My technology-persuasion series got interrupted by a fabulous family vacation to Glacier National Park – our second trip there and the only location we have graced twice (which includes 45 states and 5 foreign countries).
The US has 58 protected areas known as National Parks. They are located in 27 states and are managed by the Department of the Interior National Parks Service. Yellowstone was the first, created in 1872, and the Great Sand Dunes was the last, in 2004.
Glacier splendidly occupies more than a million acres through the upper reaches of Montana and stretches well into Canada. It is surrounded by the Blackfeet Indian Reservation on the east and the Flathead Indian Reservation on the west. Its few roads have enchanting names like Two Medicine, Many Glacier (singular, not plural), St. Mary’s, and Going-to-the-Sun. There
are 26 glaciers waiting to be climbed. At least two are reachable through worthy hikes. It is a hiker’s and sightseer’s paradise and heaven-on-earth for a backpacker (which never achieves a majority vote in our family of four.) Switzerland has more elegance and panache, unquestionably, but Switzerland has not the ruggedness and raw breath of Montana. It is not for nothing that Montana calls itself the Big Sky state.
In 1910, the Great Northern Railroad laid track and built stations throughout Montana. They needed passengers so nearby to their stations Great Northern took raw materials and constructed enormous lodges on the style of Swiss Chalets. The dozens of beams that support the East
Glacier Lodge, for example, measure almost
four feet in diameter and 45 feet tall just to support the check-in and reception area. Between these lodges, Great Northern built smaller abodes, about ten miles apart which, at the turn of the century, was an easy day of sightseeing on horseback.
Rich travelers from the east coast flocked to the facilities to stay in the lodges and travel through the mountains. Today, the park stays open year-round, but the lodges are open only during the summer. The snows come in early September and the winter temperatures sometimes don’t reach bottom at minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The summer days are an exhilarating 80/45 degrees.
If you visit, do not pass up the huckleberry pie or the Red Jammer Crème Sodas, named after the park’s famous Red Jammer buses. And, if you’re fortunate you may even spot a grizzly with its cubs or hike to a glacier like my family did. On our first visit, five years ago, we were chased by an enormous forest fire that burned hundreds of park acreage and jumped the highway onto the Blackfeet Reservation. 
The National Park Service has a policy to let fires burn. (The Blackfeet apparently don’t think much of that policy because they quickly put it out on their side – albeit much easier to accomplish because of the decreased density of forest there).
Most of the pictures attached here were taken by my son, Harrison. View his other photographs at HarrisonGivens.com