We tent camped for one night in the NPS campground on the east side of the park, with no reservations, either 2015 or 2016. It must have been late season because it froze that night. I remember our dog had ice on his whiskers in the morning. We got into Kalispell area late the previous day and ended up getting a hotel in Whitefish (again this was pre-camper days). We entered the park's west gate pretty early (after a painfully long stop at the huckleberry store, don't buy the huckleberry lemonade mix) and it was pretty busy. We drove the sun road through the park. I'd guess we hit the east campground around 2? There were about 5-10 percent of the sites left, but they filled quickly after we picked one. I think the campground was full that night. No problems going east on the sun road in a full size pickup. I seem to remember a lot of resort-y campgrounds along the road to the west gate, many of which were closed for the season at the time. But it looked like the area gets very busy during the season.
The next day we packed up early and headed north from the east entrance and back in to the park to the lodge and the lake (from the other posts here, it sounds like we were at Many Glaciers). I would recommend doing that; it would be easy to skip because it is kind of an out of the way corner of the park, but it was a lot of fun. We were only there for an hour or two, but it made us wish we had kayaks with us. Also from the lodge area, we got to play "find the mountain goats with your binoculars" on the surrounding ridges. They were everywhere if you take the time to look for them.
I would have liked to spend more time there, but it is definitely one of the busier National Parks, which is always a drawback for us. Our stop there was a midpoint between our tour of Idaho and our plan to see Yellowstone during the 150th NPS anniversary. The crowds at Glacier ended up paling severely in comparison to the nightmare that Yellowstone was.
I remember our backup plan for camping if the main east campground in Glacier was full was to drive south from the east entrance and then enter the park again. There is some sort of campground down there that is not connected by roads to any other part of the park. We never ended up going there because we found a spot.
This was part of our epic final tent trip; I had been wanting a FWC for a few years but my wife was hesitant at the investment. We had a blast and covered a lot of ground, including a wonderful 3 day stay at Grand Tetons after self-exiling from Yellowstone, but by the end of it both of us were firmly convinced that we had reached the age where setting up tent camp every few days was no longer the way to go.
Edited by Andy Douglass, 23 May 2019 - 01:33 AM.
