A Weekend in Glacier National Park

We drove into Glacier National Park over a weekend in early August. The scale of the mountains is hard to capture. We were on a winding road cut into the side of a massive green valley, looking up at jagged peaks that still held patches of snow even this late in the summer. The sky was full of dramatic, heavy clouds, with sunlight breaking through in shafts to light up different parts of the landscape. Every turn seemed to reveal an even more immense view.

The road eventually brought us to a viewpoint overlooking a huge lake, spread out between the ranges. The wind was picking up across the water, and the same dramatic clouds hung over the peaks on the far side. There was a tiny island with a cluster of trees sitting right in the middle of it all. We stopped here for a while, just watching the light and weather shift over the mountains.

The next morning, everything had changed. The clouds were gone, replaced by a clear, bright blue sky. The lake was perfectly calm, reflecting the mountains like a mirror. You could see all the colorful stones on the bottom through the clear water near the shore. It felt like a completely different place from the day before.