station wagon.
The heart of the Crown, Glacier National Park is a beauty queen from every angle: winding up the unreal
Going-to-the-Sun Road, hiking the taste-of-everything
Highline Trail, or boating across placid
Lake McDonald. Goats clamor, grizzlies hide (mostly), beargrass blooms, and glaciers like
Grinnell Glacier persevere. From tiny, off-the-grid
Polebridge, float the North Fork, sneak in the scenic way to Bowman Lake, and marvel at the clear night sky.
With all the outdoor allure, it's easy to forget the Crown's more refined offerings. Here, you can arrive via
train, catch theatre season and galleries in
Bigfork and
Whitefish, and stay in historic lodges like the
Izaak Walton Inn. Then again, sometimes forgetting civilization is part of the charm. Take
East Glacier, for instance. The backpacker cabins behind
Serrano's Mexican Restaurant, the huckleberry-stuffed French toast at the down-home
Whistle Stop Cafe, and the dramatic backdrop of mountains meeting prairies helps keep things comfortably rustic.
If you need at least one photo from your summer showcasing you backdropped by jagged peaks, munching on wild huckleberries, pointing your binoculars towards a baby mountain goat and manning a cataraft down a wild river filled with
catch-and-release opportunities ...then the Crown of the Continent has your photo op ready. (If you just need a shot of you and fresh huckleberry pie, we've got that covered, too.)
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