Glacier National Park- a PLANNER's guide

   If you're here while planning a trip to Glacier National Park in Montana, you've come to the right place! But first, which camp of planners do you fall into?

a) I'm here a few months in advance and can't wait to get started!

b) I thought I'd start planning a few weeks ahead!

c) I'm doing some light reading for last-minute tips!

    Hopefully, if you fall into categories b) or c), you'll still get some help from this guide, but this post will mostly be a much-in-advance planner's guide to Glacier National Park. Why, you might ask? Well, Glacier can get INCREDIBLY crowded in the summer months. Also, tourism and especially road trips have increased since the COVID-19 lockdown. In fact, according to the National Park Service, Glacier received almost 3 million visitors in 2023 (nps.org), and that was a DECREASE from the previous year! This park especially can get unpredictably busy, so start planning your trip well in advance!

    In this guide, I'll lay out what our itinerary was when we visited a few years ago, and a few things to keep in mind for an enjoyable experience! If you are taking a cross-country road trip like we did, you'll want to make sure its worth it by following some of these tips!

    Some of the main things you may have to consider are the season in which you are visiting and the waitlist for some of the tickets. In summer of 2021, Glacier National Park had a Ticketed Entry System. Tickets had to be planned about 60 days in advance and it was a lottery system. A lot of planning is needed because accomodations are few and number of visitors has been increasing in the last few years. If you are planning on accessing this road (it's the main one that runs through the park), you will absolutely need to keep checking the "lottery" links on the park website to avoid any hassle. Even if you have a National Park Pass like us or purchasing a ticket to enter the park, the ticket for the road may be different as they may be trying to reduce the number of visitors any given year for traffic volume control. Make sure to check based on the time you are attending, as policies can be updated frequently!

    The season you are attending is also important for checking travel conditions in the area itself. Most areas of the park itself and the Going-to-the-Sun-Road, which leads in, are closed due to snow and weather conditions until mid-June, so even if the weather may seem nice, the park may not accept those conditions for opening. Even if you have everything booked for the park, your hotel/accomodations and travel routes may be blocked by season activities in the area or even on the way to Montana. On the way, our visit to the Black Hills area coincided with the Sturgis Rally, so the road was filled with bikers. The Sturgis Rally, in case you aren't aware (that's okay, we weren't either), is a motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota, and the Black Hills region, typically in the first week of August. Even if you are not attending then, this is just an example of an activity taking place in the area that can affect your travel time or hotel bookings if you are not prepared! Make reservations in advance and keep them flexible for as long as possible so you can adjust things as needed due to an unforeseen circumstance.

    Those are some of the main things I recommend to keep in mind, as they are based on my personal experience, but please let me know in the comments if there is anything else people should consider that I didn't include!

    Before we end this post with the whole itinerary, thank you for reading this, and I hope you gained some useful information! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. Photos from our trip are on @roundwithrush on instagram!

    Finally, our itinerary. Our trip spanned 9 days including travel time, with us leaving from Chicago on a Saturday and returning the following Sunday. Here is a table of the places we stopped and the activities we did- keep in mind that we had visited some of the sites on the way on a previous road trip to Yellowstone National Park (on which, more soon), so we did not repeat those places:

Day	Night Halt at	What we did
Saturday	Fargo, ND	Drove from Home to Fargo. Stopped at Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul and Minehaha Falls in Minneapolis, MN.
Sunday	Williston, ND	Visited World's Largest Buffalo Statue in Jamestown ND. Stopped at North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck, ND. Visited both the South and North Units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in ND. Night Halt was at Williston, ND.
Monday	Whitefish, MT	Drove to Whitefish, MT from Williston, ND. On the way, we stopped by at Goat Lick Overlook and Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park.
Tuesday		Spent the day in Glacier National Park - Drove the Going-To-The-Sun-Road (GTTSR) and hiked part of the Highline Trail, the Hidden Lake Overlook Trail, St Mary's Fall Trail and stopped at different view points along the GTTSR.
Wednesday		Spent the day in Glacier National Park- drove the GTTSR stopping along some view points on our way to the Many Glacier Area of the NP. Hiked the Swiftcurrent Lake Trail and visited the Many Glacier Hotel. Later in the evening, visited the Two Medicine Area of the NP. Hiked the Running Eagle Falls Nature trail and Paradise Point trails in Two Medicine Area
Thursday	Billings, MT	Visited Garden of One Thousand Buddhas in Arlee, MT and Montana State Capitol in Helena, MT on our way to Billings, MT.
Friday	Hill City, SD	Drove to Hill City, SD from Billings, MT. Visited the Custer State Park, drove the Needles Highway and the Blackhills area of South Dakota
Saturday	Brookings SD	Visited Wind Cave National Park and took a guided tour. Stopped at Dignity Statue in Chamberlain SD and the World's only Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD on our way to Brookings, SD
Sunday	Home	Visited Falls Park in Sioux Falls, SD on our way back home.