The Hotel

I decided to cover our trip to Montana by topic instead of a day-by-day rundown. The logical first step is to cover our lodging. The location and lack of amenities determined to a high degree what we did and how little we knew of the outside world.

I made our reservations for Montana months ago, February-I think, after a good amount of internet research. Many Glacier Hotel (MGH),

http://www.nationalparkreservations.com/glacier_many.htm?gclid=COHr1fLFiJUCFQlqsgodbEeCqQ,

is located on the East side of Glacier National Park (GNP). It is set in a beautiful location on Swiftcurrent Lake, surrounded by tall mountains. We have many pictures of Many Glacier. Here are a couple to give you an idea:

Our room was on the fourth floor all the way at one end of the building. The room had a full size and twin size bed, a small desk and bedside table, a luggage bench and a chair. The sink is outside the bathroom in the room itself and the bathroom boasts a huge old-fashioned porcelain bathtub. There was a phone but no TV, radio, internet or cell phone coverage. We did have the correct cell phone service, Verizon, , to make call when we got off GNP. It was the only service that worked there.

To get to MGH from Kalispell Airport required driving through GNP across the Going-to-the-Sun Road, exit the park, drive north about 8 miles and then re-enter the park on Many Glacier Road and drive in another 8 miles to the hotel. We got a good preview of the park on that drive in and it was exciting. Penny didn’t like sitting on the drop-off side of the road as we climbed the 6,800 feet to Logan’s Pass. We both did, however, marvel at the views.

The hotel had the usual assortment of restaurant and lounges but we planned to hike each day. We hit Wal-Mart and a supermarket in Kalispell to stock up on provisions for breakfasts and high-energy snacks to take on our hikes. We didn’t buy a meal at the hotel all week. We ended up getting into a regular routine of cereal in the room for breakfast. Snacks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches during the hikes (we hiked 5-7 miles each day) and Linner somewhere between 2 and 4 PM before going back to the hotel. We did have coffee or in my case soft serve huckleberry ice cream some evenings.

The day we arrived at MGH the power had failed. That meant no elevator. We had to haul our luggage and supplies all the way to the end of the hallway and up the 4 flights to the room. It was a good workout to prepare us for the hiking. (When power was restored we found the elevator to work fine. It was tempermental, however, and you had to be very patient when you used it.)

No power also meant registering the old-fashioned way—making an imprint of my credit card.

Since our room was on the end of the building we had 2 windows, one in the room and one in the bathroom. This provided much-needed cross ventilation that most of the hotel rooms lacked.

The worst feature of the room was thin-walled-construction. We could clearly hear everything said in the next room. Since our beds were up against the common wall it meant we had other people’s heads 1-2 ft away and if they were chatty we could enjoy their conversations. If our schedules were similar it was no problem. I only had a problem one night.

The best feature was the big tub. We found after a long day of hiking we could both fit in the tub and provide each other soothing foot massages to ease our aching feet.

The hotel also had nice picture window views of the lake and mountains with comfy seats for sitting and watching. Outside was a good sized deck full of Adirondack chairs. We made good use of both in the evenings.

Overall I liked the hotel and its location. It was the most scenic location for any of the lodging we saw and the rooms were not outrageously expensive.